[Parsons & Pool]:

$1,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

PARSONS & POOL'S FAMOUS IDEAL UNCLE TOM'S CABIN COMPANY. Rare broadside advertising the Parsons & Pool's "Famous Ideal UNCLE TOM'S CABIN Company," with a woodcut depicting a scene from the story, with a seated Tom holding a book and speaking to Eva. He is sitting near a fence with an open gate, with his cabin home in the background. Although Harriet Beecher Stowe never officially sanctioned a stage interpretation of her novel, theatrical versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin were wildly popular with American audiences during the entire second half of the 19th century and into the early 1900s. These "Tom Shows" existed in scores of different iterations, from moralizing melodramas to blackface burlesques, and were a staple of the traveling show circuit. Although not mentioned on this broadside, Parsons & Pool's Uncle Tom's Cabin performances usually featured the Tennessee Jubilee Singers as well. The Jubilee Singers began as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African-American a cappella ensemble composed of students from Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville. The student group disbanded in 1878 and then reorganized as the Tennessee Jubilee Singers, a joint-stock touring group, in 1879, but retained their reputation as a refined group of performers, preserving and promoting African-American culture throughout the country.Parsons & Pool's productions were certainly among the moralizing melodramas. In one promotional pamphlet, the producers write that their presentations

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