Rice's Crow

This hand-colored lithograph by Max Rosenthal depicts Thomas Dartmouth Rice, the performer who created the "Jim Crow" character in blackface minstrelsy during the 1830s. Rice is shown with bird features—a visual pun on his stage name—surrounded by marsh grasses in a naturalistic setting. The image documents the minstrel show era, when blackface performance became mass entertainment in American newspapers and theaters. Rice's routines featured exaggerated caricatures of African Americans. This print is part of the visual culture of nineteenth-century America.