Minstrel shows were an extremely popular form of entertainment in which white performers wearing blackface makeup impersonated African Americans. The shows originated in the nineteenth century as professional stage productions. In the first half of the twentieth century professional productions disappeared, but putting on a minstrel show became a popular activity for amateur groups.

Impersonations of African Americans became popular in the northern United States around 1830. Thomas D. Rice (c. 1808–1860) performed songs and dances as the plantation slave Jim Crow. George Washington Dixon (c. 1801–1861) gained fame by pretending to be a northern black man named Zip Coon.

Out of these individual acts came the full-fledged minstrel show, with the first one generally said to be the performance by Dan Emmett (1815–1904) and his...