Minstrel Music: The Sounds and Images of Race in Antebellum America.

Abstract

IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Mark Twain lamented the passing of what he referred to as the "real Negro show" that he had first seen in Hannibal, Missouri in the 1840s. Recalling how he had once tricked his mother, who was an avid churchgoer and would not have ordinarily attended a minstrel show, to attend a performance by the Christy Minstrels by claiming that it was a group of missionaries back from Africa, Twain described the event with affection. He and countless other Americans