New Yorker Thomas Dartmouth, known as T.D. Rice, or "Daddy" Rice, was a world-famous stage performer who had invented and popularized the black-face minstrel character of "Jim Crow" beginning in the late 1830s. The dancing African-American character was purportedly based on an actual crippled slave who worked in a livery stable in Louisville, Kentucky near a theater where Rice was performing. Careless with his wealth, Rice died in near poverty in New York City aged fifty-two. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Mark Knowles, Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2002), 78-85.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Education/Culture
