Page "Blackface" Paragraph 7

There is no consensus about a single moment that constitutes the origin of blackface.

John Strausbaugh places it as part of a tradition of " displaying Blackness for the enjoyment and edification of white viewers " that dates back at least to 1441, when captive West Africans were displayed in Portugal.

Whites routinely portrayed the black characters in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater ( see English Renaissance theatre ), most famously in Othello ( 1604 ).

However, Othello and other plays of this era did not involve the emulation and caricature of " such supposed innate qualities of Blackness as inherent musicality, natural athleticism ," etc.

that Strausbaugh sees as crucial to blackface.

Lewis Hallam, Jr., a white actor using blackface makeup of American Company fame, brought blackface in this more specific sense to prominence as a theatrical device in the United States when playing the role of " Mungo ", an inebriated black man in The Padlock, a British play that premiered in New York City at the John Street Theatre on May 29, 1769.

The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style.

From at least the 1810s, blackface clowns were popular in the United States.

British actor Charles Mathews toured the U. S. in 1822 – 1823, and as a result added a " black " characterization to his repertoire of British regional types for his next show, A Trip to America, which included Mathews singing " Possum up a Gum Tree ", a popular slave freedom song.

Edwin Forrest played a plantation black in 1823, and George Washington Dixon was already building his stage career around blackface in 1828, but it was another white comic actor, Thomas D. Rice, who truly popularized blackface.

Rice introduced the song " Jump Jim Crow " accompanied by a dance in his stage act in 1828 and scored stardom with it by 1832.