Credit: Library of Congress
In the 1840s minstrel shows, in which white performers in blackface cracked jokes and performed songs and skits satirizing African Americans, became a national craze. One of the most popular troupes was Christy's "Original Band of Virginia Minstrels." Born on May 21, 1815, in Philadelphia, E. P. Christy formed his first minstrel troupe in 1842 and soon won a national audience by cleaning up the traditional minstrel shows, replacing references to sex and violence with sentimental plantation ballads, the most popular of which were penned by Stephen Foster. After a ten-year run on Broadway and successful tour of England, Christy retired in 1854, at the age of thirty-nine. Plagued by mental instability he jumped to his death from a second-story window in 1862.
