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Read about the origin of Blackface.

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minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, an American theatrical form, popular from the early 19th to the early 20th century, that was founded on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes. The tradition reached its zenith between 1850 and 1870. Although the form gradually disappeared from the professional theatres and became purely a vehicle for amateurs, its influence endured-in vaudeville, radio, and television as well as in the motion-picture and world-music industries of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The earliest minstrel shows were staged by white male minstrels (traveling musicians) who, with their faces painted black, caricatured the singing and dancing of slaves. Scholars usually distinguish this form of the tradition as blackface minstrelsy. The father of the blackface show was Thomas Dartmouth Rice, popularly known as "Jim Crow," an early African American impersonator whose performances created a vogue for the genre. The pioneer company, the Virginia Minstrels, a quartet headed by Daniel Decatur Emmett, first performed in 1843. Other noteworthy companies were Bryant's, Campbell's, and Haverly's, but the most important of the early companies was the Christy Minstrels, who played on Broadway for nearly 10 years; Stephen Foster wrote songs for this company.

The format of the minstrel show, usually in two parts, was established by the Christy company and changed little thereafter. In part one the performers were arranged in a semicircle, with the interlocutor in the centre and the end men-Mr. Tambo, who played the tambourine, and Mr. Bones, who rattled the bones (a pair of clappers, named after the original material from which they were made)-at the ends. The interlocutor, in whiteface, usually wore formal attire; the others, in blackface, wore gaudy swallow-tailed coats and striped trousers. The program opened with a chorus, often as a grand entrance, and at the conclusion of the song the interlocutor gave the command, "Gentlemen, be seated." Then followed a series of jokes between the interlocutor and end men, interspersed with ballads, comic songs, and instrumental numbers, chiefly on the banjo and violin. The second part, or olio (mixture or medley), consisted of a series of individual acts that concluded with a hoedown or walk-around in which every member did a specialty number while the others sang and clapped. Occasionally there was a third part consisting of a farce, burlesque, or comic opera.

Minstrel troupes composed of Black performers were formed after the American Civil War, and a number of these, including the Hicks and Sawyer Minstrels, had Black owners and managers. Some, such as Callendar's Consolidated Spectacular Colored Minstrels, were popular in both the United States and Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Initially these shows were staged by all-male companies that included male alto and soprano singers. The larger Black minstrel shows included bands of multitalented instrumentalists to play marches for the troupe's parades in the daytime and perform string accompaniments for the evening shows. In addition to some music by Stephen Foster, their repertoire featured music by Black composers such as James Bland, a popular singer-banjoist who wrote some 700 songs, including "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny." In general, these minstrel shows were the only theatrical medium in which gifted Black performers of the period could support themselves.

A few of the larger companies employed both Black and white performers. By the 20th century, women were also appearing in minstrel shows; the great blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were both minstrel performers early in their careers. Minstrel shows had effectively disappeared by the mid-20th century. However, vestiges of their racial stereotyping and performance aesthetics persisted for decades in various performance mediums, including television situation comedies such as Sanford and Son, , and The Jeffersons, which aired in the United States in the 1970s and '80s, as well as the South African world-music genre known as isicathamiya, championed in the late 20th and early 21st century by the group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

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Minstrel show | Description, History, & Facts

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Minstrel show, an American theatrical form, popular from the early 19th century to the early 20th century, that was founded on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes. The tradition reached its zenith between 1850 and 1870. Learn more about minstrel shows, including their format and history.

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New York mayor wants all police officers to wear body cameras.

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Should All Police Officers Wear Body Cameras?

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Do you agree with Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York that body cameras will “fundamentally change” the way the police and the community interact?

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A St. Louis County grand jury decided Monday that police officer Darren Wilson will not face trial for shooting and killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Grand juries usually return indictments; the one exception is cases involving police shootings. But more than that, police shootings, and allegations of police misconduct in general, almost never make it in front of a grand jury. And officers rarely face legal consequences for allegations of misconduct.

As is the case with police shooting statistics, comprehensive numbers on accusations of police misconduct are hard to come by. There is no national reporting requirement for such accusations; in fact, many places have laws to purposefully keep the details of misconduct investigations out of the public eye.

Nevertheless, two nongovernmental sources stand out. A recent study out of Bowling Green State University - reported by The Wall Street Journal - identified 664 incidents from 2005 to 2011 in which police officers were arrested for having "pulled, pointed, held, or fired a gun and/or threatened someone with a gun." These incidents resulted in 98 deaths. The most common "serious offenses" associated with these incidents are broken down below:

Of the 71 arrests for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, just 31 came when officers were on duty. That's about four a year during the study period. As a reminder, the best-available evidence from the Killed By Police Facebook page points to about 1,000 deaths each year caused by officers acting in the line of duty.

More general numbers on police misconduct come from National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP), which collects data based on credible media reports ( see its feed here). It was established by researcher David Packman in 2009, and operation of the database was transferred to the Cato Institute in spring 2012. Although the NPMRP continues to collect incidents, the most comprehensive and cataloged data comes from Packman's original work. His key findings are largely laid out in a 2010 report.

In 2010, Packman identified 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct in the U.S. involving 6,613 officers. Almost 10 out of every 1,000 American officers were accused of some type of misconduct. For context, the 2010 violent crime rate was four crimes per 1,000 residents, and the larceny-theft rate was 20.1 per 1,000. Here's a breakdown of the accusations by type:

Excessive force was by far the most common type of accusation, and 15 percent involved firearms. There were 127 excessive force incidents reported that resulted in fatalities, and the majority of these (71 percent) were shootings.

But, as was the case with Darren Wilson, most accusations of misconduct - combining all categories - did not result in criminal charges. Of the more than 8,300 misconduct accusations (involving almost 11,000 officers) in Packman's database from April 2009 through the end of 2010, 3,238 resulted in legal action. The chart below outlines how often these charges resulted in convictions and incarcerations, compared with the rates for felony defendants in the general population (in the 75 largest U.S. counties) collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2006.

These numbers are now irrelevant to Wilson. Outside of the unlikely event that federal charges are pressed, his chance of being convicted and incarcerated for Brown's death is almost zero.

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Allegations Of Police Misconduct Rarely Result In Charges

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A St. Louis County grand jury decided Monday that police officer Darren Wilson will not face trial for shooting and killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Grand juries usually return indictments; the one exception is cases involving police shootings.

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Video: Opinion | A Conversation With Police on Race

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In this short documentary, former officers share their thoughts on policing and race in America.

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Two San Diego Unified high school teachers will be investigated for allegedly wearing controversial Halloween costumes.

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Video about Blackface in today's society.

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Black Parents talk with their children about the police.

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Black Parents Explain How to Deal with the Police | Cut