Jump Jim Crow


"Jump Jim Crow" or "Jim Crow" is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white minstrel performer Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. The song is speculated to have been taken from Jim Crow, a physically disabled African slave, who is variously claimed to have resided in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh. The song became a great 19th-century hit and Rice performed all over the country as "Daddy Pops Jim Crow".
"Jump Jim Crow" was a key initial step in a tradition of popular music in the United States that was based on the racist "imitation" and mockery of black people. The first song sheet edition appeared in the early 1830s, published by E. Riley. A couple of decades would see the mockery genre explode in popularity with the rise of the minstrel show.
The song originally printed used "floating verses", which appear in altered forms in other popular folk songs. The chorus of the song is closely related to the traditional Uncle Joe / Hop High Ladies; some folklorists consider "Jim Crow" and "Uncle Joe" to be a single, continuous family of songs.
As a result of Rice's fame, the term Jim Crow had become a pejorative term for African Americans by 1838 and from this the laws of racial segregation became known as Jim Crow laws.

Lyrics

The lyrics as most commonly quoted are:

Standard English

Other verses, quoted in non-dialect standard English:

Variants

As he extended it from a single song into an entire minstrel revue, Rice routinely wrote additional verses for "Jump Jim Crow". Published versions from the period run as long as 66 verses; one extant version of the song, as archived by American Memory, includes 150 verses. Verses range from the boastful doggerel of the original version to an endorsement of President Andrew Jackson ; his Whig opponent in the 1832 election was Henry Clay:
Other verses, also from 1832, demonstrate anti-slavery sentiments and cross-racial solidarity that were rarely found in later blackface minstrelsy:

Origins

The origin of the name "Jim Crow" is obscure but may have evolved from the use of the pejorative "crow" to refer to black people in the 1730s. Jim may be derived from "Jimmy", an old cant term for a crow, which is based on a pun for the tool "crow". Before 1900, crowbars were called "crows" and a short crowbar was and still is called a "jimmy", a typical burglar's tool. The folk concept of a dancing crow predates the Jump Jim Crow minstrelsy and has its origins in the old farmer's practice of soaking corn in whiskey and leaving it out for the crows. The crows eat the corn and become so drunk that they cannot fly, but wheel and jump helplessly near the ground, where the farmer can kill them with a club.