This series of images, drawn from the African American Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library, illustrates the ways in which African Americans were depicted on sheet music from the 1820s up to the 1920s. Sheet music, which can be quickly produced in response to an event or a trend, is a excellent window into the popular attitudes of the day.

The images begin with those from the start of blackface minstrelsy in the 1820s, in which individual white performers sang and danced in purported imitation of the music and dances of African Americans. In the 1840s, larger-scale minstrel troupes (again, almost always of white performers) were beginning to be organized, and the ways in which they depicted African Americans - usually either as urban dandies or rural plantation hands - can be clearly seen. The antebellum era also affords images from the abolitionist tradition, including those related to the greatly influential Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The period of the Civil War shows African Americans depicted as soldiers or as displaced persons, while the sheet music from the period of Reconstruction frequently places them in a white fantasy of nostalgia for antebellum life on the plantation. The sheet music covers from the late 1870s and 1880s show a great mix of styles, evidence of the societal complexities that characterized the post-Reconstruction era. Here, portraits drawn from photographs of African American composers and performers begin to appear, often on the same sheet with highly stereotyped minstrel images and scenes.

The late 19th century and the early 20th century sheet music continues this trend, adding actual photographs of performers and multi-colored covers, as techniques of printing become more advanced. The very lively African American musical theatre of the first decade of the 20th century is well represented, and the struggles of African American performers to escape the stereotypes of minstrelsy are clearly depicted. The series of images closes with those that reflect the emerging influence of ragtime, blues and jazz, both in African American life and in American society in general.

The Loghouse (1826)

This early example of African-American related sheet music in many ways encapsulates the next 175 years of American popular music: a white composer taking his inspiration from the black folk tradition.

This cover is essentially the story of the life of the composer A. P. Heinrich. The composer is seated outside his rustic frontier cabin, and strewn about him are songs he has been writing. Looking around the corner is a ragged black figure, holding his banjo, representing the source of inspiration. At the composer's feet are two pages of music, labeled "Barbecue Divertimento, or Banjo Quick Step." Here can be clearly seen the westernized forms superimposed on folk traditions; the history of American popular music appears in this piece in microcosm.

This is also the first example of American sheet music to have a full lithographed title page. The artist is David Claypoole Johnson, 1799-1865, who was the first major illustrator of American music, and who became known as the "American Cruikshank" for his satiric prints. The lithograph was made by Pendleton's, the first important lithographic house in this country.

Dandy Jim from Carolina (1843)

This is also a "Spoodlyks" illustration; the signature appears on some issues of this title, but has been eradicated from others. This is another example of the black as dandy. This issue associates the song with Barney Williams, an Irish blackface performer from Cork. He later abandoned blackface, and became successful portraying Irish characters.

The Raw Recruits (1862)

This is one of the few depictions on sheet music of blacks during the Civil War. These men are shown in parodies of military costumes; the bell-shaped hats of three of the characters, in particular, are about twenty years out of date, being more appropriate to the period of the war with Mexico. The song was used in a minstrel piece presented by Dan Bryant's troupe in New York in 1862.

Note that the two characters on either end are shown as happy and pleased with their situations; they are a drummer and a standard bearer. The three characters in the middle, bearing arms, are depicted as bewildered incompetents. This is a combination of the stereotype of the black as dandy (delighting in gaudy military finery) and as plantation darky (ignorant and cowardly). It is a highly charged piece politically, given the debate during the Civil War about the use of African-Americans as soldiers.

This is an unsigned lithograph of Sarony, Major, and Knapp.

Hello Ma Baby (1899)

One of the most interesting things about sheet music is the way it can provide an immediate response to every new invention, fad, or preoccupation. The cover illustration for the still well-known "Hello Ma Baby" shows a (dandified) couple talking on a telephone of the period, with a telephone pole and overhead wires in the upper right.

This song, by the white ragtime composer Joe Howard, is still performed, although of course the dialect is removed. It might be said that it is an early comment on the effects of new technology on human relationships.

Baltimore Blues (1919)

Music by Eubie Blake; words by Noble Sissle. The song is about a Baltimore piano player named "Piano Joe"; the text may have been drawn from some of Blake's putative early experiences as a piano player in less than reputable Baltimore establishments. Blake began working with Sissle in 1915. This is another wonderful Starmer cover.