Coal Black Rose

The man dressed as an overweight and overdressed black woman, who was found unattractive and masculine-looking.

[1] The song was first performed in the United States in the late 1820s, possibly by George Washington Dixon.

[2] During the height of its popularity, the general assumption was that Dixon's performances of "Coal Black Rose" in 1829 were the birth of blackface minstrelsy.

[5][6] This was a common trope in early minstrel music,[7] and it proved a good source for dramatic farce.

[3] Thomas D. Rice did other dramatitizations under the titles Long-Island Juba; or, Love in a Bushel and Oh Hush!