wysi susan -- I appreciate you plenty! Can't believe that little aside slipped by without a response.

I'm interested in the ancient world (Greece/Rome) where slaves in comedies are often portrayed as much cleverer than their masters -- sometimes scheming and calculating, and more rarely bumbling dummies. Often the masters are the fools, the blind egotists or misers or whatever. You can see some of the ancient stereotypes in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" -- which is basically a 3,000-year-old script with a few updates.

It's interesting that blackface basically moved from north (where there weren't as many slaves) to the south, and that ancient writers and audiences, but not 19th century shows as a rule, acknowledged that the slaves were often more competent than their "owners".

My grandfather was a folksinger who taught my mother (1911-1987) & aunt (1913-1997) to sing harmony, and a couple of the songs he taught them had terms like "Alabammy coon" and "all the other black trash". I actually have a period book of sheet music of that ilk. My mother sang us these as lullabies but also taught us never to sing them out loud in public -- she was a very active Civil Rights worker in the 60s.