Actors - George Washington Dixon

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	Actors - George Washington Dixon

George Washington Dixon (1801?–2 March 1861) was an American singer, stage actor, and newspaper editor. He rose to prominence as a blackface performer (possibly the first American to do so) after performing "Coal Black Rose", "Zip Coon", and similar songs. He later turned to a career in journalism, during which he earned the enmity of members of the upper class for his frequent allegations against them.

At age 15, Dixon joined the circus, where he quickly established himself as a singer. In 1829, he began performing "Coal Black Rose" in blackface; this and similar songs would propel him to stardom. In contrast to his contemporary Thomas D. Rice, Dixon was primarily a singer rather than a dancer. He was by all accounts a gifted vocalist, and much of his material was quite challenging. "Zip Coon" became his trademark song.

By 1835, Dixon considered journalism to be his primary vocation. His first major paper was Dixon's Daily Review, which he published from Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1835. He followed this in 1836 with Dixon's Saturday Night Express, published in Boston. By this point, he had taken to using his paper to expose what he considered the misdeeds of the upper classes. These stories earned him many enemies, and Dixon was taken to court on several occasions. His most successful paper was the Polyanthos, which he began publishing in 1838 from New York City. Under its masthead, he challenged some of his greatest adversaries, including Thomas S. Hamblin, Reverend Francis L. Hawks, and Madame Restell. After a brief foray into hypnotism, "pedestrianism" (long-distance walking), and other pursuits, he retired to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Dixon in blackface

Details about Dixon's childhood are scarce. The record suggests that he was born in Richmond, Virginia, probably in 1801. His parents were working-class folk, perhaps a barber and a washerwoman. He may have been educated at a charity school.

Fairly detailed descriptions and portraits of Dixon survive; he had a swarthy complexion and a "splendid head of hair". However, the question of whether he was white or black is an open one. His enemies sometimes called him a "mulatto", a "Negro", or referred to him as "Zip Coon", the name of the black character in one of his songs. However, the weight of evidence suggests that if Dixon did have black ancestry, it must have been fairly remote.

A newspaper story from 1841 claims that at age 15, Dixon's singing caught the attention of a circus proprietor named West. The man convinced Dixon to join his traveling circus as a stablehand and errand boy. Dixon traveled with this and other circuses for a time, and he appears as a singer and reciter of poems on bills dated from as early as February 1824. By early 1829, he had taken on the epithet "The American Buffo Singer".

Over three days in late July 1829, Dixon performed "Coal Black Rose" in blackface at the Bowery, Chatham Garden, and Park theatres in New York City. The Flash characterized his audience as "crowded galleries and scantily filled boxes"; that is, mostly working-class. On 24 September at the Bowery, Dixon performed Love in a Cloud, a dramatic interpretation of the events described in "Coal Black Rose" and possibly the first blackface farce.

In 1833, he started a small newspaper called the Stonington Cannon. However, the publication saw little success, and by January 1834, he was performing again, now with new talents, such as ventriloquism. Dixon seemed untarnished by his yearlong hiatus. Reviews said that "his voice seems formed of the music itself— 'it thrills, it animates' . . . ." The Telegraph wrote,

In March, Dixon performed "Zip Coon" for the first time. The song, a racist tale about a black "dandy" trying to fit into Northern white society, quickly became an audience favorite and Dixon's trademark tune. He later claimed to have written the song, although others performed it before him, so this seems unlikely. and championed the Whig Party, Radical Republicanism, and the working class. Dixon's Daily Review also explored morality and women's place in the rapidly changing society of the urban North.

Dixon's criticism of his colleagues did not win him any friends, and in June, the Boston Post reported that he had "flogged one of the editors of the Lowell Castigator, and was hunting after the other." By the next month, Dixon had sold his paper, and the new publishers were eager to point out that Dixon no longer had anything to do with its production. By August, rumors were circulating that Dixon had started up another paper called the News Letter and was selling it in Lowell and Boston. If he did, no copies are known to have survived.

By February 1836, Dixon was touring again. He played many well-attended shows in Boston that month and did a play at the Tremont Theatre. His recent forays into publishing had soured his image in the popular press, however, and The New York Times satirized his lower-class audience:

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