, 1889-06-19
FOUNDER OF NEGRO MlNsrRELsY.
The Mimic Stage Of Over Sixty Years Ago.
Jump Jim Crow"

The Mimic Stage Of Over Sixty Years Ago.
Jump Jim Crow"
Thomas D. Rice is generally con-
coded to have been the founder of
Ethiopian minstrelsy. Although, as
has been seen, it did not originate with
him, he made it popular on both sides
of the Atlantic, and his image deserves
an honored niche in its cathedral.
The history of Jim Crow Rice" as
he was atfectionately called for many
years, has been written by many
scribes and in many different ways,
the most complete and most truthful
account, perhaps, being that of Mr..
Edmon S. Conner, who described in
the columns of The New York Times,
June 5, 1881, what he saw and remem-
lered OF its conception. Mr.. Conner
was q member of the company at the
Columbia street theatre, Cincinnati, in
1889, when he first met Rice, doing
little negro bits" between the acts at
that house, notably one sketch he had
studied from life in Louisville the pre-
ceding summer. Back of the Louis
vile theatre was a livery stable kept
by a man named Crow. The actors
could look into the stable yard from
the windows of their dressing rooms,
anu MtTt very lOIu OI Watching the
movements of an old and decrepit
slave who was employed by the pro
prietor TO do all sorts of odd Jobs. As
was the custom among the negroes,
he had assumed his masters name and
called himself Jim Crow. He was
very much deformed-the right
shoulder was drawn up high, and
the left leg vas stiff and crooked
at the knee, which gave him a pain
full but at the same time ludicrous
limp. He was in the habit of Groom
ing a queer old tune, t. which he had
applied words of his own. AT the end
of each verse he gave q peculiar step,
rocking de heel" in the manner since
SC general among the long generation
OF his de%lineators; and these were the
words of his refrain:
Wheel about, turn about,
Do ifs 30,
An cherry time I wheel about
jump Jim Grow.
Rice closely watched this unconscious
performer, and recognized in him a
character entirely new to the stage.
He wrote a number of verses, quicken
ed and slightly changed the air, made
upexactlylike the original, and appear
ed before q Louisville audience, Which,
as MIR. Conner says, went mad with
delight, recalling him on the first
night at least twenty times. And SO
Jim Crow jumped into fame, and
something that looks almost like i'm
mortality. 'Sol" Smith says that the
character was first seen in a piece by
Scion Robinson, called 1.-THE Rifle
and that he, Smith, ''helped Rice q
little in fixing the tune"
Other cities besides Louisville claim
Jim Crow. Francis Courteney We
myss, in his Autobiography, says he
was a native of Pittsburg, whose name
was Jim Cuff; while Mr.. Robert p.
Nevin, in The Atlantic Monthly for
November, 1867, declares that the
original was n negro stage driver of
Cincinnati, and that Pittsburg was
the scene OF Rice's first appearance in
the part, a local negro there, whose
professional career was confined to
holding his mouth open for pennies
thrown to him on the docks and the
streets, furnishing the wardrobe for
the initial performance.
Rice was born in the Seventh ward
of New York in 1908. He was q su- |
pernumerary at the Park theatre,
where Sam" Cowel remembered him
in Bombastes Furioso, attracting SO
much attention by his eccentricities
that Hilson and Barnes, the leading
characters in the cast, made q formal
complaint, and had him dismissed
from the company, Cowell adding
that this man, whose name did not
eve appear in the bills, was the only
actor on the stage whom the audience
seemed to notice. Cowell also de-
scribes him in Cincinnati in 1929 as a
very unassuming, modest young man,
who wore "a very queer hat, very
much pointed down before and be-
hind, and very much cooked on one
side" He went to England in 1886,
where he met with great success, laid
the foundation of a very comfortable
fortune, and personally and profess
sionally he was the Buffalo Bill of the
London of half a century ago. Mr..
Ireland, speaking of his popularity
in this country, says that he drew
more money to the Bowery theatre
than any other performer in the same
period of time.
Rice was the author of many of his
own ~farces, notably Bono Squash"
and ''The Virginia Mummy, and he
was the veritable originator of the
genus known to the stage as the dan
dy darby" represented particularly in
his creations of Dandy Jim of Caro-
line" and Spruce Pink" He died in
1860, never having forfeited the re-
spect of the public or the good will of
his fellow men.-Laurence Hutton in
Harper's Magazine.