Check out a rich sampling of rare recordings by some of the nineteenth-century stars of the blackface minstrelsy scene.

Musician Dean Shostak performs American classical compositions from the antebellum era using a fiddle that actually belonged to the nineteenth-century frontiersman Davy Crockett.

Listen to one stage adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling 1852 abolitionist novel.

The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture presents this collection of field recordings collected by John and Alan Lomax during their travels through the American South in the 1930s. It's a treasure of early American music history that hints at the sounds that may have been heard on the antebellum plantations. It's a must-listen for any fan of jazz, blues, bluegrass, country, or soul.