Thomas D. Rice, the famed "father of American minstrelsy," was born to poor parents in New York. He was hired by Ludlow and Smith's Southern Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, where he played minor parts and presented black imitations in intermissions. It was in the intermission of Solon Robinson's The Rifle, that Rice presented his first performance of Jim Crow. As he continued to perform his imaginary imitation of a black stable worker, he improvised the verses of Jim Crow to fit local situations. He became Jim Crow Rice. Rice traveled with his Jim Crow Show to New York in 1932 and then to Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington. Jim Crow was a success internationally, becoming the song hit of America and England.

Rise went on to compose "Ethiopian burlesques" including Othello, Bone Squash Diavolo, Long Island Juba, Jumbo Jum, Ginger Blue, and Jim Crow in London. These productions became the pattern for minstrelsy shows to come and produced a new generation of racist "negro specialists." Thomas D. Rice died of paralysis in New York in 1837.¹⁷