Jump Jim Crow - Variants

Variants

Rice routinely wrote additional verses for "Jump Jim Crow". Published versions from the period run as long as 66 verses, ranging from more boastful doggerel like the original version, to an endorsement of President Andrew Jackson (known as "Old Hickory"); his Whig opponent in the 1832 election was Henry Clay:

Old hick'ry never mind de boys

But hold up your head;

For people never turn to clay

'Till arter dey be dead.

Other verses, also from 1832, demonstrate anti-slavery sentiments and cross-racial solidarity that were rarely found in later blackface minstrelsy:

Should dey get to fighting,

Perhaps de blacks will rise,

For deir wish for freedon,

Is shining in deir eyes.

And if de blacks should get free,

I guess dey'll see some bigger,

An I shall consider it,

A bold stroke for de nigger.

I'm for freedom,

An for Union altogether,

Although I'm a black man,

De white is call'd my broder.