Minstrelsy

By: James Sellman

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Minstrelsy

Nineteenth-century American vernacular entertainment, featuring white performers mimicking blacks, that reinforced negative stereotypes of African Americans yet also preserved aspects of black humor and performance style.

During the Middle Ages, minstrels were servant-performers who entertained their patrons by playing music, singing, telling stories, juggling, or performing comic antics and buffoonery. In the antebellum United States, the term referred to comic performers, almost always white, who wore blackface makeup—generally burnt cork—and mimicked African Americans. The most popular entertainment of the nineteenth century, minstrel shows had a powerful impact on American culture; in particular, they served to “codify the public image of blacks as the prototypical Fool or Sambo,” as Mel Watkins observed in his On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor.

During the decades before the Civil War, minstrel companies found great success in Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Minstrelsy helped to create misleading and highly demeaning stereotypes of African Americans. Yet it also captured something of the distinctive qualities of African American humor and song, especially during the late nineteenth century, when a number of African American minstrel troupes appeared. Although black minstrel companies were largely trapped by the stereotypes of white minstrelsy, they nonetheless provided an important showcase for black performing talent and served as a springboard for black participation in the twentieth-century entertainment industry.

In the 1820s a number of white actors began to include brief sketches of Southern blacks as part of their acts. In Cincinnati, Edwin Forrest—who became one of America's most prominent actors—made himself up as a black man and portrayed a plantation slave on stage. During two tours of the United States, the well-known British actor and comedian Charles James Mathews collected characteristic American types that he later presented in A Trip to America, a one-man show that included a blackface rendition of what became a popular minstrel song, “Possum up a Gum Tree.”

The career of Thomas D. “Daddy” Rice marked the true beginnings of American minstrelsy. In about 1828 Rice began impersonating a black man during the intermissions in a minor drama of the period. His act featured a song and dance that became known as “Jim Crow.” Rice claimed that he based his sketch on a song and dance he had seen performed—in the words of Mel Watkins—by a “crippled and deformed black hostler or stable groom.” The chorus of the song was simple:

Wheel about an' turn about an' do jes so,
An' eb'ry time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow.

Rice dressed his “Jim Crow” character in the long blue coat and striped pants associated with another popular stereotype, the stage Yankee. Rice's sketch won him such acclaim that he quickly added additional blackface characters and music to his performances. Another African American source for Rice's minstrel act was the black street vendor and singer known as “Signor Cornmeali,” or “Old Corn Meal.” Signor Cornmeali traveled about New Orleans with horse and cart, selling cornmeal and singing such songs as “Rosin up the Bow” and his own “Fresh Corn Meal” in a rich baritone alternating with a resonant falsetto. Thomas “Daddy” Rice heard Cornmeali in 1837 and soon added a sketch titled “Corn Meal” to his minstrel act.

The notion of a minstrel troupe emerged as a response to a severe depression that began in 1837, an economic downturn that continued into the early 1840s and hit theatrical per-formers particularly hard. In 1842 four out-of-work white minstrels—Frank Brower, Dan Emmett, Frank Pelham, and Billy Whitlock—met in a New York City hotel and decided to work together as the Virginia Minstrels, the nation's first true minstrel troupe. The company concentrated exclusively on blackface comedy. From their first performance in 1843 the Virginia Minstrels were a sensation and within a year had begun a well-received tour of England. However, despite its great success, while still touring abroad the troupe broke up as a result of personal disagreements.

With the demise of the Virginia Minstrels, the Ethiopian Serenaders emerged as the nation's foremost minstrel company. In 1848 the Ethiopian Serenaders hired an African American dancer, William Henry Lane, known as “Master Juba.” Apart from Lane, Thomas Dilward was the only other African American known to have worked as a minstrel before the Civil War. Dilward was a singer and dancer, but his chief attraction lay in his diminutive height; he was reportedly about three feet tall. Lane, on the other hand, was widely recognized as a gifted dancer. English author Charles Dickens declared unequivocally that Lane was the “greatest dancer known” and in his American Notes described the black dancer in action:

“Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-out: snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels … all sorts of legs and no legs—what is this to him?”

Lane's performances, by all accounts, represented the first time many whites had seen authentic African American dance. Besides being a master of the Irish jig, Lane incorporated distinctly African American elements in his performances, including what would later be known as Tap Dancing and the hand jive. Indeed, Lane is commonly regarded as the father of tap dancing. He also utilized the dance style known as “patting juba,” in which a dancer sets complex rhythms through hand clapping, foot stomping, and striking his hands against different portions of his body. (Juba was a title or nickname commonly conferred on slaves who showed talent in music or dancing and derived from the African Gioube, an intricate step dance with many variations.) Lane first began performing professionally with white minstrels in 1845 and appeared with several companies before joining the Ethiopian Serenaders for their 1848 tour of England. At the end of this tour Lane elected to remain in England, where he died in 1852 at the age of twenty-seven.

The troupe that had the most enduring legacy and the greatest impact on the conventions of minstrel performance was Christy's Original Band of Virginia Minstrels founded in 1843 by Edwin P. Christy. In 1847 this company began a ten-year run in New York City and soon became as popular in the city as P. T. Barnum's Museum. Christy's Minstrels introduced many “Ethiopian songs” that mimicked or evoked an African American style, especially the compositions of Stephen C. Foster, including “Old Folks at Home,” “Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground,” and “My Old Kentucky Home”—the type of songs for which Foster is best remembered. Ironically, in 1851 Foster asked that his name be removed as the composer of “Old Folks at Home” because he feared that being associated with such a song might injure his reputation as a serious songwriter. But a year later he had a change of heart. Insisting on his responsibility for popularizing such music, Foster announced that he would “establish [his] name as the best Ethiopian songwriter” in the country.

In addition to popularizing many of Stephen Foster's most memorable songs, Christy's Minstrels also established minstrelsy's standard three-act format. The first act opened with a general walkabout of the costumed minstrels or with a Cakewalk—a traditional African American dance that stressed flamboyant improvisation. Then came a long routine in which the minstrels sat in a semicircle and engaged in a rapid-fire comic exchange interspersed with popular dances and love songs. The key figures in this part of the show were the interlocutor, the most proper and sophisticated character, who acted as the master of ceremonies and straight man, and two outrageously costumed endmen, who served as the focal points of mischief and mayhem. The second set, known as the olio, employed a variety show format, presenting a mix of music, dance, and novelty numbers highlighted by a farcical “stump speech.” The final act was a theatrical—originally a freewheeling plantation skit but, after the mid-1850s, typically a send-up of some serious drama—marked by broad slapstick and innumerable pratfalls. During the 1850s most other minstrel companies adopted the Christy Minstrels' program.

In performance, minstrels exuded an energy bordering on the manic, as Robert C. Toll vividly recounted in Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America:

"They burst on stage in makeup [that] gave the impression of huge eyes and gaping mouths. They dressed in ill-fitting, patchwork clothes, and spoke in heavy “nigger” dialects. Once on stage, they could not stay still for an instant. Even while sitting, they contorted their bodies, cocked their heads … and twisted their outstretched legs. … [T]heir … seemingly compulsive movements charged the entire performance with excitement."

In Black Literature in White America, Berndt Ostendorf argued that despite its reliance on demeaning caricature, minstrelsy introduced white Americans—if only indirectly—to the “influence and influx of black American culture.” Perhaps more immediately important, minstrelsy was a response to profound strains within white society.

During the 1840s and 1850s the United States received its first massive influx of European immigrants. To many native-born Anglo-Americans, these newcomers seemed frighteningly alien. At the same time American society had clearly acquired the beginnings of a working class; although the permanence of its membership was a matter of debate, it was without question growing. Profound economic dislocations accompanied America's Industrial Revolution, as seen in national depressions during the late 1830s and early 1840s and the mid- to late 1850s and in the strikes and conflicts of the early labor movement. And the ever-present and highly divisive political issue of slavery threatened to set white Americans against one another.

In an atmosphere marked by political acrimony and social tension, minstrelsy had a vital unifying function for white Americans. By constructing an image of happy-go-lucky plantation slaves and irresponsible free black dandies, minstrel shows made light of slavery and emancipation as political issues and denied the human suffering that the institution exacted daily. In addition—much like their medieval counterparts—antebellum minstrels and their absurd antics served not only to entertain, but also to reassure their patrons of their own superiority. By defining blackness so ludicrously, antebellum minstrels constructed a cultural “other” over whom all whites—whether immigrant or native-born, urban or rural, working class or well-to-do—could feel superior. Thus minstrelsy provided indirect but not inconsequential grounds for white social and political unity—at the expense of African Americans.

Although a greater number of African Americans took part in minstrelsy during the Civil War, the first influential black minstrel troupes appeared during the Reconstruction era. In 1865–1866 an African American company known as Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels toured in the Northeast, billing itself as “the Only Simon Pure Negro Troupe in the World.” From 1866 to 1872 British minstrel dancer Sam Hague toured England with a troupe of black minstrels—billed as Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels. A short time later, African American minstrel performer Charles Hicks organized yet another company of “Georgia Minstrels.” As black minstrel troupes proved their popularity and profitability, their ownership and management generally fell into the hands of whites. By the mid-1870s the most successful black minstrel troupes were all owned by whites.

These prestigious companies toured throughout the United States and in Canada, the British Isles, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Java. They typically featured large casts and played in prominent venues and major cities, often traveling in their own railroad cars. Although there were a number of less prestigious black-owned minstrel troupes, these were generally smaller and less likely to travel in such comfort. Black-owned companies tended to appear in less desirable venues and in the smaller towns and cities of America's hinterland. Notable black-owned troupes included Johnson's Plantation Minstrels, which also appeared as the Black Baby Boy Minstrels or as Lew Johnson's Original Tennessee Jubilee Singers, and companies organized by prominent black minstrels such as Billy Kersands, Bob Height, and James Bland. Below these professional troupes were many amateur minstrels.

Minstrelsy provided invaluable experience for countless African American composers, comedians, and musicians. W. C. Handy, who later gained fame as the composer of “St. Louis Blues,” worked for many years as a cornet player and bandleader with Mahara's Minstrels. James Bland—best remembered for composing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” and “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers”—was a particularly prolific minstrel composer. The talented African American minstrel and dramatic actor Sam Lucas also composed numerous minstrel songs, of which “Grandfather's Clock” remains the best known.

Numerous twentieth-century black performers also had experience with minstrelsy. Vaudeville comedians Bert Williams and Ernest Hogan got their start by serving as endmen in minstrel troupes. Blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was a featured performer with the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, a company that also included a young dancer who would one day be recognized as the greatest of all female blues singers, Bessie Smith. New Orleans Jazz musicians such as pianist Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and trumpeter Bunk Johnson did stints playing in minstrel companies. And modern jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie made his first public performance in 1929 playing in the pit band for a minstrel show put on by his elementary school.

Although black performers found opportunities in minstrelsy, they also found themselves trapped by its restrictive racial conventions. However, as author Mel Watkins cautioned, if African Americans adopted “many of the epithets and referents of minstrel humor, they did not necessarily accept [its] general racist connotations.” In On with the Show: The First Century of Show Business in America, Robert C. Toll noted that “most early black minstrels did not wear burnt cork, although the endmen used blackface as a comic mask.” In a sense, blackface was like the exaggerated facial makeup of the circus clown—with the obvious difference that minstrelsy created a comic mask that ridiculed an entire race.

During the late nineteenth century, as racial hostilities sharpened throughout the United States, white audiences came to expect that all minstrels, black as well as white, should appear in blackface, and the practice became general among black troupes. Although some black performers may have resisted using blackface, the great African American dancer and comedian Bert Williams found it liberated him as a comedian. Recalling his first experience in blackface, Williams said, “Then I began to find myself. It was not until I was able to see myself as another person that my sense of humor developed.”

By the turn of the century, professional minstrelsy was in decline. Vaudeville—its generally accepted advent being B. F. Keith's opening of the nation's first vaudeville theater in Boston in 1882—gradually supplanted minstrel shows as America's foremost entertainment. George M. Cohan and Sam Harris's Minstrels, the last full-fledged minstrel company to appear on Broadway, had brief runs in 1908 and 1909. Minstrelsy, however, did not simply disappear. Even today its legacy remains extensive and complex. Long after vaudeville became the principal popular entertainment in major cities of the Northeast, minstrel companies continued to tour the small towns of that region and widely through the South and Midwest. Amateur minstrel performances, black as well as white, continued well into the twentieth century.

Many have criticized minstrelsy for its demeaning stereotypes and its nostalgia for plantation slavery. But the minstrel legacy was not wholly negative. Minstrelsy had a powerful impact on vaudeville. Many early vaudeville performers had their first professional experience in minstrel companies. The routines of many black vaudeville comedians—including Stepin Fetchit, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham, Mantan Moreland, and Bert Williams—clearly reflected the influence of minstrelsy.

Minstrelsy helped transform American humor and, to a lesser extent, African American popular music. Minstrels' energy and verbal inventiveness—including fast-paced repartee, puns, double entendres, and assorted malapropisms—had a major impact on an emerging American comic tradition, as can be seen not only in such vaudeville comedians as Williams and Mabley but also in literature, above all in the humor of Mark Twain. Evan Esar's The Comic Encyclopedia observed that minstrelsy's endmen, the most popular minstrel characters, were “chiefly responsible for turning riddle wit in America into gags.” During the twentieth century their comic legacy would help shape not just vaudeville but also American musical theater, motion pictures, Radio, and Television.

The musical legacy of minstrelsy is less obvious, but also important. Admittedly, the songs of black minstrels—no less than those of their white counterparts—perpetuated extreme stereotypes of African Americans. Minstrel song lyrics featured degrading heavy dialects, and they tended to invoke a warm nostalgia for the bygone days of plantation slavery. But the key musical contribution of black minstrels lay not as much in their compositions as in their overall performance style. Like the dancing of William Henry Lane, the musical performances of black minstrels introduced a measure of authentic African American culture to a wider audience.

Black minstrel companies often featured renditions, in harmony, of Spirituals, jubilee songs, and sentimental ballads. The singing of such professional entertainers—along with performances by college-trained choirs, such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers—had a profound influence on subsequent vocal harmony groups, evident in secular singing no less than in Gospel Quartets. Professional minstrels and college choral groups offered slick versions of African American music, but they nonetheless provided an eye-opening experience for white audiences, and they inspired countless young African American singers and performers. At age fifteen W. C. Handy played his first amateur minstrel show in Florence, Alabama—his hometown—as first tenor in a vocal quartet. In his autobiography, Father of the Blues, Handy recalled how professional minstrels served as models for his own group of amateurs:

"We had seen the famous Georgia Minstrels in Florence. … We were all acquainted with Billy Kersands, the man who could “make a mule laugh.” … We had seen Sam Lucas and Tom McIntosh walking at the head of the parade in high silk hats and long-tailed coats. We had an idea of how the thing should be done, but I suppose our trouble was lack of experience."

The passage of more than fifty years had not dimmed Handy's awareness of the importance of black minstrelsy. “All the best black talent,” he recalled, “the composers, the singers, the musicians, the speakers, the stage performers—the Minstrel Show got them all.”

See also Labor Unions in the United States.

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