The Buzzard Lope is a popular southern States dance dating from the 1890s, included in Minstrel Show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 repertoire, alongside the cakewalk

Cakewalk

The Cakewalk dance was developed from a "Prize Walk" done in the days of slavery, generally at get-togethers on plantations in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around"...

 and juba dance

Juba dance

The Juba dance or hambone, originally known as Pattin' Juba , is a style of dance that involves stomping as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. "Pattin' Juba" would be used to keep time for other dances during a walkaround...

. Ostensibly, it is a representation of "a turkey buzzard getting ready to eat a dead Mule (some report a Cow)", performed with a comic sensibility known as hokum

Hokum

Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos...

.

Reference is made to the dance in the penultimate line of the American blues/folk song "Johnny Brown":

Little Johnny Brown, spread your comfort down (2x),

Fold one corner, Johnny Brown,

Fold another corner, Johnny Brown (3x),

Take it to your lover, Johnny Brown (2x),

Show her your motion, Johnny Brown (2x),

Lope like a buzzard, Johnny Brown (2x),

Give it to your lover, Johnny Brown (2x)