The pickaninny image gave Negro child actors the possibility to get a place in the pantheon of cinema. In general the pickaninny .
was a harmless, little screwball creation whose eyes popped, whose hair stood on end with the last excitement, and whose antics were pleasant and diverting. .
In Edison`s peep shows, The Pickaninnies Doing a Dance (1894), and Ten Pickaninnies (1904), forerunners of the later famous silent Our Gang shorts, .
a group of nameless Negro children romped and ran about while being referred to as snowballs, cherubs, coons, bad children, inky kids, smoky kids, black lambs, and chubbie ebonies. .
In all versions of Harriet Beecher Stowe`s novel Uncle Tom`s Cabin Topsy, the little slave child, was shown as a funny and droll pickaninny, who soon became one of the audience`s favorites, used for the dramatic story's comic relief. After the pickaninny image was introduced, the pure coons, described in catalogues as "'chicken thieves', 'crapshooters', and 'darkies' of the 'Old Virginny' type", appeared on the screen. One of the first films presenting the coon type was Minstrels Battling in a Room, where a white man, who stands in contrast to the dark make up of the blackface minstrels, is beaten by them with a bottle. The following comic pieces, all familiar through minestrelsy and vaudeville, ranged from the blackface Sambo and Aunt Jemina: Comedians (ca.1897) to the real apppearances of Afro-Americans in Chicken Thieves, who "pleaded authenticity because 'all coons like chicken'" , and the pre-1900 movies Interrupted Crap Game, .
"a story of 'darkies' who neglect their game to pursue a chicken" , A Night in Blackville, "hot stuff" about two coons who go out with their prettiest "babies", and Prize Fight in Coon Town, showing "two bad coons".
