Topdog/Underdog (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

As the American Civil War was drawing to a close, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended a performance of Our American Cousin, a musical comedy, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. While Lincoln sat in his box seat in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and rebel sympathizer from Maryland, sneaked into the president's box and fired one shot at point-blank range from his Deringer, shouting, "Sic simper tyrannis !" ("Thus always to tyrants"). Some reports have Booth adding, "The South is avenged!" Booth leaped to the stage below, limping to an exit and escaping on his horse. Lincoln lay mortally wounded and was carried across the street, where he entered a coma until he died the next morning, on April 15, 1865. Booth received medical attention while on the run, but was fatally shot when he was discovered hiding in a Virginia barn.

Blackface

Blackface minstrelsy was among the most popular forms of live entertainment in America during the years preceding the Civil War. Minstrel shows featured white entertainers who wore blackface to imitate the mannerisms and speech of Southern slaves or slaves who had been freed in the North. Many minstrel routines included singing and dancing that bordered on caricature. The entertainer Al Jolson brought this tradition to the silver screen in the film entitled The Jazz Singer, which was the first motion picture to feature sound. In Topdog/Underdog, Parks stands the blackface tradition on its head by having Lincoln, a black man, apply whiteface to imitate the very man who was responsible for freeing blacks from slavery.