Definitions for "Minstrel show"
A variety act of song, dance, comedy, and theater popular in the 19th century and performed largely by white actors in blackface.
Starting early in the nineteenth century, white men with burnt cork smeared on their faces to make them look black performed song, dance and comedy routines loosely based on plantation life. Although most of the minstrel's songs and skits make fun o the slaves, they did spread a version of black music to a white audience that had previously been completely ignorant of it
a troupe of performers in blackface typically giving a comic program of negro songs and jokes