Minstrel Theater

H.C. Miner Litho. Co.
Primrose & Dockstader's Great Minstrels, Back Again, Lew Dockstader: 'the man who makes millions laugh.'
New York: 1878
Prints & Photographs Division
Copyright deposit, 1898 (169.7)
[ Digital ID# ppmsca-05596 ]

Although minstrel theater survived into the twentieth century, its heyday can be traced from the 1840s to the 1890s. This poster advertises the minstrel team of George H. Primrose (b. 1852) and Lew Dockstader (1856B1924). In this lithograph, Dockstader appears in what had become the trademark guise of the minstrel stage: trick shoes, oversize pants and coat, tall hat, and black-face. Dockstader's success turned in part on his political monologues and his caricatures and imitations of political figures like Theodore Roosevelt. Working to keep his material updated, Dockstader injected his stage show with current local and national themes.