White comedians in blackface, American in origin,…

White comedians in blackface, American in origin, becomes an important performance tradition in the American theater beginning around 1830; it is to remain so for roughly one hundred years.

Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) “Daddy” Rice popularizes the circa-1829 tune “Jump Jim Crow,” supposedly inspired by the song and dance of a crippled African in Cincinnati called Jim Cuff or Jim Crow.

Rice performs all over the country as Daddy Jim Crow, and blackface acts quickly become popular overseas, particularly so in Britain, where the tradition is to last even longer than in the US.

Rice’s white man playing highly derogatory imitations of black men is of course a racist brand of entertainment, though not necessarily thought of as such at this time.

A couple of decades will see the mockery genre explode in popularity with the rise of minstrel song and dance, a purely American musical strain.

A key initial step in a tradition of popular music in the United States based on the mockery of African-Americans, “Jump Jim Crow” is also the initial step in the still extant tradition in popular music of incorporating African styles and subject matter.

The tune is to become very well known not only in the United States but internationally; in 1841 the USA ambassador to Central America, John Lloyd Stephens, will write that upon his arrival in Mérida, Yucatán, the local brass band had played "Jump Jim Crow" under the mistaken impression that it was the USA's national anthem.

With time Jim Crow will become a term often used to refer to African-Americans, and from this the laws of racial segregation are to become known as Jim Crow laws.