OT: Can PaulsLaugh Blame This On Trump

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academic.oup.com/jvc/article/19/1/93/4095101?login=false

In 1836, American actor Thomas D. Rice first arrived in Great Britain to tour the creation that had made him famous in the USA, Jim Crow.





This blackface depiction of a raggedy, runaway slave, with his infectious songs, eccentric dancing and demotic appeal soon took London by storm. The Jim Crow craze lasted for three years, with Rice finding fame, fortune and success and his imitators becoming ubiquitous in the capital's theatres and on its streets.

Although the act and its character have been acknowledged as a precursor to the evolution of British minstrelsy and blackface traditions throughout the Victorian period, the craze itself has not been substantially studied in its British context.



In print, Jim Crow was widely utilized in caustic bodily humour that attacked insincere politicians. On the streets, this same humour was seen as obscene and was repressed and contained, paving the way for the respectable, mainstream Victorian blackface act. However, integral to both appropriations of Jim Crow was the figure of the black buffoon, and the act rapidly provided an archetype for the belittling and persecution of London's black population.