minstrel

This song, also known as “The Old Folks at Home,” became the most-performed song of 19th-century minstrel shows, and was adopted as the state song of Florida, through which the Suwannee River flows, in 1935.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 1, 2026

His father, who died when Marshall was 10, occasionally sang in a minstrel act and Marshall’s sister, actor Joanne Dru, worked as a showgirl at the Copa Club.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2024

However, the banjo's creation eventually became a blending between West African and European traditions mostly due to minstrel shows in the 1800s.

From Salon ● Feb. 15, 2024

It was there that he began to imbibe the crazy quilt music of the South, with blues and jazz filtered through snatches of country and the minstrel and medicine shows that traveled through town.

From New York Times ● May 29, 2022

He turned, led the procession, and those princes followed, while his herald sought the minstrel.

From "The Odyssey" by Homer

How did this music surpass its muses from the holds to the plantation to the medicine shows and minstrels and brothels and jukes, to the Grammys red carpet, lavish video shoots and MTV Cribs?

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2023

The composer and songwriter Stephen Foster, a white Pittsburgher, wrote the 1853 melody, which blackface minstrels made into a hit.

From Salon ● May 5, 2022

Meanwhile, abolitionist Frederick Douglass made it a point to become the era’s most-photographed man, in direct opposition to a culture drenched in racist images of minstrels and contented slaves.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 2, 2020

Not to mention “My Bathroom Is a Private Kind of Place” by the American Standards, minstrels of the American Standard Company, maker of toilets.

From New York Times ● Jul. 4, 2013

Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang were sad, too.

From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith