Thomas D.

Rice
Thomas Dartmouth Rice (May 20, 1808 – September 19, 1860), known professionally
as Daddy Rice, was an American performer and playwright who performed blackface and
used African American vernacular speech, song and dance to become one of the most
popular minstrel show entertainers of his time. He is considered the "father of American
minstrelsy".[1][2] His act drew on aspects of African American culture and popularized them with a
national, and later international audience.
Rice's "Jim Crow" persona was an ethnic depiction in accordance with contemporary Caucasian
ideas of African Americans and their culture. The character was based on a folk trickster named
Jim Crow that was long popular among black slaves. Rice also adapted and popularized a
traditional slave song called "Jump Jim Crow".

Biography
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was born on the lower east side of Manhattan, New York. His family
resided in the commercial district near the East River docks. Rice received some formal
education in his youth, but ceased in his teenage years when he acquired an apprenticeship with
a woodcarver named Dodge. Despite this occupational training, Rice quickly made a career as a
performer.
By 1827, Rice was a traveling actor, appearing not only as a stock player in several New York
theaters, but also performing on frontier stages in the coastal South and the Ohio River valley.
According to a former stage colleague, Rice was "tall and wiry, and a great deal on the build
of Bob Fitzsimmons, the prizefighter". According to another account he was at least six feet tall.
[4]
 He frequently told stories of George Washington, who he claimed had been a friend of his
father.[5]

Career
Rice had made the Jim Crow character his signature act by 1832.[6] Rice went from one theater to
another, singing his Jim Crow Song. He became known as "Jim Crow Rice". There had been
other blackface performers before Rice, and there were many more afterwards. But it was
"Daddy Rice" who became so indelibly associated with a single character. Rice claimed to have
been inspired by a crippled black stable groom, who sang and danced as he did his work,[7] and
even claimed to have bought the man's clothes for "authenticity." The time, place and truth of this
claim have been disputed.
He soon expanded his repertoire, with his most popular routine being his "shadow dance." Rice
would appear on stage carrying a sack slung over his shoulder, then sing the song "Me and My
Shadow" (not the better-known 1920s song). As Rice began to dance, a child actor in blackface
would crawl out of the sack, and emulate each of Rice's moves and steps. Rice also performed
as the "Yankee" character, an already-established stage stereotype who represented rural
America and dressed in a long blue coat and striped pants.
Rice's greatest prominence came in the 1830s, before the rise of full-blown blackface minstrel
shows, when blackface performances were typically part of a variety show or as an entr'acte in
another play.[8]
During the years of his peak popularity, from roughly 1832 to 1844, Rice often encountered sold-
out houses, with audiences demanding numerous encores.[8] In 1836 he popularized blackface
entertainment with English audiences when he appeared in London,[9] although he and his
character were known there by reputation at least by 1833.[8]
Rice not only performed in more than 100 plays, but also created plays of his own, providing
himself slight variants on the Jim Crow persona—as Cuff in Oh, Hush! (1833), Ginger Blue
in Virginia Mummy (1835), and Bone Squash in Bone Squash Diavolo (1835). Shortly after
making his first hit in London in Oh, Hush, Rice starred in a more prestigious production, a three-
act play at the Adelphi Theatre in London.[10] Moreover, Rice wrote and starred in Otello (1844);
he also played the title character in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Starting in 1854 he played in one of the
more prominent (and one of the least abolitionist) "Tom shows", loosely based on Harriet
Beecher Stowe's book.[11]
"The Virginny Cupids" was an operatic olio and the most popular of the time. It is centered on a
song "Coal Black Rose", which predated the playlet. Rice played Cuff, boss of the bootblacks,
and he wins the girl, Rose, away from the black dandy Sambo Johnson, a former bootblack who
made money by winning a lottery.[12]
According to Broadbent,[13] "T. D. Rice, the celebrated negro comedian, performed "Jump Jim
Crow" with witty local allusions" at Ducrow's Royal Amphitheatre (now The Royal Court Theatre),
Liverpool, England.
At least initially, blackface could also give voice to an oppositional dynamic that was prohibited
by society. As early as 1832, Rice was singing, "An' I caution all white dandies not to come in my
way, / For if dey insult me, dey'll in de gutter lay." It also on occasion equated lower-class white
and lower-class black audiences; while parodying Shakespeare, Rice sang, "Aldough I'm a black
man, de white is call'd my broder."[14]