A Spoonful of Levity Helps the Racism Go Down
T.D. Rice’s minstrel character, Jim Crow, was immensely popular from its inception in the 1820s. The character Jim Crow was instrumental in the popularity of minstrelsy as a form of entertainment and inspired countless songs and skits throughout the nineteenth century. Jim Crow – noted as the first stock character in minstrelsy – promulgated a stereotype of Black field hands being untrustworthy, shiftless, naïve, and boastful. Alan Green notes, somehow by combining blackness, rags, grotesqueness, song, dance, and dialect, ‘Daddy Rice’ had indeed fathered a universally-acceptable comic ‘Negro.’”[1] The legacy of the character continued as it became used as a derogatory term for Black Americans, and later the name became associated with various segregation laws in the United States.
Alongside Jim Crow on the minstrel stage was the city-slicking Zip Coon, created by George Washington Dixon. These two characters represented “two comic types which were to reign throughout the long career of Negro minstrelsy: the plantation or field-hand darky and the citified dandy.[2] Before the Civil War, the Zip Coon and other characters like him were created to make fun of freed African Americans who lived in the cities. Matthew Morrison described the Zip Coon as “the blackfaced urban dandy—attractive, well dressed, ‘educated’—effectively embodies the irony and fear of black ‘upward’ mobility throughout the nation, as he also performs the class frustrations of an urban, white working-class immigrant population on the rise between the 1820s and the 1840s.”[3] The Zip Coon has not had the cultural staying power of Jim Crow, but the impact of the character, the racist songs about him, and the racist songs he and Jim Crow would sing inspired decades of popular songs that spread and upheld racist stereotypes of Black Americans. In this paper, I investigate coon songs, a genre of comic songs popularized by blackface minstrelsy that developed into its own genre. The peak of the coon song’s popularity was about 1880 to the end of the First World War. In this paper, I will show how these songs furthered the spread of racist stereotypes, how they reflect racist ideology of the day, and how widespread its popularity was, reaching the height of American society. Furthermore, I will link these songs to the general attitude of many white Americans – as shown by legislation and writings of the time – towards Black Americans in the decades after the failure of Reconstruction.
The etymology of coon song, as with the Zip Coon, is linked to Black Americans being popularly associated with the raccoon. According to James Dormon, the association had nothing to do physical features, “but the association was largely by way of the ascribed affection of blacks for the amiable and tasty little beasts. By ascription, blacks loved hunting, trapping, and eating raccoons.”[4] Because of this association, the term “coon” became a racial epithet for African Americans. The term may have been further popularized by G.W. Dixon’s famous character, but that was not the genesis of the term. Zip Coon was not even the first known character named to reference raccoons. Andrew Barton’s 1767 The Disappointment; or the Force of Credulity includes a Black character name “Raccoon.”[5] Dixon’s Zip Coon, however, held much more cultural weight than previous characters, and is the titular character of a song that was influential on the coon song genre.
Popularity of coon song began to grow in the 1890s. However, by the end of the century the song form became an undeniable staple in American music and shows that did not include at least one coon song were doomed. As a writer for The Sioux City Journal noted in 1898:
Rising in popularity for about three years the “coon song” has almost swept away all competitors, says the Chicago Tribune. Scarcely a single song outside this classification has become popular within the last year. When the troops lay in the trenches around Santiago it almost seemed that “There’ll Be a Hot Time” had become our national anthem. A vaudeville show without a good “coon act” is as nothing now. A burlesque, according to the latest advices from New York, must be mostly a “black face” performance. Indeed, New York is reported to be quite mad on the subject. In the new Casino burlesque, for example, Miss Belle Davis sings “coon songs,” Miss Alice Atherton sings “coon songs,” Mr. Somebody Else, a “real coon,” sings “coon songs” […] The “real coon” is taking advantage of all this and is pressing hard the popularity of the “black face comedian” who is not the real thing. A team who only a few years ago were singing in a free show in Chicago are now getting one of the biggest salaries in the profession, and there is a story of a phenomenal jump from $35 a week to $350 made by another well known group of singers.[6]
This article makes clear the popularity of coon song, but also reveals that the American public writ large was interested in a more “authentic” portrayal of African Americans in public performance of coon song. Like the minstrel tradition that predated and gave birth to the musical genre, coon song offered a foot in the door for Black performers and songwriters to make a living in show business. This comparison has been made by other scholars who attempt to explain why Black actors, singers and songwriters willfully participate in their own denigration. Patricia Schroeder notes that beyond job opportunities, coon song writers – and minstrels before them – received benefits like “mobility, good pay, community status, and training in professional musicianship, all rare and valuable commodities for former slaves and the children of former slaves.”[7]
While the composition and performance of these songs may have led to upward mobility and fame for Black entertainers, it did not grant them immunity from American racism. On August 13, 1900, a police officer named Robert J. Thorpe died after he was stabbed by an African American man named Arthur Harris the night before. This triggered race riots and lynch mobs across the United States. A writer for the Birmingham Age-Herald wrote:
A mob of several hundred persons formed at 11 o’clock tonight in front of the home of Policeman Robert J. Thorpe… to wreak vengeance upon the negroes of that neighborhood because one of their race had caused the policeman’s death… in a few minutes the mob tonight swelled to 1,500 people or more, and as they became violent the negroes fled in terror into any hiding place they could find… The mob of white men, which grew with rapidity, raged through the district and negroes regardless of age or sex were indiscriminately attacked.[8]
Two weeks after this event, there were still rioters in New York. The Indianapolis paper, The Freeman wrote about Black entertainers being victimized by the mobs including Ernest Hogan, the composer of the famous coon song, “All Coons Look Alike to Me,”
The wild, uncontrollable passion of the mob was best shown on Broadway at 12:30 o’clock this morning, when that popular comedian and song writer, Ernest Hogan, was chased like a wild beast with a pack at his heels…
‘All Coons Look Alike to Me,’ Mr. Hogan’s own composition, had been rendered, to the applause of a large audience. Hogan, fashionably dressed, stood on the curb, twirling his cane.
A cry came from Forty-fourth street and Eight avenue, and a mob of five hundred men, armed with clubs and stones, surged over toward Broadway. Hogan was seen. ‘Get the [n-word]’ was the chorus. Hogan dropped his cane and started down Broadway on a run. The mob followed and for the next three minutes it had a life and death race for Hogan.[9]
As evidenced by this event, the upward mobility provided to Black artists could hardly be enough to justify coon song as a positive means of racial expression since the violence of racists could not be undone or avoided by these tunes. Additionally, the historic harm done by the genre far out-weighs the historic benefit. Beyond its being named after a racial slur, coon songs featured Black characters who were often portrayed as “foppish…, thieves, highly sexed, and violent.”[10] An article from 1906 published in the Kansas City Star notes, “There were hundreds of these songs and they treated of every variety of vice from the chicken-stealing, gambling, shiftless, gin-drinking, razor-fighting ‘[n-word].’”[11]
Looking into examples that portray African Americans as shiftless, the 1902 song “If Time Was Money, I’d Be a Millionaire” opens with the description of the song’s character as “a lazy coon a hangin’ round.” From there the first verse perpetuates the Jim Crow character of a Black American who is both lazy yet big and strong, which was used to imply natural ability of Black individuals for field work:
A lazy coon a hangin’ ‘round heard Parson Jenkins say
“Dat time was money” and it almost took his breath away
He never done a stroke of work he was too big and strong,
He’d stretch out in the boilin’ sun and sleep de whole day long
Of course he never had a dollar in his tattered clothes,
And didn’t own a pair of shoes to cover up his toes
De only thing he had was lots of time to pass away
An’ when he heard that time was money dis is what he did say[12]
This song also insinuates that this character is stupid and fundamentally does not understand the phrase “time is money.” The refrain of the song hammers this point in a way that leaves little to the imagination:
If time was money I'd be a millionaire
I’ve got time honey an’ chunks of it to spare
Oh dere ain’t no other coon could get wealthy half so soon
If time was money I’d be a millionaire[13]
In the second verse, Felix F Feist is more aggressive with his language – using the n-word twice – and asserting this man’s laziness in every line, saying:
Dis [n-word] was too lazy fo to raid a chicken roost
Because he’d have to lift his arm to give his hand a boost
He nearly starved to death one day fo’ certainly because
Didn’t have the energy to move his lazy jaws
Dis coon was never sociable it tired him to talk
If twenty mules would kick him all at once he wouldn’t walk
‘an so a baskin’ in the sun dis [n-word] laid all day,
A grinnin’, chucklin’ to himself an’ dis am what he’d say
The use of the n-word in the second verse of “If Time Was Money” caught the attention of a writer for the Indianapolis paper, The Freeman who noted,
Felix F. Fiest, a white man, author of the words to the coon song, “If Time was Money” has used the word “n-word” in the second verse of his song. I find the word… to be common place and not appreciated by the best classes of people. There seems to be no objections to the word “coon” and the word “darkey” could easily be substituted.”[14]
Elsewhere in the article, the author notes “music publishers took a trip abroad last winter in search of a substitute for the ‘coon’ song… In the meantime, Jos. W. Stearn’s music company has consumed all the famous song writers in New York… to flood the market with genuine coon songs.” The two quotes show that this author does not take as much issue with the practice of writing such offensive songs (though the article mentions a publisher who refuses to write them), but does take issue with the language of certain tunes, showing that even for the Black press, racism in music is not completely unacceptable provided the songwriters use more admissible racist nomenclature. Furthermore, it is not bothersome or worth mentioning in the article that the mere premise of the song is perpetuating racist stereotypes and portraying a Jim Crow-like character that is so lazy he would starve to death since he cannot bring himself to chew. At this point, however, the premise of racist song themes was so commonplace that it would not be noteworthy since it was simply part of the song form.
“If Time Was Money” was not the only song that leaned on the trope of racialized laziness and relating it to economic misfortune. Two other examples of this stereotype were both written in1898 song: “I Wish My Rent Was Paid,” and “I’m Having a Million Dollar Dream.” “I Wish My Rent Was Paid,” begins: “A group of coons one day / Was a wishin’ their time away / They were wishin’ for wealth, and a-wishin for health / And a-wishin’ they could get more pay.” “I’m Having a Million Dollar Dream” begins by describing a character, Bill Jackson as “a lazy coon, as lazy as could be / I never seen such worthless loon since coons were first set free.” All three of these songs portray African Americans as both obsessed with being rich as well as unwilling or unable to work to make money. The latter two songs describe lazy, day-dreaming dead beats before adding stanzas about how they go find jobs and are then unsuccessful. The writing of characters too lazy to lift a finger, who then find work but are not financially rewarded is an antinomy within the stereotype. African Americans are seen as simultaneously too lazy to earn any money and too stupid to keep the money they earn from working – ultimately making them unfit to do business in the eyes of white Americans.
Alongside being portrayed as lazy, African Americans were also often portrayed as violent. The threat of violence was most often signified with a character wielding a razor. Sometimes the reference is in the title like the 1885 song, “De Coon Dat Had De Razor,” or it could be worked into the song for the sake of mentioning a razor. The song “Armazindy Lee” is a love song in which the point of view is a man singing about the woman he wants to marry. In the second verse while talking about the wedding ceremony, the songwriter Eugene Todd includes the line, “Of case there is a fight in the middle of the night / why you’d better have a razor up your sleeve.”[15] Additionally, some songs portrayed a dangerous character like the 1896 song, “Bully Song,” which includes these starting lines for the two verses:
Have yo’ heard about dat bully dat’s just come to town
He’s round among de [n-words] a layin’ their bodies down
I’m a lookin’ for dat bully and he must be found
I’m a Tennessee [n-word] and I don’t allow
[…]
I’s gwine down the street with my ax in my hand
I’m lookin’ for dat bully and I’ll sweep him off dis land
I’m a lookin’ for dat bully and he must be found
I’ll take ‘long my razor, I’se gwine to carve him deep[16]
This song sticks tightly to the theme of violence, making sure in the second verse to reference the protagonist’s weapons: an ax and a razor. These songs amplify the notion that African Americans are violent and to be feared. If their laziness was justification to exclude them in business, the violence was a justification to keep African Americans at arm’s length socially.
Coon songs were written as comedy songs, but the stereotypes they spread had very real and unhumorous consequences. Notions that African Americans were inherently violent, stupid, lazy, and more sexually deviant than white Americans were not just littering the pages of coon song but represented widespread American thought. These stereotypes had an influence on business practices, social dynamics, scientific theories, and legislation. Moreover, the legislation birthed out of insidious American racism further impacted the social and business lives of African Americans.
Outside of the context of music and theater, coon song is used as a pop culture reference for American racists. Coon song was referenced in a 1903 poem sent into the Belleville News Democrat by a reader who was furious that President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington over to the White House for a dinner two years prior. The poem entitled “[N-words] in the White House” begins with, “Things in the White House / Looking mighty curious / [N-words] running everywhere / White people furious.”[17] The fourteen-stanza poem is penned by “Unchained Poet in Democrat Leader, Missouri,” who primarily complains that Black men have been allowed to step foot inside the White House with passages like:
[N-words] on the front porch
[N-words] on the gable
[N-words] in the dining room
[N-words] at the table
The poem also advocates beheading the president as well as including references to African American music styles like the cake walk and coon song:
[N-words] in the sitting room
Making all the talk
[N-words] in the ball room
Doing cake walk
[N-words] in the east room
Make a might throng
[N-words] in the music room
Singing a coon song
The song references these two popular forms of entertainment along with playing craps, plundering, and “raising hell” as though these are strictly activities and forms of entertainment enjoyed by African Americans. As noted, however, coon songs were first written by white entertainers, reflecting white perception of African Americans more than reality. The vitriol for African Americans being spewed across the pages of the Belleville News Democrat shows themes found in coon songs were not innocent fun or light-hearted jabs, they were heart-felt sentiments for a substantial number of Americans around the start of the twentieth century. These racist beliefs are being reinforced with every new song being heard, as listeners ingest another spoonful of racism every time the gather around the piano. This happened often, as coon song’s popularity was so immense that in 1898 an article was written about President William McKinley’s acceptance of the genre.
In the Afro-American Sentinel titled “McKinley’s Musical Tastes,” President McKinley is portrayed as a pious, hymn-singing man who enjoys listening to opera. The article’s subheading, “The President Has Succumbed to the ‘Coon Song’ Craze,” is addressed laying affirming the president’s high-brow taste, saying that the president does not “despise the modern songs of light opera and the vaudevilles.”[18] The article notes that McKinley was delighted to have singer Kate Huntington serenade him with the song “Louisiana Lou.” The lyrics are not as overtly racist as songs like “If Time Was Money, I’d Be a Millionaire” or the myriad of other songs that portray African Americans as lazy, violent, and oversexed. However, the lyrics are still bursting with mimicry of “Black” dialect. For instance, the refrain of the piece is written:
Lou, Lou, I lub you; I lub you, dat's true
Don't cry, don't sigh, you'll see me in de mornin'
Dream, dream, dream ob me, and I'll dream ob you
My Louisiana, Louisiana, Louisiana Lou
The refrain is filled with the typical trappings of apparent Black dialect often found in coon song: “d” replaces “th” as in “dat’s true,” “b” replaces “v” and “f” as in “I lub you” or “dream ob me.” These linguistic mannerisms are carried over from the minstrel caricatures of African Americans like Jim Crow or Zip Coon. The use of faux “Black” dialect was the most universal stereotype in coon song and is included in the very definition of the genre provided on Grove Music Online.[19] The acceptance of the stereotype by McKinley, who was voted into office with the expectation that he would be as progressive as other Republicans of the time, exemplifies how normalized these stereotypes were by the end of the nineteenth century.
Stereotypes found in coon song proved to be most harmful in the creation of legislation. In the early days of minstrelsy, the perceived lazy plantation-dwelling enslaved Jim Crow and well-dressed yet undignified city-dwelling dandy Zip Coon were created to poke fun at African Americans. These portrayals primarily made African Americans look foolish and lazy. However, in the decades following emancipation, violence became a more significant theme and the laziness amplified to paint newly freed African Americans as both inferior and threatening. Notions of white superiority and fear were used to rationalize laws meant to keep white people as distanced from African Americans as possible.
In 1875, congress passed the Civil Rights Act which stated:
That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude. [20]
In 1883, about the year that “the fad [of coon songs] had its origins,” the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act was called to question and swiftly nullified by the United States Supreme Court.[21] This made it possible for states to enact laws that kept African American passengers separated from white passengers on public conveyances like steamboats, train cars, and busses – which many states adopted during the heyday of coon songs. Part of the justification for racial separation on public transit was the perceived threat to white people. This perception was fueled by ideas seen in coon songs as Phillip Bruce makes clear in his 1911 article when he justifies segregating train cars:
The white people… demanded the change [to double accommodations in order to separate by race], and the railways offered no serious opposition. A more useful law was never inserted in the Southern statute book. No one who remembers the former promiscuous commingling of whites and blacks in the Southern trains can fail to recall the scenes of violence witnessed there in consequence of the aggressive attitude of negroes inflamed by drink. [22]
The duel stereotyping of African Americans as both lacking intelligence and averse to work ethic resulted in their being treated as a truly inferior race of people. This was compounded by scientific racists who espoused the view that “innate physiological and biological differences [that] separated the races.”[23] This resulted in extremely condescending views of African American’s role in American society. William Starr Myers claims “the negro must be recognized as one of an inferior, not merely a backward, race. He must be treated as a ‘grown-up child’ – with justice, but with authority. He must be educated and given every opportunity to develop to the limit of his capacity.”[24] He then minimizes the achievements of any African Americans and marginalizes their place in society as a helper to the white establishment by saying, “a few of the thoroughly capable negroes (and their number is pitifully small) should be educated above the average of their fellows to aid the whites in leading their people.”[25] Philip Bruce echoes the presentation of African American intellect in coon song in his reasoning for treating them as second class citizens, saying:
In rushing in and arbitrarily and prematurely requiring the South to enfranchise the indigent and illiterate black man almost as soon as he had obtained his freedom, the North dislocated hopelessly for a time that judicious evolutionary process through which negro suffrage would have passed, had the Southern people been left to confer that right gradually and to regulate its exercise.[26]
Negative stereotypes that were reinforced by coon song did incalculable damage to the ways in which African Americans were perceived, as evidenced by the way in which writers present Jim Crow laws as ways to preserve Southern (white) society as well as to protect the apparently helpless (but also overly violent) African Americans during their process of social evolution. Preserving Southern society is central to Philip Bruce’s article:
The most notable achievements of this constructive local statesmanship consist of five great enactments, namely, the practical disfranchisement of the negro, the prohibition of the intermarriage of the races, the interdiction of their co-education, their separation in all public conveyances, and their domiciliary segregation in the cities.[27]
The racist drivel found throughout the coon song genre showed a sort of fascination with African American culture. Not an accurate depiction of African American life, but a construction of Blackness created by white Americans – a construction that would allow for the continued oppression of a formerly-enslaved group of people. The construction of race and racial stereotyping in the United States is still not completely solved more than fifty years after the end of segregation and over one hundred years after the popularity of coon songs died out. Coon songs started to fade away in the early 1900s with articles marking the end of the genre appearing throughout the latter half of the aughts. In 1906, a white-owned newspaper, The Kansas City Star published an article titled “’Coon Songs’ on the Wane: The Rapid Rise and Decline of ‘Rag Time’ Music” in which they gleefully declare that the sun is setting on coon songs and its parent genre ragtime:
The American public have renounced the “coon song” with its negro “rag time” Probably no fad in the musical world ever took hold of the popular fancy with a more tenacious or longed-lived grip than the “coon” song… The public mind was saturated with it…
About three years ago the popularity of the rag-time song began to wane and it has been rapidly approaching the extinction since then. It isn’t quite dead, of course. Once in a while somebody has the heartlessness to hammer out a rag-time “selection” on the piano. But hardly anybody composes one nowadays.[28]
The article continues its obituary for ragtime and coon song, lamenting that such annoying music has remained in the public sphere for nearly two decades. Not once, however, does the author cite the racist lyrics as a reason to celebrate the genre’s demise. Rather, they are more interested in the quality of the lyrical structure and repetition of themes than the message of the genre. An African American-owned newspaper, The Freeman, on the other hand, published an article in 1909 entitled “’Coon’ Songs Must Go” in which they lambast the laziness of lyricists who rely on tired stereotypes to sell a song. This lengthy article dissects how damaging the music is for African Americans, how African Americans participated in their own denigration, and notes how the repeated use of racial epithets in songs started as fun but did not stay tethered to the music.
Coon songs, after the great damage they have done to the American colored man are now dying out. Although “rag” time melody may live forever, the words “coon,” “[n-word]” and darkey are now being omitted by song writers. Usually some fictitious name as “Sam Johnson” and “Linda Lue” are used in the lines of poetry instead of the word “coon” which is very offensive to the colored race and makes the hair raise on their heads when they hear it. There is a great difference in composers of 20 years ago to the later day poets… Nowadays the composers have no respect for good people, no thought of elevating, careless of hurting good innocent people’s, they rush their horrible junk on the market for sale. Out for graft they use slang hurried-up poetry – anything that will sell quickly. The colored writers not knowing the harm they were doing took a stick to break their own hands by writing “coon” songs.
[…]
Williams & Walker are a great deal to blame for being the originators and establishing the name “coon” upon our race… In order to achieve success or to attract the attention of the public they branded themselves as “the two real coons.” Their names accompanied with “coon” songs was soon heralded… As much as to say the Negro has now changed his name. He is no more human, but a “coon.” [Williams & Walker and Ernest Hogan] needed the money, what little they received, and the white people needed the laugh on the ignorant… Colored men in general took no offense… and laughed as heartily on hearing a “coon” song as the whites. But where the rub came is when the colored man was called a “coon” outside of the opera house. Instead of the whole race raising up in arms and protesting against such slang used in songs and such horrible caricatures on the title pages, they good naturedly joined in the chorus “All Coons Look Alike to Me.”[29]
Additionally, the author discusses the effects on children hearing the casual racism of coons songs.
Every colored man and woman of any pride, whether educated or not, becomes grossly insulted when called a “coon.” Yet he can’t go to a theatre nor listen to a phonograph without being told that he is a “coon.” The name “coon” in a song we understand is only meant… to amuse or to cause laughter while you play the song… but it don’t stop there. A show goes to a country town – some low down, loud-mouth “coon shouter” sings “Coon, Coon, Coon” or some other song… with an emphasis on the word “coon.” Then the people, especially the children are educated that a colored man is a “coon.” What was meant for a jest is taken seriously. [30]
The legacy of the coon song is summed up well in the sentiment that it was a jest taken seriously. However, in the wake of the Civil War along with the rise and fall of reconstruction, it is more likely that coon song was never truly jest. The hatred that filled the pages of hundreds of song books represented real resentment that had festered in primarily Southern whites since the end of the war. By repeating heinous phrases with a laugh and a smile, racism could be made more palatable for white audiences who took little pushing to hop on board, as well as African American audiences.
[1] Green, Alan W. C. “‘Jim Crow,’ ‘Zip Coon’: The Northern Origins of Negro Minstrelsy.” The Massachusetts Review 11, no. 2 (1970): 385–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087995.
[2] Ibid, 390.
[3]Matthew D. Morrison, “Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 72, no. 3 (2019), 81-823. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.781.
[4] James H. Dormon, “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘Coon Song’ Phenomenon of the Gilded Age, American Quarterly, Vol. 40, no. 4 (December 1988), 452
[5] Ibid, 451.
[6] "In the Theatrical World the Dramatic Season in Sioux City in New in Full Sway." Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa), September 4, 1898: 5. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A11A8291E9BB54EB8%40EANX-11B5CA0A379EA5C0%402414537-11B5CA0A68056C20%404-11B5CA0B295C8810%40In%2Bthe%2BTheatrical%2BWorld%2Bthe%2BDramatic%2BSeason%2Bin%2BSioux%2BCity%2Bin%2BNew%2Bin%2BFull%2BSway.
[7] Patricia R. Schroeder, “Passing for Black: Coon Songs and the Performance of Race,” Wiley Online Library (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, June 9, 2010), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1542-734X.2010.00740.x,143.
[8] "New York Mob after Negroes Repetition of the Recent Riot in New Orleans. Many Blacks." Age-Herald (Birmingham, Alabama), August 16, 1900: [1]. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A11EC25AD467AEC15%40EANX-11F4787A26D6C3A8%402415248-11F4787A30408A00%400-11F4787A6E1276D0%40New%2BYork%2BMob%2Bafter%2BNegroes%2BRepetition%2Bof%2Bthe%2BRecent%2BRiot%2Bin%2BNew%2BOrleans.%2BMany%2BBlacks.
[9] "Stage." Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 1, 1900: 5. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANX-12C8A2616CAAF3A8%402415264-12C8A261A1BF5010%404-12C8A2625527F460%40Stage.
[10] Neal, Brandi A. "Coon song." Grove Music Online. 16 Oct. 2013; Accessed 10 Dec. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002249084.
[11] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), March 4, 1906: 13. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A1126152C152E4978%40EANX-11650C30B0520690%402417274-11650C34C55F6590%4038-11650C43C3C86A10%40%2522Coon%2BSongs%2522%2Bon%2Bthe%2BWane.%2BThe%2BRapid%2BRise%2Band%2BDecline%2Bof%2B%2522Rag%2BTime%2522%2BMusic.
[12] Felix F. Feist, If Time was Money, I’d be a Millionaire, 1902
[13] Feist, 1902.
[14] "Professional Philosophy." Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), July 19, 1902: [5]. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANAAA-12C4F968687037F8%402415950-12C4F968964ADD08%404-12C4F96979992DA0%40Professional%2BPhilosophy.
[15] Armazindy Lee,
[16] Bully Song
[17] "Poetry," Belleville News Democrat (Belleville, Illinois), July 25, 1903: 2. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A114CEEB0320B0130%40EANX-11532DC0A49130D8%402416321-11532DC126037DB8%401-11532DC24D9B8928%40Poetry.
[18] "McKinley's Musical Tastes. The President Has Succumbed to the 'Coon Song' Craze." Afro-American Sentinel (Omaha, Nebraska), February 5, 1898: 1. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B9767335867038%40EANAAA-12CE2CDC1312D7D0%402414326-12CC42BC041E1F78%400-12EA3C091ACE8C80%40McKinley%2527s%2BMusical%2BTastes.%2BThe%2BPresident%2BHas%2BSuccumbed%2Bto%2Bthe%2B%2522Coon%2BSong%2522%2BCraze.
[19] Neal, “Coon Song.”
[20] Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas. “The Separation of the Races in Public Conveyances. The American Political Science Review. (1909):180-204.
[21] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), March 4, 1906: 13. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A1126152C152E4978%40EANX-11650C30B0520690%402417274-11650C34C55F6590%4038-11650C43C3C86A10%40%2522Coon%2BSongs%2522%2Bon%2Bthe%2BWane.%2BThe%2BRapid%2BRise%2Band%2BDecline%2Bof%2B%2522Rag%2BTime%2522%2BMusic.
[22] Philip Alexander Bruce, “Evolution of the Negro Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 19, No. 4 (1911), 392
[23] Andrea Patterson, “Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South,” in Journal of the History of Biology 42, no. 3 (2009), 530
[24] Wm. Starr Myers, “Some Present-Day Views of the Southern Race Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 21, No. 3 (1913), 348
[25] Ibid., 348.
[26] Philip Alexander Bruce, “Evolution of the Negro Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 19, No. 4 (1911), 387
[27] Ibid, 386
[28] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star
[29] Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), January 2, 1909: [5]. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANX-12C55FDC3692A460%402418309-12C55FDC927A4920%40.
[30] Ibid.
