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97-422: Kersands began performing with traveling minstrel troupes in the early 1860s. As black minstrelsy gained popularity, Kersands became its biggest star. In 1879, he earned about $ 15 a week, but by 1882, he was reportedly earning $ 80, only slightly less than a featured white minstrel. He was known to have earned $ 250 a week during European Minstrel Tours. He was a hit with both white and black audiences, particularly in

194-536: A Mardi Gras parade in 1886. Kersands offered $ 1000 to any rival who could outmarch them. He also continued to play engagements with other companies, including Richard and Pringle's Georgia Minstrels in 1890 as one of "The Vestibule Car Porters and Drum Majors". In 1904, Kersands performed in an urban, black-produced show in the East. He only stayed for a short time, instead preferring the blackface minstrelsy he knew best. He formed another troupe and took up touring primarily in

291-525: A grey parrot , understood questions about color, shape, size, number etc. of objects and would provide a one-word answer to them. He is also documented to have asked an existential question. Another grey parrot, N'kisi , could use 950 words in proper context, was able to form sentences and even understood the concept of grammatical tense . Researchers have attempted to teach great apes ( chimpanzees , gorillas and orangutans ) spoken language with poor results as they can only be taught how to say one or

388-406: A balloon and wait for the world to rotate below. Highly musical and unable to sit still, they constantly contorted their bodies wildly while singing. Tambo and Bones's simple-mindedness and lack of sophistication were highlighted by pairing them with a straight man master of ceremonies called the interlocutor . This character, although usually in blackface, spoke in aristocratic English and used

485-711: A common target for male characters, although she usually proved capricious and elusive. After the Civil War, the wench emerged as the most important specialist role in the minstrel troupe; men could alternately be titillated and disgusted, while women could admire the illusion and high fashion. The role was most strongly associated with the song " Miss Lucy Long ", so the character many times bore that name. Actress Olive Logan commented that some actors were "marvelously well fitted by nature for it, having well-defined soprano voices, plump shoulders, beardless faces, and tiny hands and feet." Many of these actors were teen-aged boys. In contrast

582-688: A concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre , calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels . The minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment was born. The show had little structure. The four sat in a semicircle, played songs, and traded wisecracks. One gave a stump speech in dialect, and they ended with a lively plantation song. The term minstrel had previously been reserved for traveling white singing groups, but Emmett and company made it synonymous with blackface performance, and by using it, signalled that they were reaching out to

679-603: A cruel and inhuman institution. However, in the 1850s, minstrelsy became more pro-slavery as political and satirical content was toned down or removed entirely. Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.) The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and largely white in origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful. Figures like

776-440: A difficult profession. When playing Southern towns, performers had to stay in character off stage, dressed in ragged "slave clothes" and perpetually smiling. Troupes left town quickly after each performance, and some had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired whole trains or had custom sleeping cars built, complete with hidden compartments to hide in should things turn ugly. Even these were no haven, as whites sometimes used

873-707: A drunken black man in a 1769 staging of The Padlock . Later research by Cockrell and others disputes this claim. Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr'actes in New York City theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface " Sambo " character came to supplant the "tall-tale-telling Yankee " and "frontiersman" character-types in popularity, and white actors such as Charles Mathews , George Washington Dixon , and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. Author Constance Rourke even claimed that Forrest's impression

970-412: A few basic or limited words or phrases or less, and sign language with significantly better results as they can be very creative with various signs like those of deaf people . In this regard, there are now numerous studies and an extensive bibliography. An owner hears a dog making a sound that resembles a phrase says the phrase back to the dog, who then repeats the sound and is rewarded with

1067-420: A good example. The song exists in three texts, two published 1875 and one in 1880, suggesting that Kersands made up verses as he sang. All three versions begin in a church, a locale that white minstrels tended to avoid. The 1875 texts describe charismatic black worship practices, but the 1880 edition begins with a black character fleeing a white church because they "prayed so long". Verses from the song soon entered

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1164-417: A graver ill than the treatment of black slaves—or by a less class-conscious rhetoric of "productive" versus "unproductive" elements of society. On the other hand, views on slavery were fairly evenly presented in minstrelsy, and some songs even suggested the creation of a coalition of working blacks and whites to end the institution. Among the appeals and racial stereotypes of early blackface performance were

1261-414: A mere three troupes dominated the scene. A key cause was rising salary costs, which for the leading companies had risen from $ 400 a week in the 1860s to $ 2500 a week in 1912, far too high to be profitable in most cases, especially with the rise of motion pictures, which could easily outcompete the touring minstrel shows on ticket prices. Small companies and amateurs carried the traditional minstrel show into

1358-426: A much larger vocabulary. The humor of these exchanges came from the misunderstandings on the part of the endmen when talking to the interlocutor: Tambo and Bones were favorites of the audience, and their repartee with the interlocutor was for many the best part of the show. There was an element of laughing with them for the audience, as they frequently made light of the interlocutor's grandiose ways. The interlocutor

1455-588: A new, middle-class audience. The Herald wrote that the production was "entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features, which have hitherto characterized Negro extravaganzas." In 1845, the Ethiopian Serenaders purged their show of low humor and surpassed the Virginia Minstrels in popularity. Shortly thereafter, Edwin Pearce Christy founded Christy's Minstrels , combining

1552-401: A pattern that had been pioneered by Rice, minstrelsy united workers and "class superiors" against a common black enemy, symbolized especially by the character of the black dandy. In this same period, the class-conscious but racially inclusive rhetoric of " wage slavery " was largely supplanted by a racist one of "white slavery". This suggested that the abuses against northern factory workers were

1649-534: A repertoire drawing heavily on Shakespeare. A rival theater company paid people to "riot" and cause disturbances at the theater, and it was shut down by the police when neighbors complained of the commotion. White, working-class Northerners could identify with the characters portrayed in early blackface performances. This coincided with the rise of groups struggling for workingman's nativism and pro-Southern causes, and faux black performances came to confirm pre-existing racist concepts and to establish new ones. Following

1746-474: A send-up of a popular play. Minstrel songs and sketches featured several stock characters, most popularly the slave and the dandy. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy , her counterpart the old darky , the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically black, although the extent of the genuine black influence remains debated. Spirituals (known as jubilees ) entered

1843-498: A small part of the repertoire. This effect was amplified as minstrelsy featuring black performers took off in its own right and stressed its connection to the old plantations. The main target of criticism was the moral decay of the urbanized North. Cities were painted as corrupt, as homes to unjust poverty, and as dens of "city slickers" who lay in wait to prey upon new arrivals. Minstrels stressed traditional family life; stories told of reunification between mothers and sons thought dead in

1940-514: A stir in variety shows, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels ran with the idea, first performing in 1870 in skimpy costumes and tights, the scantily clad women being the real attraction. Their success gave rise to at least 11 all-female troupes by 1871, one of which did away with blackface altogether. Ultimately, the girlie show emerged as a form in its own right. Mainstream minstrelsy continued to emphasize its propriety and "fun without vulgarity", but traditional troupes adopted some of these elements in

2037-576: A treat. Eventually the dog learns a modified version of the original sound. Dogs have limited vocal imitation skills, so these sounds usually need to be shaped by selective attention and social reward. Great apes mimicking human speech is rare although some of them have attempted to do so by often watching and mimicking the gestures, and voices from their human trainers. Apparently, human voice control in non-human great apes could derive from an evolutionary ancestor with similar voice control capacities. These include chimpanzees and orangutans. Some of

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2134-516: A woman with "lips so large a lover could not kiss them all at once". They had huge feet and preferred "possum" and "coon" to more civilized fare. Minstrel characters were often described in animalistic terms, with "wool" instead of hair, "bleating" like sheep, and having "darky cubs" instead of children. Other claims were that blacks had to drink ink when they got sick "to restore their color" and that they had to file their hair rather than cut it. They were inherently musical, dancing and frolicking through

2231-552: The defining characteristics , e.g. grammar , syntax , recursion , and displacement . Researchers have been successful in teaching some animals to make gestures similar to sign language , although whether this should be considered a language has been disputed. The term refers to animals who can imitate (though not necessarily understand) human speech. Parrots , for example, repeat phrases of human speech through exposure. There were parrots that learnt to use words in proper context and had meaningful dialogues with humans. Alex ,

2328-529: The endmen or cornermen . The interlocutor acted as a master of ceremonies and as a dignified, if pompous, straight man. He had a somewhat aristocratic demeanor, a "codfish aristocrat", while the endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs. Over time, the first act came to include maudlin numbers not always in dialect. One minstrel, usually a tenor , came to specialize in this part; such singers often became celebrities, especially with women. Initially, an upbeat plantation song and dance ended

2425-497: The 1820s, blackface performers called themselves "Ethiopian delineators"; from then into the early 1840s, unlike the later heyday of minstrelsy, they performed either solo or in small teams. Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York's less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway , the Bowery , and Chatham Street . It also appeared on more respectable stages, most often as an entr'acte . Upper class houses at first limited

2522-564: The 20th century the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former popularity, having been replaced for the most part by the Vaudeville style of theatre. The form survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur performances continued until the 1960s in high schools and local theaters. The genre has had a lasting legacy and influence and was featured in the British television series The Black and White Minstrel Show as recently as

2619-471: The 20th century, now with an audience mostly in the rural South, while black-owned troupes continued traveling to more outlying areas like the West. These black troupes were one of minstrelsy's last bastions, as more white actors moved into vaudeville. (Community amateur blackface minstrel shows persisted in northern New York State into the 1960s. The University of Vermont banned the minstrel-like Kake Walk as part of

2716-484: The African American tradition and appeared in later collections of folklore. Other songs Kersands performed featured African American elements like talking animals and weak-versus-strong match-ups. His popularity led many theatre owners to relax rules limiting black patrons to specific sections of the playhouse. Despite weighing over 200 pounds, Kersands was also a talented dancer and acrobat . His trademark dance

2813-435: The Civil War and merged qualities of the slave and the dandy. He was acknowledged for playing some role in the war, but he was more frequently lampooned for bumbling through his drills or for thinking his uniform made him the equal of his white counterparts. He was usually better at retreating than fighting, and, like the dandy, he preferred partying to serious pursuits. Still, his introduction allowed for some return to themes of

2910-1272: The Civil War. New entertainments such as variety shows, musical comedies and vaudeville appeared in the North, backed by master promoters like P. T. Barnum who wooed audiences away. Blackface troupes responded by traveling farther and farther afield, with their primary base now in the South and Midwest. By 1883 there were no resident minstrel troupes in New York, only performances by travelling troupes. Those minstrels who stayed in New York and similar cities followed Barnum's lead by advertising relentlessly and emphasizing spectacle. Troupes ballooned; as many as 19 performers could be on stage at once, and J. H. Haverly 's United Mastodon Minstrels had over 100 members. Scenery grew lavish and expensive, and specialty acts such as strongmen, acrobats, or circus freaks sometimes appeared. These changes made minstrelsy unprofitable for smaller troupes. Minstrel troupes, which previously had tended to be owned by performers, now tended to be owned by professional managers such as Haverly. Other minstrel troupes tried to satisfy different, less socially acceptable tastes. Female acts had made

3007-560: The Ethiopian Opera House and the like. Many amateur troupes performed only a few local shows before disbanding. Meanwhile, celebrities like Emmett continued to perform solo. The rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement. Many Northerners were concerned for the oppressed blacks of the South, but most had no idea how these slaves lived day-to-day. Blackface performance had been inconsistent on this subject; some slaves were happy, others victims of

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3104-499: The Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that blacks did not belong, nor did they want to belong, in Northern society. Adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin sprang up rapidly after its publication (all were unlicensed by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who refused to sell the theatrical rights for any sum). While all incorporated some elements of minstrelsy, their content varied significantly, from serious productions retaining

3201-636: The South. Kersands answered the inevitable question of why he had not made the move to vaudeville thus: "All of my money came from the people of the South, the white and the colored, while playing down there. Whether they meant it or not, the way I was treated by them, and still am, I feel at home. I also make a good living with no worries." Kersands's comedy act centered on his enormous mouth , which he exuberantly contorted into countless shapes. He peppered his songs with these movements and their accompanying noises. One observer remarked, "The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth

3298-472: The Southern United States. Tom Fletcher wrote that "In the South, a minstrel show without Billy Kersands is like a circus without elephants." Over his career, Kersands played with many of the major black minstrel troupes. He was a member of Sam Hague 's Georgia Minstrels, along with Charles Hicks and Bob Height . When the company returned from an English tour in 1872, Charles Callender purchased

3395-578: The act; later it was more common for the first act to end with a walkaround , including dances in the style of a cakewalk . The second portion of the show, called the olio , was historically the last to evolve, as its real purpose was to allow for the setting of the stage for act three behind the curtain. It had more of a variety show structure. Performers danced, played instruments, did acrobatics, and demonstrated other amusing talents. Troupes offered parodies of European-style entertainments, and European troupes themselves sometimes performed. The highlight

3492-525: The audience, although the focus was usually on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' inability to make sense of them. Many troupes employed a stump specialist with a trademark style and material. The afterpiece rounded out the production. In the early days of the minstrel show, this was often a skit set on a Southern plantation that usually included song-and-dance numbers and featured Sambo- and Mammy-type characters in slapstick situations. The emphasis lay on an idealized plantation life and

3589-455: The banjo. The New Orleans Picayune wrote that a singing New Orleans street vendor called Old Corn Meal would bring "a fortune to any man who would start on a professional tour with him". Rice responded by adding a "Corn Meal" skit to his act. Meanwhile, there had been several attempts at legitimate black stage performance, the most ambitious probably being New York's African Grove theater, founded and operated by free blacks in 1821, with

3686-416: The book's antislavery message like that of George Aiken 's, to minstrel show parodies which generally excised characters such as the cruel master Simon Legree, retaining only the "plantation frolics", differing from earlier minstrel shows only in name, to outright condemnation of Stowe as uninterested in the suffering of the white working class. " Tom shows " continued into the 20th century, continuing to blend

3783-414: The breakup of the plantation family. Talking animal A talking animal or speaking animal is any non-human animal that can produce sounds or gestures resembling those of a human language . Several species or groups of animals have developed forms of communication which superficially resemble verbal language, however, these usually are not considered a language because they lack one or more of

3880-411: The cars for target practice. Their salaries, though higher than those of most blacks of the period, failed to reach levels earned by white performers; even superstars like Kersands earned slightly less than featured white minstrels. Most black troupes did not last long. In content, early black minstrelsy differed little from its white counterpart. As the white troupes drifted from plantation subjects in

3977-473: The character of Othello being traditionally played by an actor in black makeup, the minstrel show as such has later origins. By the late 18th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as "servant" types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief. Lewis Hallam is frequently cited as the first actor to perform in blackface based on an impression he did of

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4074-519: The cheaper side of outdoor shows for the paying masses. Such traveling medicine shows also employed a Negro band and minstrels, including both men and women. Museums were set up to appeal to the low income audience, housing freak shows, wax sculptures, as well as exhibits of exoticism, mingled with magic, and necessarily live performance. African Americans were most often displayed as savages, cannibals, or natural freaks. Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604,

4171-412: The comic aspects of minstrelsy with the more serious plot of the novel. Minstrelsy's racism (and sexism) could be vicious. There were comic songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes. On the other hand,

4268-623: The dandy, known frequently as Zip Coon, from the song Zip Coon . "First performed by George Dixon in 1834, Zip Coon made a mockery of free blacks. An arrogant, ostentatious figure, he dressed in high style and spoke in a series of malaprops and puns that undermined his attempts to appear dignified." The white actors who portrayed these characters spoke an exaggerated form of Black Vernacular English. The blackface makeup and illustrations on programs and sheet music depicted them with huge eyeballs, very wide noses, and thick-lipped mouths that hung open or grinned foolishly; one character expressed his love for

4365-431: The darkeys be" and they could not be "bought and sold". In plantation material, aged black characters were rarely reunited with long-lost masters like they were in white minstrelsy. African Americans formed a large part of the black minstrels' audience, especially for smaller troupes. In fact, their numbers were so great that many theater owners had to relax rules relegating black patrons to certain areas. The reasons for

4462-492: The endmen and dressed themselves in lavish finery and powdered wigs. They decorated the stage with elaborate backdrops and performed no slapstick whatsoever. Their brand of minstrelsy differed from other entertainments only in name. Other troupes followed to varying extents, and pre-war style minstrelsy found itself confined to explicitly nostalgic "histories of minstrelsy" features. Social commentary continued to dominate most performances, with plantation material constituting only

4559-455: The faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as "mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. ... The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork." The minstrels themselves promoted their performing abilities, quoting reviews that favorably compared them to popular white troupes. These black companies often featured female minstrels. One or two African-American troupes dominated

4656-559: The fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps more significant than the racist manner in which it did so. Despite these pro-plantation attitudes, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities. Its association with the North was such that as secessionist attitudes grew stronger, minstrels on Southern tours became convenient targets of anti-Yankee sentiment. Non-race-related humor came from lampoons of other subjects, including aristocratic whites such as politicians, doctors, and lawyers. Women's rights

4753-401: The first act of the show with a military high-stepping , brass band burlesque, a practice adopted after Callender's Minstrels used it in 1875 or 1876. Although black minstrelsy lent credence to racist ideals of blackness, many African-American minstrels worked to subtly alter these stereotypes and to poke fun at white society. One jubilee described heaven as a place "where de white folks must let

4850-519: The first totally black-owned black vaudeville show, The Rabbit's Foot Company , which performed with an all-black cast that elevated the level of shows with sophisticated and fun comedy. It successfully toured mainly the Southwest and Southeast, as well as in New Jersey and New York City. The Christy Minstrels established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s. A crowd-gathering parade to

4947-412: The guidance of their Northern friends." White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting "spontaneously" and "naturally." Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, Canebrake , BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT." Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked

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5044-603: The guise of the female impersonator. A well-played prima donna character, as popularised by the performer Francis Leon, was considered to be critical to success in the postwar period. This new minstrelsy maintained an emphasis on refined music. Most troupes added jubilees, or spirituals , to their repertoire in the 1870s. These were fairly authentic religious slave songs borrowed from traveling black singing groups. Other troupes drifted further from minstrelsy's roots. When George Primrose and Billy West broke with Haverly's Mastodons in 1877, they did away with blackface for all but

5141-453: The happy slaves who lived there. Nevertheless, antislavery viewpoints sometimes surfaced in the guise of family members separated by slavery, runaways, or even slave uprisings. A few stories highlighted black trickster figures who managed to get the better of their masters. Beginning in the mid-1850s, performers did burlesque renditions of other plays; both Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights were common targets. The humor of these came from

5238-568: The inept black characters trying to perform some element of high white culture. Slapstick humor pervaded the afterpiece, including cream pies to the face, inflated bladders, and on-stage fireworks. Material from Uncle Tom's Cabin dominated beginning in 1853. The afterpiece allowed the minstrels to introduce new characters, some of whom became quite popular and spread from troupe to troupe. The earliest minstrel characters took as their base popular white stage archetypes—frontiersmen, fishermen, hunters, and riverboatsmen whose depictions drew heavily from

5335-417: The instruments they played: Brudder Tambo (or simply Tambo ) for the tambourine and Brudder Bones (or Bones ) for the bone castanets or bones . These endmen (for their position in the minstrel semicircle) were ignorant and poorly spoken, being conned, electrocuted, or run over in various sketches. They happily shared their stupidity; one slave character said that to get to China, one had only to go up in

5432-408: The mid-1870s however, black troupes placed a new emphasis on it. The addition of jubilee singing gave black minstrelsy a popularity boost as the black troupes were rightly believed to be the most authentic performers of such material. Other significant differences were that the black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from them, and that the black companies commonly ended

5529-426: The mid-1970s. Generally, as the civil rights movement progressed and gained acceptance, minstrelsy lost popularity. The typical minstrel performance followed a three-act structure. The troupe first danced onto stage then exchanged wisecracks and sang songs. The second part featured a variety of entertainments, including the pun-filled stump speech . The final act consisted of a slapstick musical plantation skit or

5626-409: The military burlesques that regularly ended the first act beginning in 1875 or 1876. These sketches earned him renown for his acrobatic feats of drumming. In 1885, Kersands began his own minstrel troupe, named Kersands' Minstrels. Charles Hicks was the manager, but he left to form his own group after little more than a year. Kersands' Minstrels was well known for its marching band , and the group led

5723-460: The minstrel shows were extremely popular, being "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group", they were also controversial. Integrationists decried them as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were "disrespectful" of social norms as they portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine slavery. Minstrel shows were popular before slavery

5820-514: The mood of a bereaved nation. Troupes performed skits about dying soldiers and their weeping widows, and about mourning white mothers. " When This Cruel War Is Over " became the hit of the period, selling over a million copies of sheet music. To balance the somber mood, minstrels put on patriotic numbers like " The Star-Spangled Banner ", accompanied by depictions of scenes from American history that lionized figures like George Washington and Andrew Jackson. Social commentary grew increasingly important to

5917-491: The most popular black troupe in America, and the words Callender and Georgia came to be synonymous with the institution of black minstrelsy. J. H. Haverly, in turn, purchased Callender's troupe in 1878 and applied his strategy of enlarging troupe size and embellishing sets. When this company went to Europe, Gustave and Charles Frohman took the opportunity to promote their Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels. Their success

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6014-485: The most popular song on this subject. Less frequently, the old darky might be cast out by a cruel master when he grew too old to work. After the Civil War, this character became the most common figure in plantation sketches. He frequently cried about the loss of his home during the war, only to meet up with someone from the past such as the child of his former master. In contrast, the trickster, often called Jasper Jack, appeared less frequently. Female characters ranged from

6111-497: The night with no need for sleep. Thomas "Daddy" Rice introduced the earliest slave archetype with his song " Jump Jim Crow " and its accompanying dance. He claimed to have learned the number by watching an old, limping black stable hand dancing and singing, "Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so/Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow." Other early minstrel performers quickly adopted Rice's character. Slave characters in general came to be low-comedy types with names that matched

6208-530: The number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theatre , much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material, and rowdy audiences eventually prevented the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all. Typical blackface acts of

6305-565: The period were short burlesques , often with mock Shakespearean titles like " Hamlet the Dainty ", " Bad Breath, the Crane of Chowder ", " Julius Sneezer " or " Dars-de-Money ". Meanwhile, at least some whites were interested in black song and dance by actual black performers. Nineteenth-century New York slaves shingle danced for spare change on their days off, and musicians played what they claimed to be "Negro music" on so-called black instruments like

6402-513: The pleasure of the grotesque and its infantilization of blacks. These allowed—by proxy, and without full identification—childish fun and other low pleasures in an industrializing world where workers were increasingly expected to abandon such things. With the Panic of 1837 , theater attendance suffered, and concerts were one of the few attractions that could still make money. In 1843, four blackface performers led by Dan Emmett combined to stage just such

6499-596: The popularity of this openly racist form of entertainment with black audiences have long been debated by historians. Perhaps they felt in on the joke, laughing at the over-the-top characters from a sense of "in-group recognition". Maybe they even implicitly endorsed the racist antics, or they felt some connection to elements of an African culture that had been suppressed but was visible, albeit in racist, exaggerated form, in minstrel personages. They certainly got many jokes that flew over whites' heads or registered as only quaint distractions. An undeniable draw for black audiences

6596-468: The refined singing of the Ethiopian Serenaders (epitomized by the work of Christy's composer Stephen Foster ) with the Virginia Minstrels' bawdy schtick. Christy's company established the three-act template into which minstrel shows would fall for the next few decades. This change to respectability prompted theater owners to enforce new rules to make playhouses calmer and quieter. Minstrels toured

6693-488: The repertoire in the 1870s, marking the first undeniably black music to be used in minstrelsy. During the 1830s and 1840s at the height of its popularity, it was at the epicenter of the American music industry. For several decades, it provided the means through which American whites viewed black people. On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans more awareness, albeit distorted, of some aspects of black culture in America. Although

6790-451: The same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European itinerant entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. Life on the road entailed an "endless series of one-nighters, travel on accident-prone railroads, in poor housing subject to fires, in empty rooms that they had to convert into theaters, arrest on trumped up charges, exposed to deadly diseases, and managers and agents who skipped out with all

6887-528: The scene for much of the late 1860s and 1870s. The first of these was Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels , who played the Northeast around 1865. Sam Hague 's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels formed shortly thereafter and toured England to great success beginning in 1866. In the 1870s, white entrepreneurs bought most of the successful black companies. Charles Callender obtained Sam Hague's troupe in 1872 and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. They became

6984-399: The sexually provocative to the laughable. These roles were almost always played by men in drag (most famously George Christy , Francis Leon and Barney Williams ), even though American theater outside minstrelsy was filled with actresses at this time. Mammy or the old auntie was the old darky's counterpart. She often went by the name of Aunt Dinah Roh after the song of that title. Mammy

7081-420: The show. Performers criticized Northern society and those they felt responsible for the breakup of the country, who opposed reunification, or who profited from a nation at war. Emancipation was either opposed through "happy plantation" material, or mildly supported with pieces that depicted slavery in a negative light. Eventually, direct criticism of the South became more biting. Minstrelsy lost popularity during

7178-462: The song popularized by George Washington Dixon, although others had pretentious names like Count Julius Caesar Mars Napoleon Sinclair Brown. Their clothing was a ludicrous parody of upper-class dress: coats with tails and padded shoulders, white gloves, monocles, fake mustaches, and gaudy watch chains. They spent their time primping and preening, going to parties, dancing and strutting, and wooing women. The black soldier became another stock type during

7275-402: The stage persona of a slow and ignorant Sambo . He also sang songs that reinforced these racist views. In his "Mary's Gone with a Coon", he sang of a black man "lamenting" his daughter's impending marriage to a black man: "De chile dat I bore, should tink ob me no more / Den to run away wid a big black coon." His " Old Aunt Jemima " lent its name to the stereotyped mammy Aunt Jemima that later

7372-406: The tall tale—and added exaggerated blackface speech and makeup. These Jim Crows and Gumbo Chaffs fought and boasted that they could "wip [their] weight in wildcats" or "eat an alligator". As public opinion toward blacks changed, however, so did the minstrel stereotypes. Eventually, several stock characters emerged. Chief among these were the slave, who often maintained the earlier name Jim Crow, and

7469-414: The theater often preceded the performance. The show itself was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song. Upon the instruction of the interlocutor , a sort of host, they sat in a semicircle. Various stock characters always took the same positions: the genteel interlocutor in the middle, flanked by Mr Tambo and Mr Bones , who served as

7566-425: The troupe and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. When Kersands and other popular troupe members demanded higher pay and more favorable treatment, Callender dismissed them. They quit to form their own ensemble, a move Callender characterized as theft. The company did poorly, and Kersands and most of the others returned to Callender. During his years with Callender's Georgia Minstrels, Kersands regularly featured in

7663-520: The troupe's money." The more popular groups stuck to the main circuit that ran through the Northeast; some even went to Europe, which allowed their competitors to establish themselves in their absence. By the late 1840s, a Southern tour had opened from Baltimore to New Orleans. Circuits through the Midwest and as far as California followed by the 1860s. As its popularity increased, theaters sprang up specifically for minstrel performance, often with names such as

7760-488: The war. Women's rights, disrespectful children, low church attendance, and sexual promiscuity became symptoms of decline in family values and of moral decay. Of course, Northern black characters carried these vices even further. African-American members of Congress were one example, pictured as pawns of the Radical Republicans . By the 1890s, minstrelsy formed only a small part of American entertainment, and, by 1919,

7857-455: The winter Carnival in 1969.) In the 1840s and '50s, William Henry Lane and Thomas Dilward became the first African Americans to perform on the minstrel stage. All-black troupes followed as early as 1855. These companies emphasized that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance, with one advertisement describing a troupe as "SEVEN SLAVES just from Alabama, who are EARNING THEIR FREEDOM by giving concerts under

7954-612: Was Essence of Old Virginia or Virginia Essence, which he may have introduced. The dance later developed into the soft shoe . He was also known for the buck-and-wing . His dance routines helped cement such dance acts as fixtures in later vaudeville and Hollywood routines. Kersands died shortly after a performance in Artesia, New Mexico at the age of 73. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002092514 Minstrel show The minstrel show , also called minstrelsy ,

8051-477: Was abolished, sufficiently so that Frederick Douglass described blackface performers as "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." Circus sideshows included Negro performers, minstrels were exhibited in museums, Wild West shows , and in musical ensembles. Black people were also part of traveling medicine shows , which were on

8148-602: Was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. Blackface minstrelsy

8245-415: Was another serious subject that appeared with some regularity in antebellum minstrelsy, almost always to ridicule the notion. The women's rights lecture became common in stump speeches. When one character joked, "Jim, I tink de ladies oughter vote", another replied, "No, Mr. Johnson, ladies am supposed to care berry little about polytick, and yet de majority ob em am strongly tached to parties." Minstrel humor

8342-423: Was developed into an iconic trademark for a brand of pancakes . Despite Kersands's reinforcement of negative black stereotypes, very few African Americans disdained his act. Part of his appeal for them lay in his mixing of elements of African American folklore into his show in a way that would appeal to his black audience but be ignored or derided by whites. "Old Aunt Jemima", one of his signature songs, serves as

8439-402: Was highly musical and none-too-bright, but he had favorable aspects like his loving nature and the sentiments he raised regarding love for the aged, ideas of old friendships, and the cohesiveness of the family. His death and the pain it caused his master was a common theme in sentimental songs. Alternatively, the master could die, leaving the old darky to mourn. Stephen Foster's "Old Uncle Ned" was

8536-445: Was lovable to both blacks and whites, matronly, but hearkening to European peasant woman sensibilities. Her main role was to be the devoted mother figure in scenarios about the perfect plantation family. The wench , yaller gal or prima donna was a mulatto who combined the light skin and facial features of a white woman with the perceived sexual promiscuity and exoticism of a black woman. Her beauty and flirtatiousness made her

8633-592: Was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience." He could even fit several billiard balls or a cup and saucer into his mouth and still perform a dance routine or fill the theater with boisterous laughter. Tom Fletcher wrote that while touring in England, Kersands told Queen Victoria that if his mouth was any bigger, his ears would have to be moved. This physical feature fit well into racist white-created stereotypes of blacks having large lips and mouths. Kersands further embraced such disparaging caricatures by affecting

8730-439: Was responsible for beginning and ending each segment of the show. To this end, he had to be able to gauge the mood of the audience and know when it was time to move on. Accordingly, the actor who played the role was paid very well in comparison to other non-featured performers. There were many variants on the slave archetype. The old darky or old uncle formed the head of the idyllic black family. Like other slave characters, he

8827-557: Was simple and relied heavily on slapstick and wordplay. Performers told riddles: "The difference between a schoolmaster and an engineer is that one trains the mind and the other minds the train." With the advent of the American Civil War , minstrels remained mostly neutral and satirized both sides. However, as the war reached Northern soil, troupes turned their loyalties to the Union. Sad songs and sketches came to dominate in reflection of

8924-445: Was simply seeing fellow African Americans on stage; black minstrels were largely viewed as celebrities. Formally educated African Americans, on the other hand, either disregarded black minstrelsy or openly disdained it. Still, black minstrelsy was the first large-scale opportunity for African Americans to enter American show business. Black minstrels were therefore viewed as a success. Pat H. Chappelle capitalized on this and created

9021-493: Was so good he could fool blacks when he mingled with them in the streets. Thomas Dartmouth Rice 's successful song-and-dance number, " Jump Jim Crow ", brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice's success, The Boston Post wrote, "The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria of the United Kingdom and Jump Jim Crow ." As early as

9118-525: Was such that the Frohmans bought Haverly's group and merged it with theirs, creating a virtual monopoly on the market. The company split in three to better canvas the nation and dominated black minstrelsy throughout the 1880s. Individual black performers like Billy Kersands , James A. Bland , Sam Lucas , Martin Francis and Wallace King grew as famous as any featured white performer. Racism made black minstrelsy

9215-517: Was the funny old gal , a slapstick role played by a large man in motley clothing and large, flapping shoes. The humor she invoked often turned on the male characters' desire for a woman whom the audience would perceive as unattractive. The counterpart to the slave was the dandy , a common character in the afterpiece. He was a Northern, urban black man trying to live above his station by mimicking white, upper-class speech and dress—usually to no good effect. Dandy characters often went by Zip Coon , after

9312-457: Was the first uniquely American form of theater, and for many minstrel shows emerged as brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early 1830s in the Northeastern states . They were developed into full-fledged art form in the next decade. By 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national artform, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. By the turn of

9409-563: Was when one actor, typically one of the endmen, delivered a faux-black-dialect stump speech , a long oration about anything from nonsense to science, society, or politics, during which the dim-witted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. All the while, the speaker moved about like a clown, standing on his head and almost always falling off his stump at some point. With blackface makeup serving as fool's mask, these stump speakers could deliver biting social criticism without offending

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