Thomas D. Rice
Encyclopedia
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was a white performer and playwright
who used African American vernacular
speech, song, and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show
entertainers of his time.
, the prizefighter." According to another account he was at least six foot tall. He frequently told stories of George Washington
, whom he claimed had been a friend of his father.
A more likely explanation behind the origin of the character is that Rice had observed and absorbed African American traditional song and dance over many years. He grew up in a racially integrated Manhattan neighborhood, and later Rice toured the Southern slave states. According to the reminiscences of Isaac Odell, a former minstrel who described the development of the genre in an interview given in 1907, Rice appeared onstage at Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1830s and learned there to mimic local black speech: “Coming to New York he opened up at the old Park Theatre, where he introduced his Jim Crow act, impersonating a negro slave. He sang a song, ‘I Turn About and Wheel About’, and each night composed new verses for it, catching on with the public and making a great name for himself.”
The character dressed in rags, battered hat and torn shoes. Rice blackened his face and hands and impersonated a very nimble and irreverently witty African American field hand who sang, “Turn about and wheel about, and do just so. And every time I turn about I Jump Jim Crow.”
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.
During the years of his peak popularity, from roughly 1832 to 1844, Rice often encountered sold-out houses, with audiences demanding numerous encores. In 1836 he popularized blackface entertainment with English audiences when he appeared in London, although he and his character were known there by reputation at least by 1833.
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 there. 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
. (Lott, 1993, 211).
"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
. (Lott, 1993, 133)
laws were surfacing in the United States
. The Jim Crow period, which started when segregation rules, laws and customs surfaced after Reconstruction era ended in the 1870s, existed until the mid-1960s when the struggle for civil rights
in the United States gained national attention.
Rice enjoyed displaying his wealth, and on his return from London wore a blue dress coat with gold guineas for buttons, and a vest on which each gold button bore a solitaire diamond.
As early as 1840 Rice suffered from a type of paralysis which began to limit his speech and movements, and eventually led to his death on September 19, 1860. A reminiscence of him in the New York Times suggests his death was alcohol-related, and states that although he had made a considerable fortune in his time, his later years were spent in a liquor saloon and his burial was paid for by public subscription.
. It was painted and made in four pieces, with both arms and the right leg below the knee being separate parts screwed to the trunk. Prior to at least 1871 it had stood on Broadway outside 'a well-known resort of actors and showmen'. According to an article in the New York Times it had apparently been carved by Rice himself in 1833, although a different account in the same paper says it had been carved by a celebrated figurehead carver called Weeden, and yet another article attributes it to Rice's former employer 'Charley' Dodge. It had long been used by Rice as an advertizing feature and accompanied him on his successful tour of London.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
who used African American vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
speech, song, and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
entertainers of his time.
Background
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was born in 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 his occupational training, Rice quickly made a career as a performer. By 1827, he 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 FitzsimmonsBob Fitzsimmons
Robert James "Bob" Fitzsimmons , was a British boxer who made boxing history as the sport's first three-division world champion. He also achieved fame for beating Gentleman Jim Corbett, the man who beat John L. Sullivan, and is in The Guinness Book of World Records as the Lightest heavyweight...
, the prizefighter." According to another account he was at least six foot tall. He frequently told stories of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, whom he claimed had been a friend of his father.
Character
The actual origin of the Jim Crow character has been lost to legend. Several sources describe a tale of Rice encountering an elderly black stableman working in one of the river towns where Rice was performing. According to some accounts the man had a crooked leg and deformed shoulder. He was singing about Jim Crow, and punctuating each stanza with a little jump.A more likely explanation behind the origin of the character is that Rice had observed and absorbed African American traditional song and dance over many years. He grew up in a racially integrated Manhattan neighborhood, and later Rice toured the Southern slave states. According to the reminiscences of Isaac Odell, a former minstrel who described the development of the genre in an interview given in 1907, Rice appeared onstage at Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1830s and learned there to mimic local black speech: “Coming to New York he opened up at the old Park Theatre, where he introduced his Jim Crow act, impersonating a negro slave. He sang a song, ‘I Turn About and Wheel About’, and each night composed new verses for it, catching on with the public and making a great name for himself.”
The character dressed in rags, battered hat and torn shoes. Rice blackened his face and hands and impersonated a very nimble and irreverently witty African American field hand who sang, “Turn about and wheel about, and do just so. And every time I turn about I Jump Jim Crow.”
Career
Rice had made the Jim Crow character his signature act by 1830. 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 and routine.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
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
or as an entr'acte
Entr'acte
' is French for "between the acts" . It can mean a pause between two parts of a stage production, synonymous to an intermission, but it more often indicates a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production...
in another play.
During the years of his peak popularity, from roughly 1832 to 1844, Rice often encountered sold-out houses, with audiences demanding numerous encores. In 1836 he popularized blackface entertainment with English audiences when he appeared in London, although he and his character were known there by reputation at least by 1833.
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 there. 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
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
) "Tom shows", loosely based on Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
's book
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
. (Lott, 1993, 211).
"The Virginny Cupids" was an operatic olio
Olio (musical number)
An olio is a Vaudeville number, short dance or song performed as musical encore after the performance of a dramatic play. It can also be defined as a collection of various artistic or literary works or musical pieces used between acts in a burlesque or minstrel show. This was common on showboats in...
and the most popular of the time. It is centered on a song "Coal Black Rose
Coal Black Rose
"Coal Black Rose" is a folk song, one of the earliest songs to be sung by a man in blackface. The song was first performed in the United States in the late 1820s, possibly by George Washington Dixon. It was certainly Dixon who popularized the song when he put on three blackface performances at the...
", which predated the playlet. Rice played Cuff, boss of the bootblacks, and he wins the girl, Rose, away from the black dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
Sambo Johnson, a former bootblack who made money by winning a lottery
Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...
. (Lott, 1993, 133)
Jim Crow laws
Rice's minstrel shows gained widespread international acceptance at a time when it was common to see Black people mocked as uneducated and irrational, and his famous stage persona lent its name to a negative and stereotypical view of black people. The shows peaked in the 1850s, and after Rice's death in 1860 interest in them faded. There was still some memory of them in the 1870s however, just as the "Jim Crow" segregationRacial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
laws were surfacing in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Jim Crow period, which started when segregation rules, laws and customs surfaced after Reconstruction era ended in the 1870s, existed until the mid-1960s when the struggle for civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
in the United States gained national attention.
Personal life and death
On one of his stage tours in England, Rice married Charlotte Bridgett Gladstone in 1837. She died in 1847, and none of their children survived infancy.Rice enjoyed displaying his wealth, and on his return from London wore a blue dress coat with gold guineas for buttons, and a vest on which each gold button bore a solitaire diamond.
As early as 1840 Rice suffered from a type of paralysis which began to limit his speech and movements, and eventually led to his death on September 19, 1860. A reminiscence of him in the New York Times suggests his death was alcohol-related, and states that although he had made a considerable fortune in his time, his later years were spent in a liquor saloon and his burial was paid for by public subscription.
Popular culture
For some years in the latter half of the 19th century a wooden statue of Rice in his 'Jim Crow' character stood in various New York locations, including outside the Chatham Garden TheatreChatham Garden Theatre
The Chatham Garden Theatre or Chatham Theatre was a playhouse in the Chatham Gardens of New York City. It was located on the north side of Chatham Street on Park Row between Pearl and Duane streets in lower Manhattan. The grounds ran through to Augustus Street...
. It was painted and made in four pieces, with both arms and the right leg below the knee being separate parts screwed to the trunk. Prior to at least 1871 it had stood on Broadway outside 'a well-known resort of actors and showmen'. According to an article in the New York Times it had apparently been carved by Rice himself in 1833, although a different account in the same paper says it had been carved by a celebrated figurehead carver called Weeden, and yet another article attributes it to Rice's former employer 'Charley' Dodge. It had long been used by Rice as an advertizing feature and accompanied him on his successful tour of London.
Further reading
- Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507832-2.