Challenge dancing in antebellum America: Sporting men, vulgarwomen, and blacked-up boys

Between the 1840s and 1860s, jig-dancing contests were held in dockside taverns, markets, and streets across America between blacks and whites of both sexes. Such competitions also captivated audiences in circuses and theaters as part of white and blackface productions. Jig dances, no less than boxing matches, could be scored and promoted to attract huge crowds. This article traces the processes by which market forces, reform movements, and sectionalism turned this dynamic and inclusive social practice into a racially segregated all-male sport and business. While scholars generally regard challenge dancing as a form of blackface minstrelsy and an early example of the appropriation of African-American culture by whites, this view skews our understanding of the variety of personal interchanges that shaped nineteenth-century culture. Challenge dancing is one realm in which the mixing of working-class blacks and whites was well documented. But as theater managers and minstrel troupes turned challenge dancing into fashionable entertainment, a moral backlash swept female competitors off the floor, isolated black contenders, and equated male dancers with gamblers. This social transformation and the changing relationships of performers, audiences, and entrepreneurs are obscured when challenge dancing is overlooked or viewed solely as a form of minstrelsy. As a historical subject, challenge dancing highlights the way popular cultural forms flourish and fade in the face of changing social, economic, and political relations.