In the nineteenth century, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment in the US. Their focus was racial caricature. The songs were in a fake form of black dialect, and many of them trivialized bad things that happened to black people. Some of them have survived in a cleaned-up form. “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the South, was originally “Dixie’s Land,” about a woman who “died for a man that broke her heart,” treating it as a bit of fun. (“But if you want to drive away sorrow, / Come and hear this song tomorrow!”) Other songs were still worse.

Minstrel shows featured performers in blackface. This didn’t mean simply black makeup; it was an intentional caricature, with dark makeup on the face and white lips. A well-known example is Al Jolson in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. Even black performers were sometimes expected to wear blackface.
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