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of the wave function to extend over a few to several nanometers along the tube axis, while poor screening in the vacuum or dielectric environment outside of the nanotube allows for large (0.4 to ) binding energies.
Often more than one band can be chosen as source for the electron and the hole, leading to different types of excitons in the same material. Even high-lying bands can be effective as femtosecond two-photon experiments have shown. At cryogenic temperatures, many higher excitonic levels can be observed approaching the edge of the band, forming a series of spectral absorption lines that are in principle similar to hydrogen spectral series.
## Binding energy and radius.
In a bulk semiconductor,
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a Wannier exciton has an energy and radius associated with it, called exciton Rydberg energy and exciton Bohr radius respectively. For the energy, we have
where formula_2 is the Rydberg constant, formula_3 is the (static) relative permittivity, formula_4 is the reduced mass of the electron and hole, and formula_5 is the electron mass. Concerning the radius, we have
where formula_7 is the Bohr radius.
So for example in GaAs, we have relative permittivity of 12.8 and effective electron and hole masses as 0.067"m" and 0.2"m" respectively; and that gives us formula_8 meV and formula_9 nm.
# Charge-transfer exciton.
An intermediate case between Frenkel and Wannier excitons, "charge-transfer
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(CT) excitons" occur when the electron and the hole occupy adjacent molecules. They occur primarily in ionic crystals. Unlike Frenkel and Wannier excitons they display a static electric dipole moment.
# Surface exciton.
At surfaces it is possible for so called "image states" to occur, where the hole is inside the solid and the electron is in the vacuum. These electron-hole pairs can only move along the surface.
# Atomic and molecular excitons.
Alternatively, an exciton may be described as an excited state of an atom, ion, or molecule, if the excitation is wandering from one cell of the lattice to another.
When a molecule absorbs a quantum of energy that corresponds to a transition from
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one molecular orbital to another molecular orbital, the resulting electronic excited state is also properly described as an exciton. An electron is said to be found in the lowest unoccupied orbital and an electron hole in the highest occupied molecular orbital, and since they are found within the same molecular orbital manifold, the electron-hole state is said to be bound. Molecular excitons typically have characteristic lifetimes on the order of nanoseconds, after which the ground electronic state is restored and the molecule undergoes photon or phonon emission. Molecular excitons have several interesting properties, one of which is energy transfer (see Förster resonance energy transfer) whereby
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if a molecular exciton has proper energetic matching to a second molecule's spectral absorbance, then an exciton may transfer ("hop") from one molecule to another. The process is strongly dependent on intermolecular distance between the species in solution, and so the process has found application in sensing and "molecular rulers".
The hallmark of molecular excitons in organic molecular crystals are doublets and/or triplets of exciton absorption bands strongly polarized along crystallographic axes. In these crystals an elementary cell includes several molecules sitting in symmetrically identical positions, which results in the level degeneracy that is lifted by intermolecular interaction. As
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a result, absorption bands are polarized along the symmetry axes of the crystal. Such multiplets were discovered by Antonina Prikhot'ko and their genesis was proposed by Alexander Davydov. It is known as 'Davydov splitting'.
# Giant oscillator strength of bound excitons.
Excitons are lowest excited states of the electronic subsystem of pure crystals. Impurities can bind excitons, and when the bound state is shallow, the oscillator strength for producing bound excitons is so high that impurity absorption can compete with intrinsic exciton absorption even at rather low impurity concentrations. This phenomenon is generic and applicable both to the large radius (Wannier-Mott) excitons and molecular
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(Frenkel) excitons. Hence, excitons bound to impurities and defects possess giant oscillator strength.
# Self-trapping of excitons.
In crystals excitons interact with phonons, the lattice vibrations. If this coupling is weak as in typical semiconductors such as GaAs or Si, excitons are scattered by phonons. However, when the coupling is strong, excitons can be self-trapped. Self-trapping results in dressing excitons with a dense cloud of virtual phonons which strongly suppresses the ability of excitons to move across the crystal. In simpler terms, this means a local deformation of the crystal lattice around the exciton. Self-trapping can be achieved only if the energy of this deformation can
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compete with the width of the exciton band. Hence, it should be of atomic scale, of about an electron volt.
Self-trapping of excitons is similar to forming strong-coupling polarons but with three essential differences. First, self-trapped exciton states are always of a small radius, of the order of lattice constant, due to their electric neutrality. Second, there exists a self-trapping barrier separating free and self-trapped states, hence, free excitons are metastable. Third, this barrier enables coexistence of free and self-trapped states of excitons. This means that spectral lines of free excitons and wide bands of self-trapped excitons can be seen simultaneously in absorption and luminescence
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spectra. While the self-trapped states are of lattice-spacing scale, the barrier has typically much larger scale. Indeed, its spatial scale is about formula_10 where formula_11 is effective mass of the exciton, formula_12 is the exciton-phonon coupling constant, and formula_13 is the characteristic frequency of optical phonons. Excitons are self-trapped when formula_11 and formula_12 are large, and then the spatial size of the barrier is large compared with the lattice spacing. Transforming a free exciton state into a self-trapped one proceeds as a collective tunneling of coupled exciton-lattice system (an instanton). Because formula_16 is large, tunneling can be described by a continuum theory.
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The height of the barrier formula_17. Because both formula_11 and formula_12 appear in the denominator of formula_20, the barriers are basically low. Therefore, free excitons can be seen in crystals with strong exciton-phonon coupling only in pure samples and at low temperatures. Coexistence of free and self-trapped excitons was observed in rare-gas solids, alkali-halides, and in molecular crystal of pyrene.
# Interaction.
Excitons are the main mechanism for light emission in semiconductors at low temperature (when the characteristic thermal energy "kT" is less than the exciton binding energy), replacing the free electron-hole recombination at higher temperatures.
The existence of exciton
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states may be inferred from the absorption of light associated with their excitation. Typically, excitons are observed just below the band gap.
When excitons interact with photons a so-called polariton (or more specifically exciton-polariton) is formed. These excitons are sometimes referred to as "dressed excitons".
Provided the interaction is attractive, an exciton can bind with other excitons to form a biexciton, analogous to a dihydrogen molecule. If a large density of excitons is created in a material, they can interact with one another to form an electron-hole liquid, a state observed in k-space indirect semiconductors.
Additionally, excitons are integer-spin particles obeying Bose statistics
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in the low-density limit. In some systems, where the interactions are repulsive, a Bose–Einstein condensed state, called excitonium, is predicted to be the ground state. Some evidence of excitonium has existed since the 1970s, but has often been difficult to discern from a Peierls phase. Exciton condensates have allegedly been seen in a double quantum well systems. In 2017 Kogar et al. found "compelling evidence" for observed excitons condensing in the three-dimensional semimetal 1T-TiSe2
# Spatially direct and indirect excitons.
Normally, excitons in a semiconductor have a very short lifetime due to the close proximity of the electron and hole. However, by placing the electron and hole in
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spatially separated quantum wells with an insulating barrier layer in between so called 'spatially indirect' excitons can be created. In contrast to ordinary (spatially direct), these spatially indirect excitons can have large spatial separation between the electron and hole, and thus possess a much longer lifetime. This is often used to cool excitons to very low temperatures in order to study Bose–Einstein condensation (or rather its two-dimensional analog).
# Excitons in nanoparticles.
In semiconducting crystallite nanoparticles, excitonic radii are given by
where formula_22 is the high-frequency dielectric constant, formula_23 is the effective electron mass, formula_5 is the electron mass,
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an be created. In contrast to ordinary (spatially direct), these spatially indirect excitons can have large spatial separation between the electron and hole, and thus possess a much longer lifetime. This is often used to cool excitons to very low temperatures in order to study Bose–Einstein condensation (or rather its two-dimensional analog).
# Excitons in nanoparticles.
In semiconducting crystallite nanoparticles, excitonic radii are given by
where formula_22 is the high-frequency dielectric constant, formula_23 is the effective electron mass, formula_5 is the electron mass, and formula_25 is the Bohr radius.
# See also.
- Trion
- Plasmon
- Polariton superfluid
- Oscillator strength
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Fluorite
Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon.
The Mohs scale of mineral hardness, based on scratch hardness comparison, defines value 4 as Fluorite.
Fluorite is a colorful mineral, both in visible and ultraviolet light, and the stone has ornamental and lapidary uses. Industrially, fluorite is used as a flux for smelting, and in the production of certain glasses and enamels. The purest grades of fluorite are a source of fluoride for hydrofluoric acid manufacture, which is the intermediate source of most
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fluorine-containing fine chemicals. Optically clear transparent fluorite lenses have low dispersion, so lenses made from it exhibit less chromatic aberration, making them valuable in microscopes and telescopes. Fluorite optics are also usable in the far-ultraviolet and mid-infrared ranges, where conventional glasses are too absorbent for use.
# History and etymology.
The word "fluorite" is derived from the Latin verb "fluere", meaning "to flow". The mineral is used as a flux in iron smelting to decrease the viscosity of slags. The term "flux" comes from the Latin adjective "fluxus", meaning "flowing, loose, slack". The mineral fluorite was originally termed fluorospar and was first discussed
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in print in a 1530 work "Bermannvs sive de re metallica dialogus" [Bermannus; or a dialogue about the nature of metals], by Georgius Agricola, as a mineral noted for its usefulness as a flux. Agricola, a German scientist with expertise in philology, mining, and metallurgy, named fluorspar as a neo-Latinization of the German "Flussspat" from "Fluß" (stream, river) and "Spat" (meaning a nonmetallic mineral akin to gypsum, spærstān, "spear stone", referring to its crystalline projections).
In 1852, fluorite gave its name to the phenomenon of fluorescence, which is prominent in fluorites from certain locations, due to certain impurities in the crystal. Fluorite also gave the name to its constitutive
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element fluorine. Presently, the word "fluorspar" is most commonly used for fluorite as the industrial and chemical commodity, while "fluorite" is used mineralogically and in most other senses.
In the context of archeology, gemmology, classical studies, and egyptology, the Latin terms "murrina" and "myrrhina" refer to fluorite. In book 37 of his "Naturalis Historia", Pliny the Elder describes it as a precious stone with purple and white mottling, whose objects carved from it, the Romans prize.
# Structure.
Fluorite crystallises in a cubic motif. Crystal twinning is common and adds complexity to the observed crystal habits. Fluorite has four perfect cleavage planes that help produce octahedral
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fragments.
Element substitution for the calcium cation often includes certain rare earth elements (REE), such as yttrium and cerium. Iron, sodium, and barium are also common impurities. Some fluorine may be replaced by the chloride anion.
# Occurrence and mining.
Fluorite is a widely occurring mineral that occurs globally with significant deposits in over 9,000 areas. It may occur as a vein deposit, especially with metallic minerals, where it often forms a part of the gangue (the surrounding "host-rock" in which valuable minerals occur) and may be associated with galena, sphalerite, barite, quartz, and calcite. It is a common mineral in deposits of hydrothermal origin and has been noted as
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a primary mineral in granites and other igneous rocks and as a common minor constituent of dolomite and limestone.
The world reserves of fluorite are estimated at 230 million tonnes (Mt) with the largest deposits being in South Africa (about 41 Mt), Mexico (32 Mt) and China (24 Mt). China is leading the world production with about 3 Mt annually (in 2010), followed by Mexico (1.0 Mt), Mongolia (0.45 Mt), Russia (0.22 Mt), South Africa (0.13 Mt), Spain (0.12 Mt) and Namibia (0.11 Mt).
One of the largest deposits of fluorspar in North America is located in the Burin Peninsula, Newfoundland, Canada. The first official recognition of fluorspar in the area was recorded by geologist J.B. Jukes in
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1843. He noted an occurrence of "galena" or lead ore and fluoride of lime on the west side of St. Lawrence harbour. It is recorded that interest in the commercial mining of fluorspar began in 1928 with the first ore being extracted in 1933. Eventually at Iron Springs Mine, the shafts reached depths of . In the St. Lawrence area, the veins are persistent for great lengths and several of them have wide lenses. The area with veins of known workable size comprises about .
Cubic crystals up to 20 cm across have been found at Dalnegorsk, Russia. The largest documented single crystal of fluorite was a cube 2.12 m in size and weighing ~16 tonnes. Fluorite may also be found in mines in Caldoveiro Peak,
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in Asturias, Spain.
## "Blue John".
One of the most famous of the older-known localities of fluorite is Castleton in Derbyshire, England, where, under the name of "Derbyshire Blue John", purple-blue fluorite was extracted from several mines or caves. During the 19th century, this attractive fluorite was mined for its ornamental value. The mineral Blue John is now scarce, and only a few hundred kilograms are mined each year for ornamental and lapidary use. Mining still takes place in Blue John Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern.
Recently discovered deposits in China have produced fluorite with coloring and banding similar to the classic Blue John stone.
# Fluorescence.
George Gabriel Stokes named
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the phenomenon of "fluorescence" from fluorite, in 1852.
Many samples of fluorite exhibit fluorescence under ultraviolet light, a property that takes its name from fluorite. Many minerals, as well as other substances, fluoresce. Fluorescence involves the elevation of electron energy levels by quanta of ultraviolet light, followed by the progressive falling back of the electrons into their previous energy state, releasing quanta of visible light in the process. In fluorite, the visible light emitted is most commonly blue, but red, purple, yellow, green and white also occur. The fluorescence of fluorite may be due to mineral impurities, such as yttrium and ytterbium, or organic matter, such as
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volatile hydrocarbons in the crystal lattice. In particular, the blue fluorescence seen in fluorites from certain parts of Great Britain responsible for the naming of the phenomenon of fluorescence itself, has been attributed to the presence of inclusions of divalent europium in the crystal.
One fluorescent variety of fluorite is chlorophane, which is reddish or purple in color and fluoresces brightly in emerald green when heated (thermoluminescence), or when illuminated with ultraviolet light.
The color of visible light emitted when a sample of fluorite is fluorescing depends on where the original specimen was collected; different impurities having been included in the crystal lattice in
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different places. Neither does all fluorite fluoresce equally brightly, even from the same locality. Therefore, ultraviolet light is not a reliable tool for the identification of specimens, nor for quantifying the mineral in mixtures. For example, among British fluorites, those from Northumberland, County Durham, and eastern Cumbria are the most consistently fluorescent, whereas fluorite from Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Cornwall, if they fluoresce at all, are generally only feebly fluorescent.
Fluorite also exhibits the property of thermoluminescence.
# Color.
Fluorite is allochromatic, meaning that it can be tinted with elemental impurities. Fluorite comes in a wide range of colors and has
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consequently been dubbed "the most colorful mineral in the world". Every color of the rainbow in various shades are represented by fluorite samples, along with white, black, and clear crystals. The most common colors are purple, blue, green, yellow, or colorless. Less common are pink, red, white, brown, and black. Color zoning or banding is commonly present. The color of the fluorite is determined by factors including impurities, exposure to radiation, and the absence or voids of the color centers.
# Uses.
## Source of fluorine and fluoride.
Fluorite is a major source of hydrogen fluoride, a commodity chemical used to produce a wide range of materials. Hydrogen fluoride is liberated from
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the mineral by the action of concentrated sulfuric acid:
The resulting HF is converted into fluorine, fluorocarbons, and diverse fluoride materials. As of the late 1990s, five billion kilograms were mined annually.
There are three principal types of industrial use for natural fluorite, commonly referred to as "fluorspar" in these industries, corresponding to different grades of purity. Metallurgical grade fluorite (60–85% CaF), the lowest of the three grades, has traditionally been used as a flux to lower the melting point of raw materials in steel production to aid the removal of impurities, and later in the production of aluminium. Ceramic grade fluorite (85–95% CaF) is used in the manufacture
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of opalescent glass, enamels, and cooking utensils. The highest grade, "acid grade fluorite" (97% or more CaF), accounts for about 95% of fluorite consumption in the US where it is used to make hydrogen fluoride and hydrofluoric acid by reacting the fluorite with sulfuric acid.
Internationally, acid-grade fluorite is also used in the production of AlF and cryolite (NaAlF), which are the main fluorine compounds used in aluminium smelting. Alumina is dissolved in a bath that consists primarily of molten NaAlF, AlF, and fluorite (CaF) to allow electrolytic recovery of aluminium. Fluorine losses are replaced entirely by the addition of AlF, the majority of which react with excess sodium from the
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alumina to form NaAlF.
## Niche uses.
### Lapidary uses.
Natural fluorite mineral has ornamental and lapidary uses. Fluorite may be drilled into beads and used in jewelry, although due to its relative softness it is not widely used as a semiprecious stone. It is also used for ornamental carvings, with expert carvings taking advantage of the stone's zonation.
### Optics.
In the laboratory, calcium fluoride is commonly used as a window material for both infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, since it is transparent in these regions (about 0.15 µm to 9 µm) and exhibits extremely low change in refractive index with wavelength. Furthermore, the material is attacked by few reagents. At wavelengths
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as short as 157 nm, a common wavelength used for semiconductor stepper manufacture for integrated circuit lithography, the refractive index of calcium fluoride shows some non-linearity at high power densities, which has inhibited its use for this purpose. In the early years of the 21st century, the stepper market for calcium fluoride collapsed, and many large manufacturing facilities have been closed. Canon and other manufacturers have used synthetically grown crystals of calcium fluoride components in lenses to aid apochromatic design, and to reduce light dispersion. This use has largely been superseded by newer glasses and computer-aided design. As an infrared optical material, calcium fluoride
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is widely available and was sometimes known by the Eastman Kodak trademarked name "Irtran-3", although this designation is obsolete.
Fluorite glass is a type of low-dispersion glass. Optical groups made with low dispersion glass have a very low dispersion (color spreading), so optical groups made with fluorite elements exhibit less chromatic aberration than those utilising a traditional flint glass. Optical groups employ a combination of different types of glass. Each type of glass refracts light in a different way. by using a combination of different types of glass, lens manufacturers are able to compensate for unwanted characteristics. Fluorite elements better complement the chromatic aberration
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of commercially used crown glass elements providing a more uniform dispersion across the spectrum of visible light, therefore keeping colors more closely spaced.
With the advent of synthetically grown fluorite crystals, it could be used instead of glass in some high-performance optical telescope and camera lens elements. Its use for prisms and lenses was studied and promoted by Victor Schumann near the end of the 19th century. Naturally occurring fluorite crystals without optical defects were only large enough to produce microscope elements.
In telescopes, fluorite elements allow high-resolution images of astronomical objects at high magnifications. Canon Inc. produces synthetic fluorite crystals
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that are used in their more expensive telephoto lenses.
Exposure tools for the semiconductor industry make use of fluorite optical elements for ultraviolet light at wavelengths of about 157 nanometers. Fluorite has a uniquely high transparency at this wavelength. Fluorite objective lenses are manufactured by the larger microscope firms (Nikon, Olympus, Carl Zeiss and Leica). Their transparence to ultraviolet light enables them to be used for fluorescence microscopy. The fluorite also serves to correct optical aberrations in these lenses. Nikon has previously manufactured at least one fluorite and synthetic quartz element camera lens (105 mm f/4.5 UV) for the production of ultraviolet images.
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Konica produced a fluorite lens for their SLR cameras – the Hexanon 300 mm f6.3.
# Source of fluorine gas in nature.
In 2012, the first source of naturally occurring fluorine gas was found in fluorite mines in Bavaria, Germany. It was previously thought that fluorine gas did not occur naturally because it is so reactive and would rapidly react with other chemicals. Fluorite is normally colorless, but some varied forms found nearby look black and are known as 'fetid fluorite' or antozonite. The minerals, containing small amounts of uranium and its daughter products, release radiation sufficiently energetic to induce oxidation of fluoride anions within the structure to fluorine that becomes
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s within the structure to fluorine that becomes trapped inside the mineral. The color of fetid fluorite is predominantly due to the calcium atoms remaining. Solid state fluorine-19 NMR carried out on the gas contained in the antozonite revealed a peak at 425 ppm, which is consistent with F.
# See also.
- List of countries by fluorite production
- List of minerals
- Magnesium fluoride – also used in UV optics
# External links.
- Educational article about the different colors of fluorites crystals from Asturias, Spain
- An educational tour of Weardale Fluorite
- Illinois State Geologic Survey
- Illinois state mineral
- Barber Cup and Crawford Cup, related Roman cups at British Museum
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Bud
In botany, a bud is an undeveloped or embryonic shoot and normally occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of a stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormant condition, or it may form a shoot immediately. Buds may be specialized to develop flowers or short shoots, or may have the potential for general shoot development. The term bud is also used in zoology, where it refers to an outgrowth from the body which can develop into a new individual.
# Overview.
The buds of many woody plants, especially in temperate or cold climates, are protected by a covering of modified leaves called "scales" which tightly enclose the more delicate parts of the bud. Many bud scales are covered
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by a gummy substance which serves as added protection. When the bud develops, the scales may enlarge somewhat but usually just drop off, leaving a series of horizontally-elongated scars on the surface of the growing stem. By means of these scars one can determine the age of any young branch, since each year's growth ends in the formation of a bud, the formation of which produces an additional group of bud scale scars. Continued growth of the branch causes these scars to be obliterated after a few years so that the total age of older branches cannot be determined by this means.
In many plants scales do not form over the bud, and the bud is then called a naked bud. The minute underdeveloped leaves
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in such buds are often excessively hairy. Naked buds are found in some shrubs, like some species of the Sumac and Viburnums ("Viburnum alnifolium" and "V. lantana") and in herbaceous plants. In many of the latter, buds are even more reduced, often consisting of undifferentiated masses of cells in the axils of leaves. A terminal bud occurs on the end of a stem and lateral buds are found on the side. A head of cabbage (see Brassica) is an exceptionally large terminal bud, while Brussels sprouts are large lateral buds.
Since buds are formed in the axils of leaves, their distribution on the stem is the same as that of leaves. There are alternate, opposite, and whorled buds, as well as the terminal
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bud at the tip of the stem. In many plants buds appear in unexpected places: these are known as adventitious buds.
Often it is possible to find a bud in a remarkable series of gradations of bud scales. In the buckeye, for example, one may see a complete gradation from the small brown outer scale through larger scales which on unfolding become somewhat green to the inner scales of the bud, which are remarkably leaf-like. Such a series suggests that the scales of the bud are in truth leaves, modified to protect the more delicate parts of the plant during unfavorable periods.
# Types of buds.
Buds are often useful in the identification of plants, especially for woody plants in winter when leaves
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have fallen. Buds may be classified and described according to different criteria: location, status, morphology, and function.
Botanists commonly use the following terms:
- for location:
- terminal, when located at the tip of a stem (apical is equivalent but rather reserved for the one at the top of the plant);
- axillary, when located in the axil of a leaf (lateral is the equivalent but some adventitious buds may be lateral too);
- adventitious, when occurring elsewhere, for example on trunk or on roots (some adventitious buds may be former axillary ones reduced and hidden under the bark, other adventitious buds are completely new formed ones).
- for status:
- accessory, for secondary
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buds formed besides a principal bud (axillary or terminal);
- resting, for buds that form at the end of a growth season, which will lie dormant until onset of the next growth season;
- dormant or latent, for buds whose growth has been delayed for a rather long time. The term is usable as a synonym of "resting", but is better employed for buds waiting undeveloped for years, for example epicormic buds;
- pseudoterminal, for an axillary bud taking over the function of a terminal bud (characteristic of species whose growth is sympodial: terminal bud dies and is replaced by the closer axillary bud, for examples beech, persimmon, "Platanus" have sympodial growth).
- for morphology:
- scaly or
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covered (perulate), when scales, also referred to as a perule (lat. perula, perulaei) (which are in fact transformed and reduced leaves) cover and protect the embryonic parts;
- naked, when not covered by scales;
- hairy, when also protected by hairs (it may apply either to scaly or to naked buds).
- for function:
- vegetative, if only containing vegetative pieces: embryonic shoot with leaves (a leaf bud is the same);
- reproductive, if containing embryonic flower(s) (a flower bud is the same);
- mixed, if containing both embryonic leaves and flowers.
# Within botany.
The term bud (as in budding) is used by analogy within zoology as well, where it refers to an outgrowth from the body
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tgrowth from the body which develops into a new individual. It is a form of asexual reproduction limited to animals or plants of relatively simple structure. In this process a portion of the wall of the parent cell softens and pushes out. The protuberance thus formed enlarges rapidly while at this time the nucleus of the parent cell divides (see: mitosis, meiosis). One of the resulting nuclei passes into the bud, and then the bud is cut off from its parent cell and the process is repeated. Often the daughter cell will begin to bud before it becomes separated from the parent, so that whole colonies of adhering cells may be formed. Eventually cross walls cut off the bud from the original cell.
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Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American form of entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by white people in make-up or blackface for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and all-black minstrel groups that formed and toured under the direction of white people. Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.
Minstrel shows emerged as brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early
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1830s in the Northeastern states. They were developed into full-fledged form in the next decade. By 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national artform, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience.
By the turn of the 20th century, the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former popularity, having been replaced for the most part by vaudeville. The form survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur performances continued until the 1960s in high schools and local theaters. The genre has had a lasting legacy and influence and was featured in a television series as recently as 1975. Generally, as the civil rights movement progressed
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and gained acceptance, minstrels lost popularity.
The typical minstrel performance followed a three-act structure. The troupe first danced onto stage then exchanged wisecracks and sang songs. The second part featured a variety of entertainments, including the pun-filled stump speech. The final act consisted of a slapstick musical plantation skit or a send-up of a popular play.
Minstrel songs and sketches featured several stock characters, most popularly the slave and the dandy. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy, her counterpart the old darky, the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically
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black, although the extent of the black influence remains debated. Spirituals (known as "jubilees") entered the repertoire in the 1870s, marking the first undeniably black music to be used in minstrelsy.
Blackface minstrelsy was the first theatrical form that was distinctly American. During the 1830s and 1840s at the height of its popularity, it was at the epicenter of the American music industry. For several decades, it provided the means through which American whites viewed black people. On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and broad awareness of what some whites considered significant aspects of black culture in America.
Although
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the minstrel shows were extremely popular, being "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group", they were also controversial. Integrationists decried them as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were "disrespectful" of social norms as they portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine the Southerners' "peculiar institution".
# History.
## Early development.
Minstrel shows were popular before slavery was abolished, sufficiently so that Frederick Douglass described blackface performers as "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them
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by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604, the minstrel show as such has later origins. By the late 18th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as "servant" types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief. Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr'actes in New York theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface "Sambo" character came to supplant the "tall-tale-telling Yankee" and "frontiersman" character-types in popularity, and white actors such
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as Charles Mathews, George Washington Dixon, and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. Author Constance Rourke even claimed that Forrest's impression was so good he could fool blacks when he mingled with them in the streets.
Thomas Dartmouth Rice's successful song-and-dance number, "Jump Jim Crow", brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice's success, "The Boston Post" wrote, "The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria and Jim Crow." As early as the 1820s, blackface performers called themselves "Ethiopian delineators"; from then into the early 1840s, unlike the later heyday
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of minstrelsy, they performed either solo or in small teams.
Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York's less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway, the Bowery, and Chatham Street. It also appeared on more respectable stages, most often as an "entr'acte". Upper-class houses at first limited the number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theatre, much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material, and rowdy audiences eventually prevented
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the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all. Typical blackface acts of the period were short burlesques, often with mock Shakespearean titles like "Hamlet the Dainty", "Bad Breath, the Crane of Chowder", "Julius Sneezer" or "Dars-de-Money".
Meanwhile, at least some whites were interested in black song and dance by actual black performers. Nineteenth-century New York slaves shingle danced for spare change on their days off, and musicians played what they claimed to be "Negro music" on so-called black instruments like the banjo. The "New Orleans Picayune" wrote that a singing New Orleans street vendor called Old Corn Meal would bring "a fortune to any man who would start on a professional
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tour with him". Rice responded by adding a "Corn Meal" skit to his act. Meanwhile, there had been several attempts at legitimate black stage performance, the most ambitious probably being New York's African Grove theater, founded and operated by free blacks in 1821, with a repertoire drawing heavily on Shakespeare. A rival theater company paid people to "riot" and cause disturbances at the theater, and it was shut down by the police when neighbors complained of the commotion.
White, working-class Northerners could identify with the characters portrayed in early blackface performances. This coincided with the rise of groups struggling for workingman's nativism and pro-Southern causes, and faux
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black performances came to confirm pre-existing racist concepts and to establish new ones. Following a pattern that had been pioneered by Rice, minstrelsy united workers and "class superiors" against a common black enemy, symbolized especially by the character of the black dandy. In this same period, the class-conscious but racially inclusive rhetoric of "wage slavery" was largely supplanted by a racist one of "white slavery". This suggested that the abuses against northern factory workers were a graver ill than the treatment of black slaves—or by a less class-conscious rhetoric of "productive" versus "unproductive" elements of society. On the other hand, views on slavery were fairly evenly
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presented in minstrelsy, and some songs even suggested the creation of a coalition of working blacks and whites to end the institution.
Among the appeals and racial stereotypes of early blackface performance were the pleasure of the grotesque and its infantilization of blacks. These allowed—by proxy, and without full identification—childish fun and other low pleasures in an industrializing world where workers were increasingly expected to abandon such things. Meanwhile, the more respectable could view the vulgar audience itself as a spectacle.
## Height.
With the Panic of 1837, theater attendance suffered, and concerts were one of the few attractions that could still make money. In 1843,
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four blackface performers led by Dan Emmett combined to stage just such a concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre, calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels. The minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment was born. The show had little structure. The four sat in a semicircle, played songs, and traded wisecracks. One gave a stump speech in dialect, and they ended with a lively plantation song. The term "minstrel" had previously been reserved for traveling white singing groups, but Emmett and company made it synonymous with blackface performance, and by using it, signalled that they were reaching out to a new, middle-class audience.
The "Herald" wrote that the production was "entirely
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exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features, which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas." In 1845, the Ethiopian Serenaders purged their show of low humor and surpassed the Virginia Minstrels in popularity. Shortly thereafter, Edwin Pearce Christy founded Christy's Minstrels, combining the refined singing of the Ethiopian Serenaders (epitomized by the work of Christy's composer Stephen Foster) with the Virginia Minstrels' bawdy schtick. Christy's company established the three-act template into which minstrel shows would fall for the next few decades. This change to respectability prompted theater owners to enforce new rules to make playhouses calmer and quieter.
Minstrels
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toured the same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European itinerant entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. Life on the road entailed "endless series of one-nighters, travel on accident-prone railroads, in poor housing subject to fires, in empty rooms that they had to convert into theaters, arrest on trumped up charges, exposed to deadly diseases, and managers and agents who skipped out with all the troupe's money." The more popular groups stuck to the main circuit that ran through the Northeast; some even went to Europe, which allowed their competitors to establish themselves in their absence. By the late 1840s, a southern tour had opened
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from Baltimore to New Orleans. Circuits through the Midwest and as far as California followed by the 1860s. As its popularity increased, theaters sprang up specifically for minstrel performance, often with names such as the Ethiopian Opera House and the like. Many amateur troupes performed only a few local shows before disbanding. Meanwhile, celebrities like Emmett continued to perform solo.
The rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement. Many Northerners were concerned for the oppressed blacks of the South, but most had no idea how these slaves lived day-to-day. Blackface performance had been inconsistent on this subject; some slaves were happy, others
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victims of a cruel and inhuman institution. However, in the 1850s, minstrelsy became decidedly mean-spirited and pro-slavery as race replaced class as its main focus. Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.) The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and largely white in origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful. The message was clear: do not worry about the slaves; they are happy with their lot in life. Figures like the
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Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that blacks did not belong, nor did they want to belong, in Northern society.
Minstrelsy's reaction to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is indicative of plantation content at the time. "Tom acts" largely came to replace other plantation narratives, particularly in the third act. These sketches sometimes supported Stowe's novel, but just as often they turned it on its head or attacked the author. Whatever the intended message, it was usually lost in the joyous, slapstick atmosphere of the piece. Characters such as Simon Legree sometimes disappeared, and the title was frequently changed to something more cheerful like "Happy Uncle Tom" or "Uncle
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Dad's Cabin". Uncle Tom himself was frequently portrayed as a harmless bootlicker to be ridiculed. Troupes known as "Tommer" companies specialized in such burlesques, and theatrical "Tom shows" integrated elements of the minstrel show and competed with it for a time.
Minstrelsy's racism (and sexism) could be rather vicious. There were comic songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes. On the other hand, the fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps
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more significant than the racist manner in which it did so. Despite these pro-plantation attitudes, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities. Its association with the North was such that as secessionist attitudes grew stronger, minstrels on Southern tours became convenient targets of anti-Yankee sentiment.
Non-race-related humor came from lampoons of other subjects, including aristocratic whites such as politicians, doctors, and lawyers. Women's rights was another serious subject that appeared with some regularity in antebellum minstrelsy, almost always to ridicule the notion. The women's rights lecture became common in stump speeches. When one character joked, "Jim, I tink de ladies oughter
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vote", another replied, "No, Mr. Johnson, ladies am supposed to care berry little about polytick, and yet de majority ob em am strongly tached to parties." Minstrel humor was simple and relied heavily on slapstick and wordplay. Performers told nonsense riddles: "The difference between a schoolmaster and an engineer is that one trains the mind and the other minds the train."
With the advent of the American Civil War, minstrels remained mostly neutral and satirized both sides. However, as the war reached Northern soil, troupes turned their loyalties to the Union. Sad songs and sketches came to dominate in reflection of the mood of a bereaved nation. Troupes performed skits about dying soldiers
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and their weeping widows, and about mourning white mothers. "When This Cruel War Is Over" became the hit of the period, selling over a million copies of sheet music. To balance the somber mood, minstrels put on patriotic numbers like "The Star-Spangled Banner", accompanied by depictions of scenes from American history that lionized figures like George Washington and Andrew Jackson. Social commentary grew increasingly important to the show. Performers criticized Northern society and those they felt responsible for the breakup of the country, who opposed reunification, or who profited from a nation at war. Emancipation was either opposed through happy plantation material or mildy supported with
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pieces that depicted slavery in a negative light. Eventually, direct criticism of the South became more biting.
## Decline.
Minstrelsy lost popularity during the war. New entertainments such as variety shows, musical comedies and vaudeville appeared in the North, backed by master promoters like P. T. Barnum who wooed audiences away. Blackface troupes responded by traveling farther and farther afield, with their primary base now in the South and Midwest.
Those minstrels who stayed in New York and similar cities followed Barnum's lead by advertising relentlessly and emphasizing the spectacle of minstrelsy. Troupes ballooned; as many as 19 performers could be on stage at once, and J. H. Haverly's
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United Mastodon Minstrels had over 100 members. Scenery grew lavish and expensive, and specialty acts like Japanese acrobats or circus freaks sometimes appeared. These changes made minstrelsy unprofitable for smaller troupes.
Other minstrel troupes tried to satisfy outlying tastes. Female acts had made a stir in variety shows, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels ran with the idea, first performing in 1870 in skimpy costumes and tights. Their success gave rise to at least 11 all-female troupes by 1871, one of which did away with blackface altogether. Ultimately, the girlie show emerged as a form in its own right. Mainstream minstrelsy continued to emphasize its propriety, but traditional troupes
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adopted some of these elements in the guise of the female impersonator. A well-played wench character became critical to success in the postwar period.
This new minstrelsy maintained an emphasis on refined music. Most troupes added jubilees, or spirituals, to their repertoire in the 1870s. These were fairly authentic religious slave songs borrowed from traveling black singing groups. Other troupes drifted further from minstrelsy's roots. When George Primrose and Billy West broke with Haverly's Mastodons in 1877, they did away with blackface for all but the endmen and dressed themselves in lavish finery and powdered wigs. They decorated the stage with elaborate backdrops and performed no slapstick
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whatsoever. Their brand of minstrelsy differed from other entertainments only in name.
Social commentary continued to dominate most performances, with plantation material constituting only a small part of the repertoire. This effect was amplified as minstrelsy featuring black performers took off in its own right and stressed its connection to the old plantations. The main target of criticism was the moral decay of the urbanized North. Cities were painted as corrupt, as homes to unjust poverty, and as dens of "city slickers" who lay in wait to prey upon new arrivals. Minstrels stressed traditional family life; stories told of reunification between mothers and sons thought dead in the war. Women's
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rights, disrespectful children, low church attendance, and sexual promiscuity became symptoms of decline in family values and of moral decay. Of course, Northern black characters carried these vices even further. African-American members of Congress were one example, pictured as pawns of the Radical Republicans.
By the 1890s, minstrelsy formed only a small part of American entertainment, and, by 1919, a mere three troupes dominated the scene. Small companies and amateurs carried the traditional minstrel show into the 20th century, now with an audience mostly in the rural South, while black-owned troupes continued traveling to more outlying areas like the West. These black troupes were one of
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minstrelsy's last bastions, as more white actors moved into vaudeville. (Community amateur blackface minstrel shows persisted in northern New York State into the 1960s. The University of Vermont banned the minstrel-like Kake Walk as part of the winter Carnival in 1969.)
## Black minstrels.
In the 1840s and '50s, William Henry Lane and Thomas Dilward became the first African Americans to perform on the minstrel stage. All-black troupes followed as early as 1855. These companies emphasized that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance, with one advertisement describing a troupe as "SEVEN SLAVES just from Alabama, who are EARNING THEIR FREEDOM by giving concerts
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under the guidance of their Northern friends." White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting "spontaneously" and "naturally." Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT." Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked the faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as "mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. ... The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork." The minstrels themselves promoted their performing abilities, quoting
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reviews that favorably compared them to popular white troupes. These black companies often featured female minstrels.
One or two African-American troupes dominated the scene for much of the late 1860s and 1870s. The first of these was Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels, who played the Northeast around 1865. Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels formed shortly thereafter and toured England to great success beginning in 1866. In the 1870s, white entrepreneurs bought most of the successful black companies. Charles Callender obtained Sam Hague's troupe in 1872 and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. They became the most popular black troupe in America, and the words "Callender"
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and "Georgia" came to be synonymous with the institution of black minstrelsy. J. H. Haverly, in turn, purchased Callender's troupe in 1878 and applied his strategy of enlarging troupe size and embellishing sets. When this company went to Europe, Gustave and Charles Frohman took the opportunity to promote their Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels. Their success was such that the Frohmans bought Haverly's group and merged it with theirs, creating a virtual monopoly on the market. The company split in three to better canvas the nation and dominated black minstrelsy throughout the 1880s. Individual black performers like Billy Kersands, James A. Bland, Sam Lucas, Martin Francis and Wallace
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King grew as famous as any featured white performer.
Racism made black minstrelsy a difficult profession. When playing Southern towns, performers had to stay in character off stage, dressed in ragged "slave clothes" and perpetually smiling. Troupes left town quickly after each performance, and some had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired whole trains or had custom sleeping cars built, complete with hidden compartments to hide in should things turn ugly. Even these were no haven, as whites sometimes used the cars for target practice. Their salaries, though higher than those of most blacks of the period, failed to reach levels earned by white performers; even superstars like Kersands
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earned slightly less than featured white minstrels. Most black troupes did not last long.
In content, early black minstrelsy differed little from its white counterpart. As the white troupes drifted from plantation subjects in the mid-1870s however, black troupes placed a new emphasis on it. The addition of jubilee singing gave black minstrelsy a popularity boost as the black troupes were rightly believed to be the most authentic performers of such material. Other significant differences were that the black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from them, and that the black companies commonly ended the first act of the show with a military high-stepping, brass band
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burlesque, a practice adopted after Callender's Minstrels used it in 1875 or 1876. Although black minstrelsy lent credence to racist ideals of blackness, many African-American minstrels worked to subtly alter these stereotypes and to poke fun at white society. One jubilee described heaven as a place "where de white folks must let the darkeys be" and they could not be "bought and sold". In plantation material, aged black characters were rarely reunited with long-lost masters like they were in white minstrelsy.
African Americans formed a large part of the black minstrels' audience, especially for smaller troupes. In fact, their numbers were so great that many theater owners had to relax rules
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relegating black patrons to certain areas. The reasons for the popularity of this openly racist form of entertainment with black audiences have long been debated by historians. Perhaps they felt in on the joke, laughing at the over-the-top characters from a sense of "in-group recognition". Maybe they even implicitly endorsed the racist antics, or they felt some connection to elements of an African culture that had been suppressed but was visible, albeit in racist, exaggerated form, in minstrel personages. They certainly got many jokes that flew over whites' heads or registered as only quaint distractions. An undeniable draw for black audiences was simply seeing fellow African Americans on stage;
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black minstrels were largely viewed as celebrities. Formally educated African Americans, on the other hand, either disregarded black minstrelsy or openly disdained it. Still, black minstrelsy was the first large-scale opportunity for African Americans to enter American show business. Black minstrels were therefore viewed as a success. Pat H. Chappelle capitalized on this and created the first totally black-owned black vaudeville show, The Rabbit's Foot Company, performed with an all-black cast that elevated the level of shows with sophisticated and fun comedy. It successfully toured mainly the southwest and southeast, as well as in New Jersey and New York City.
# Structure.
The Christy Minstrels
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established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s. A crowd-gathering parade to the theater often preceded the performance. The show itself was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song. Upon the instruction of the "interlocutor", a sort of host, they sat in a semicircle. Various stock characters always took the same positions: the genteel interlocutor in the middle, flanked by "Tambo" and "Bones", who served as the "endmen" or "cornermen". The interlocutor acted as a master of ceremonies and as a dignified, if pompous, straight man. He had a somewhat aristocratic demeanor, a "codfish aristocrat", while the
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endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs. Over time, the first act came to include maudlin numbers not always in dialect. One minstrel, usually a tenor, came to specialize in this part; such singers often became celebrities, especially with women. Initially, an upbeat plantation song and dance ended the act; later it was more common for the first act to end with a "walkaround", including dances in the style of a cakewalk.
The second portion of the show, called the "olio", was historically the last to evolve, as its real purpose was to allow for the setting of the stage for act three behind the curtain. It had more of a variety show structure. Performers danced, played
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instruments, did acrobatics, and demonstrated other amusing talents. Troupes offered parodies of European-style entertainments, and European troupes themselves sometimes performed. The highlight was when one actor, typically one of the endmen, delivered a faux-black-dialect "stump speech", a long oration about anything from nonsense to science, society, or politics, during which the dim-witted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. All the while, the speaker moved about like a clown, standing on his head and almost always falling off his stump at some point. With blackface makeup serving as fool's mask, these stump speakers
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could deliver biting social criticism without offending the audience, although the focus was usually on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' ability to make sense of them. Many troupes employed a stump specialist with a trademark style and material.
The "afterpiece" rounded out the production. In the early days of the minstrel show, this was often a skit set on a Southern plantation that usually included song-and-dance numbers and featured Sambo- and Mammy-type characters in slapstick situations. The emphasis lay on an idealized plantation life and the happy slaves who lived there. Nevertheless, antislavery viewpoints sometimes surfaced in the guise of family members separated
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by slavery, runaways, or even slave uprisings. A few stories highlighted black trickster figures who managed to get the better of their masters. Beginning in the mid-1850s, performers did burlesque renditions of other plays; both Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights were common targets. The humor of these came from the inept black characters trying to perform some element of high white culture. Slapstick humor pervaded the afterpiece, including cream pies to the face, inflated bladders, and on-stage fireworks. Material from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" dominated beginning in 1853. The afterpiece allowed the minstrels to introduce new characters, some of whom became quite popular and spread from troupe
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to troupe.
# Characters.
The earliest minstrel characters took as their base popular white stage archetypes—frontiersmen, fishermen, hunters, and riverboatsmen whose depictions drew heavily from the tall tale—and added exaggerated blackface speech and makeup. These Jim Crows and Gumbo Chaffs fought and boasted that they could "wip [their] weight in wildcats" or "eat an alligator". As public opinion toward blacks changed, however, so did the minstrel stereotypes. Eventually, several stock characters emerged. Chief among these were the slave, who often maintained the earlier name Jim Crow, and the dandy, known frequently as Zip Coon, from the song Zip Coon. "First performed by George Dixon in
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1834, Zip Coon made a mockery of free blacks. An arrogant, ostentatious figure, he dressed in high style and spoke in a series of malaprops and puns that undermined his attempts to appear dignified."
The white actors who portrayed these characters spoke an exaggerated form of Black Vernacular English. The blackface makeup and illustrations on programs and sheet music depicted them with huge eyeballs, very wide noses, and thick-lipped mouths that hung open or grinned foolishly; one character expressed his love for a woman with "lips so large a lover could not kiss them all at once". They had huge feet and preferred "possum" and "coon" to more civilized fare. Minstrel characters were often described
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in animalistic terms, with "wool" instead of hair, "bleating" like sheep, and having "darky cubs" instead of children. Other claims were that blacks had to drink ink when they got sick "to restore their color" and that they had to file their hair rather than cut it. They were inherently musical, dancing and frolicking through the night with no need for sleep.
Thomas "Daddy" Rice introduced the earliest slave archetype with his song "Jump Jim Crow" and its accompanying dance. He claimed to have learned the number by watching an old, limping black stable hand dancing and singing, "Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so/Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow." Other early minstrel performers
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quickly adopted Rice's character.
Slave characters in general came to be low-comedy types with names that matched the instruments they played: "Brudder Tambo" (or simply "Tambo") for the tambourine and "Brudder Bones" (or "Bones") for the bone castanets or bones. These "endmen" (for their position in the minstrel semicircle) were ignorant and poorly spoken, being conned, electrocuted, or run over in various sketches. They happily shared their stupidity; one slave character said that to get to China, one had only to go up in a balloon and wait for the world to rotate below. Highly musical and unable to sit still, they constantly contorted their bodies wildly while singing.
Tambo and Bones's
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simple-mindedness and lack of sophistication were highlighted by pairing them with a straight man master of ceremonies called the "interlocutor". This character, although usually in blackface, spoke in aristocratic English and used a much larger vocabulary. The humor of these exchanges came from the misunderstandings on the part of the endmen when talking to the interlocutor:
Tambo and Bones were favorites of the audience, and their repartee with the interlocutor was for many the best part of the show. There was an element of laughing with them for the audience, as they frequently made light of the interlocutor's grandiose ways.
The interlocutor was responsible for beginning and ending each
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segment of the show. To this end, he had to be able to gauge the mood of the audience and know when it was time to move on. Accordingly, the actor who played the role was paid very well in comparison to other non-featured performers.
There were many variants on the slave archetype. The "old darky" or "old uncle" formed the head of the idyllic black family. Like other slave characters, he was highly musical and none-too-bright, but he had favorable aspects like his loving nature and the sentiments he raised regarding love for the aged, ideas of old friendships, and the cohesiveness of the family. His death and the pain it caused his master was a common theme in sentimental songs. Alternatively,
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the master could die, leaving the old darky to mourn. Stephen Foster's "Old Uncle Ned" was the most popular song on this subject. Less frequently, the old darky might be cast out by a cruel master when he grew too old to work. After the Civil War, this character became the most common figure in plantation sketches. He frequently cried about the loss of his home during the war, only to meet up with someone from the past such as the child of his former master. In contrast, the trickster, often called Jasper Jack, appeared less frequently.
Female characters ranged from the sexually provocative to the laughable. These roles were almost always played by men in drag (most famously George Christy,
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Francis Leon and Barney Williams), even though American theater outside minstrelsy was filled with actresses at this time. "Mammy" or the "old auntie" was the old darky's counterpart. She often went by the name of Aunt Dinah Roh after the song of that title. Mammy was lovable to both blacks and whites, matronly, but hearkening to European peasant woman sensibilities. Her main role was to be the devoted mother figure in scenarios about the perfect plantation family.
The "wench", "yaller gal" or "prima donna" was a mulatto who combined the light skin and facial features of a white woman with the perceived sexual promiscuity and exoticism of a black woman. Her beauty and flirtatiousness made her
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a common target for male characters, although she usually proved capricious and elusive. After the Civil War, the wench emerged as the most important specialist role in the minstrel troupe; men could alternately be titillated and disgusted, while women could admire the illusion and high fashion. The role was most strongly associated with the song "Miss Lucy Long", so the character many times bore that name. Actress Olive Logan commented that some actors were "marvelously well fitted by nature for it, having well-defined soprano voices, plump shoulders, beardless faces, and tiny hands and feet." Many of these actors were teen-aged boys. In contrast was the "funny old gal", a slapstick role played
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by a large man in motley clothing and large, flapping shoes. The humor she invoked often turned on the male characters' desire for a woman whom the audience would perceive as unattractive.
The counterpart to the slave was the "dandy", a common character in the afterpiece. He was a northern urban black man trying to live above his station by mimicking white, upper-class speech and dress—usually to no good effect. Dandy characters often went by Zip Coon, after the song popularized by George Washington Dixon, although others had pretentious names like Count Julius Caesar Mars Napoleon Sinclair Brown. Their clothing was a ludicrous parody of upper-class dress: coats with tails and padded shoulders,
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white gloves, monocles, fake mustaches, and gaudy watch chains. They spent their time primping and preening, going to parties, dancing and strutting, and wooing women.
The black soldier became another stock type during the Civil War and merged qualities of the slave and the dandy. He was acknowledged for playing some role in the war, but he was more frequently lampooned for bumbling through his drills or for thinking his uniform made him the equal of his white counterparts. He was usually better at retreating than fighting, and, like the dandy, he preferred partying to serious pursuits. Still, his introduction allowed for some return to themes of the breakup of the plantation family.
Non-black
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stereotypes played a significant role in minstrelsy, and although still performed in blackface, were distinguished by their lack of black dialect. American Indians before the Civil War were usually depicted as innocent symbols of the pre-industrial world or as pitiable victims whose peaceful existence had been shattered by the encroachment of the white man. However, as the United States turned its attentions West, American Indians became savage, pagan obstacles to progress. These characters were formidable scalpers to be feared, not ridiculed; any humor in such scenarios usually derived from a black character trying to act like one of the frightful savages. One sketch began with white men and
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American Indians enjoying a communal meal in a frontier setting. As the American Indians became intoxicated, they grew more and more antagonistic, and the army ultimately had to intervene to prevent the massacre of the whites. Even favorably presented American Indian characters usually died tragically.
Depictions of East Asians began during the California Gold Rush when minstrels encountered Chinese out West. Minstrels caricatured them by their strange language ("ching chang chung"), odd eating habits (dogs and cats), and propensity for wearing pigtails. Parodies of Japanese became popular when a Japanese acrobat troupe toured the U.S. beginning in 1865. A run of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The
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Mikado" in the mid-1880s inspired another wave of Asian characterizations.
The few white characters in minstrelsy were stereotypes of immigrant groups like the Irish and Germans. Irish characters first appeared in the 1840s, portrayed as hotheaded, odious drunkards who spoke in a thick brogue. However, beginning in the 1850s, many Irishmen joined minstrelsy, and Irish theatergoers probably came to represent a significant part of the audience, so this negative image was muted. Germans, on the other hand, were portrayed favorably from their introduction to minstrelsy in the 1860s. They were responsible and sensible, though still portrayed as humorous for their large size, hearty appetites, and
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heavy "Dutch" accents. Part of this positive portrayal no doubt came about because some of the actors portraying German characters were German themselves.
# Music and dance.
"Minstrelsy evolved from several different American entertainment traditions; the traveling circus, medicine shows, shivaree, Irish dance and music with African syncopated rhythms, musical halls and traveling theatre." Music and dance were the heart of the minstrel show and a large reason for its popularity. Around the time of the 1830s there was a lot of national conflict as to how people viewed African Americans. Because of that interest in the Negro people, these songs granted the listener new knowledge about African
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Americans, who were different from themselves, even if the information was prejudiced. Troupes took advantage of this interest and marketed sheet music of the songs they featured so that viewers could enjoy them at home and other minstrels could adopt them for their act.
How much influence black music had on minstrel performance remains a debated topic. Minstrel music certainly contained some element of black culture, added onto a base of European tradition with distinct Irish and Scottish folk music influences. Musicologist Dale Cockrell argues that early minstrel music mixed both African and European traditions and that distinguishing black and white urban music during the 1830s is impossible.
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