Sam Lucas was an American actor, comedian, singer, and songwriter. His year of birth, to freed former slaves, is disputed, and has been cited, in addition to 1848, as 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1850.
Lucas' 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". Despite his beginnings in minstrelsy, he was vocal about liberating himself from the minstrel profession, and was the only composer of spirituals of his time to present them consistently within the context of jubilee concerts.
