Sam Lucas

Sam Lucas (August 7, 1848 – January 5, 1916) was an African American actor, comedian, singer, and songwriter. Sam Lucas's exact date of birth is disputed. Lucas's year of birth, to freed former slaves, has also been cited as 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1850.

His career began in blackface minstrelsy, but he later became one of the first African Americans to branch out into more serious drama, with roles in seminal works such as The Creole Show and A Trip to Coontown. He was the first black man to portray the role of Uncle Tom on both stage and screen. James Weldon Johnson described him as the "Grand Old Man of the Negro Stage".

Lucas was born Samuel Mildmay Lucas (or Samuel Lucas Milady) in Washington Court House, Ohio to free black parents. He showed a talent for guitar and singing as a teenager, and while working as a barber, his local performances gained him a positive reputation.

In 1858 he began his career as a performer with the traveling African-American minstrel companies. Over the next five years, he sang and acted on stage and on riverboats, and composed music for his shows. Meanwhile, he found ways to integrate his African-American roots into the mostly white form; for instance, his tune "Carve Dat Possum" borrowed its melody from a black religious song. As black minstrelsy grew popular with the general public, Lucas became one of its first celebrities, particularly known for his portrayals of pitiable, comic characters.

His fame allowed him to choose his engagements, and over the span of his career, he performed with some of the best black minstrel troupes. He never led a troupe of his own, however. Throughout his life, Lucas performed with many minstrel groups including Lew Johnson's Plantation Minstrels (1871–73), Callender’s Georgia Minstrels (1873–74, 1875–76), and Sprague’s Georgia Minstrels (1878–79) in Havana, Cuba. After his time as a minstrel performer, Lucas began to perform in vaudeville.

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