Kid Rock is a 21st Century Jim Crow blackface

"Come listen all you galls and boys, I'm going to sing a little song, My name is Jim Crow. Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow." Jim Crow image These words are from the song, "Jim Crow," as it appeared in sheet music written by Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. Rice, a struggling "actor" (he did short solo skits between play scenes) at the Park Theater in New York, happened upon a black person singing the above song -- some accounts say it was an old black slave who walked with difficulty, others say it was a ragged black stable boy. Whether modeled on an old man or a young boy we will never know, but we know that in 1828 Rice appeared on stage as "Jim Crow" -- an exaggerated, highly stereotypical black character. Rice, a white man, was one of the first performers to wear blackface makeup -- his skin was darkened with burnt cork. His Jim Crow song-and-dance routine was an astounding success that took him from Louisville to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and finally to New York in 1832. He also performed to great acclaim in London and Dublin. By then "Jim Crow" was a stock character in minstrel shows, along with counterparts Jim Dandy and Zip Coon. Rice's subsequent blackface characters were Sambos, Coons, and Dandies. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of black people as singing, dancing, grinning fools.