Stump speech (minstrelsy)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The stump speech was a comic monologue from blackface minstrelsy (which is an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface). A typical stump speech consisted of malapropisms (the substitution of a word for a word with a similar sound), nonsense sentences, and puns delivered in a parodied version of Black Vernacular English. The stump speaker wore blackface makeup and moved about like a clown. Topics varied from pure nonsense to parodies of politics, science, and social issues. Although both the topic itself and the black character's inability to comprehend it served as sources of comedy, minstrels used such speeches to deliver social commentary that might be considered taboo in another setting. The stump speech was an important precursor to modern stand-up comedy.
