In Spite of Handicaps: The Disability History of Racial Uplift

Abstract

In Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro: As Sung at Hampton Institute (1927), R. Nathaniel Dett distinguishes the “old Negro” from the “New Negro” by revisiting the origins of blackface minstrelsy. No good could come of that cultural form's resilience, the distinguished composer makes clear, least of all for black musicians. Not only were African-American performers forever linked to a debased cultural tradition; they were also made to keep unsavory company. Writing disdainfully of one forbear in particular, Dett complains that “Negro music, at the very outset, made a bad start.” The singing and dancing in a New Orleans theatre of “Jim Crow,” a Negro folk nonsense-ballad by a Negro cripple who was able to flop himself about the stage in imitation of the motions of a crow, was such an uproarious success that it was imitated throughout the country by “black-face” comedians of both races as a sure-fire hit. Thereby an early tradition of the Negro as essentially a humorous character was established, the effect of which exists to the present day. (xi)

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