[Footnote 1:  See “Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races.  By Josiah C. Nott, M.D., Mobile, 1844.”]

To such opinions was now added one of the greatest misfortunes that have befallen the Negro race in its entire history in America—­burlesque on the stage.  When in 1696 Thomas Southerne adapted Oroonoko from the novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn and presented in London the story of the African prince who was stolen from his native Angola, no one saw any reason why the Negro should not be a subject for serious treatment on the stage, and the play was a great success, lasting for decades.  In 1768, however, was presented at Drury Lane a comic opera, The Padlock, and a very prominent character was Mungo, the slave of a West Indian planter, who got drunk in the second act and was profane throughout the performance.  In the course of the evening Mungo entertained the audience with such lines as the following: 

  Dear heart, what a terrible life I am led! 
  A dog has a better, that’s sheltered and fed. 
       Night and day ’tis the same;
       My pain is deir game: 
  Me wish to de Lord me was dead! 
       Whate’er’s to be done,
       Poor black must run. 
       Mungo here, Mungo dere,
       Mungo everywhere: 
       Above and below,
       Sirrah, come; sirrah, go;
       Do so, and do so,
            Oh! oh! 
  Me wish to de Lord me was dead!

The depreciation of the race that Mungo started continued, and when in 1781 Robinson Crusoe was given as a pantomime at Drury Lane, Friday was represented as a Negro.  The exact origins of Negro minstrelsy are not altogether clear; there have been many claimants, and it is interesting to note in passing that there was an “African Company” playing in New York in the early twenties, though this was probably nothing more than a small group of amateurs.  Whatever may have been the beginning, it was Thomas D. Rice who brought the form to genuine popularity.  In Louisville in the summer of 1828, looking from one of the back windows of a theater, he was attracted by an old and decrepit slave who did odd jobs about a livery stable.  The slave’s master was named Crow and he called himself Jim Crow.  His right shoulder was drawn up high and his left leg was stiff at the knee, but he took his deformity lightly, singing as he worked.  He had one favorite tune to which he had fitted words of his own, and at the end of each verse he made a ludicrous step which in time came to be known as “rocking the heel.”  His refrain consisted of the words: 

  Wheel about, turn about,
  Do jis so,
  An’ ebery time I wheel about
  I jump Jim Crow.