History of Double Dutch (text)
History of Double Dutch, New York Amsterdam News (1962-). June 6, 1981 ProQuest page 57.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, show your shoe. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, how old are you?
Little girls from big cities, rural towns, and as far away as Japan echo this “Teddy Bear” singsong rhythmic chant, as they play a single jumprope or Double Dutch. It’s the most popular jumprope theme in the world., transcending national religious and ethnic boundaries. The above “Teddy Bear” chant is popular in New York City. But there are 20 ways to sing this theme when jumping single or Double Dutch.
Double Dutch is a skip rope activity in which two ropes are turned in in eggbeater fashion by two rope turners while a third person jumps within the moving ropes. It is historically a game played by girls. Although there is no written history of the game, it probably goes back many centuries to when the Dutch settler came to America and brought Double Dutch to the Hudson River trading town of New Amsterdam. Double Dutch, it is believed, got its name when the English arrived in this country and saw children playing there too rope game. Double Dutch was an English slang term, meaning anything “unintelligible” or confusing.
More recently, Double Dutch grew, primarily in cities as a game for little girls. It became a favorite pastime to sing rhymes while turning and jumping. After World War II, the game was often played on New York city sidewalks in front of tenements where children could be safely watched by mothers and neighbors. The game didn’t require lots of equipment; a piece of old clothesline was all that was needed.
By the late 1950s, the radio music boom, the dangerous of sidewalk play, and the lack of recreational areas close to apartment buildings have greatly diminished the game’s popularity.
“Double Dutch was a good sport for girls and we could not let it die,” says Detective David Walker and his partner, Mike Williams of the New York City Police Community Affairs Department. They were looking for a sports activity that would appeal to girls and found it on New York City’s streets. Together the detectives wrote a rule book for Double Dutch and organized the first Double Dutch tournament held in New York City in 1975. The first year, only about 350 girls participated. Today, there are more than 50,000 contestants coming from different parts of the country to compete. “The objective of Double Dutch,” says Detective Walker is to encourage organized participation in the activity by as many girls and boys as possible."
Image description: Two girls swing a jumprope while a third jumps. A crowd of people stands in the background, framed by high rise apartments.
Caption: Stepping lovely, Diane Hayes of Seward Park High School flashes the form that gained her team a third place finish in the 1980 World Invitational Double Dutch Tournament held in New York’s Lincoln Center Plaza last year. Turning the ropes to the left is Marlene Cruz, also of Seward Park and to the right, Sophie Colon of Norman Thomas High School. World Double Dutch tourney is set for June 13 at the Lincoln Center Plaza. The McDonald’s corporation is sponsoring a team " McDonald’s Dynamos" “hat includes Zenobia White (13) Kenyette Saunders (13), Theresa Christ (13) and Lisa Monro (13).
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