Date range of materials within this digital teaching collection: 1917 - 2007.
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The minstrel show, in which white performers blackened their faces and spoke in exaggerated African American vernacular, traded in stereotypes of blacks to entertain white audiences. Although no one is certain who first performed in blackface, Thomas D. Rice, professionally known as Daddy Rice, is credited as the father of American minstrelsy. Rice, an actor born on the lower east side of Manhattan, New York, created the popular Jim Crow character, namesake of a series of laws enforcing segregation in the South.
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The Sixth Avenue Business Men's Club put on a minstrel show at the Jason Lee Auditorium in Tacoma, Washington. This article was published in the December 4, 1925, issue of The Trail, the student newspaper at the University of Puget Sound.
This is the production script for the minstrel show, “Sho’ Nuff,” which was performed on campus at the University of Puget Sound in 1949.
This image is of a float decorated by a University of Puget Sound sorority for the 1952 Homecoming parade in downtown Tacoma, Washington. The Homecoming theme that year was “Political Stew in ‘52.”
These articles from the The Trail, the student newspaper at the University of Puget Sound, relate to flyers posted on campus for the Infinite Monkeys Theatre Festival. One of the flyers showed a monkey in blackface, posing in the traditional Uncle Sam pose, with the caption reading “We Want You!”
This digital teaching collection has been made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this digital collection do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.