The Jim Crow Craze in London's Press and Streets, 1836–39

Abstract

Abstract 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. This essay will look beyond Rice's act and the performance of Jim Crow in the theatres to look instead at Jim Crow's appropriation in print satire and street performance. It will argue that these requisitions of Jim Crow illustrate how Georgian traditions of carnival and grotesque humour were redeveloped for the early Victorian 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.