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Minstrel show

The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century.[1] 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.[2][3] Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.

For the album by Little Brother, see The Minstrel Show. For the medieval European entertainer, see Minstrel.

Blackface minstrelsy 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.[4]


By the turn of 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.[5]


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 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 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,[6] although the extent of the genuine black influence remains debated. Spirituals (known as jubilees) entered 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.[7][8]


Although the minstrel shows were extremely popular, being "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group",[9] 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.[10]

Structure

The Christy Minstrels established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s.[90] A crowd-gathering parade to the theater often preceded the performance.[91] The show itself was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song.[92] 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,[93] who served as 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",[94] while the endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs.[95][96] 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.[97] Initially, an upbeat plantation song and dance ended the act; later it was more common for the first act to end with a walkaround, including dances in the style of a cakewalk.[92]


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 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 the audience,[98] although the focus was usually on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' inability to make sense of them.[99] 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 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.[42] A few stories highlighted black trickster figures who managed to get the better of their masters.[100] 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 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.[101] 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.

(1903), an early "full-length" movie (between 10 and 14 minutes), was directed by Edwin S. Porter and used white actors in blackface in the major roles. Similar to the earlier "Tom Shows" it featured black stereotypes such as having the slaves dance in almost any context, including at a slave auction.[155]

Uncle Tom's Cabin

(1926), a Vitaphone sound-on-disc short film starring Al Jolson. Long thought to have been lost, a copy of the film and sound disc were located and the restored version has been issued as a bonus feature on the DVD release of The Jazz Singer.

A Plantation Act

(1927), the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences. Based on a play by Samson Raphaelson, the story tells of Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), the son of a devout Jewish family, who runs away from home to become a jazz singer.

The Jazz Singer

(1929), a feature film starring Minstrel show comics Charles Mack and George Moran, also known as Two Black Crows.

Why Bring That Up?

(1930), another Al Jolson film, this relives Jolson's early years as a minstrel man. With songs by Irving Berlin, who is also credited with the original story titled Mr. Bones.

Mammy

(1934), is a 21 minute short in which Bill Green, played by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, after being denied a chance to audition wins a black minstrel show in a crap game. The endmen in the show in the film emulate traditional white blackface by a line of white greasepaint around their mouths.

King for a Day

(1936), film starring Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Hattie McDaniel, Paul Robeson. One of the shows on board is a blackface minstrel act.

Show Boat

(1936), a musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers features a dance number entitled "Bojangles of Harlem" performed by Astaire in blackface.

Swing Time

(1939), in which Eleanor Powell performs a blackface dance homage to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

Honolulu

(1940), another fictionalized biographical film on Stephen Foster. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Musical Scoring and was the last on-screen appearance of Al Jolson.

Swanee River

(1941), a musical starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The next-to-last musical number is a medley of songs performed in blackface.

Babes on Broadway

(1942), an animated short featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The final scene, edited out of recent television broadcasts, shows Bunny and Fudd in blackface, along with five tall men in the same condition, singing "Camptown Races".

Fresh Hare

(1942), contains a musical number entitled "Abraham" with Bing Crosby performing in blackface in the style of a minstrel show. Beginning in the 1980s, this number has been cut from many TV broadcasts.

Holiday Inn

(1943), a film based on the life of songwriter Daniel Decatur Emmett. It includes Bing Crosby singing the film's title song in blackface.

Dixie

(1944), blackface musicians perform a jolly number on the river vessel, in the scene where Captain Clemens rescues Charles Langdon from a thief.

The Adventures of Mark Twain

(1944), contains a show-within-a-show. It includes a minstrel routine performed by Bing Crosby and Sonny Tufts; their two characters then sing a musical number entitled "Ac-Cen-Tchu-Ate the Positive".[156]

Here Come The Waves

(1944), a fictional film about the rise, fall, and revival of a minstrel performer's career. It was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Original Song and Best Original Score).

Minstrel Man

(1947), starring Dennis Morgan, Andrea King, and Arlene Dahl, is set in 1890s New York and features several scenes depicting blackface musical numbers.

My Wild Irish Rose

Hollywood Varieties (1950), a collection of stage acts with Glen Vernon and Edward Ryan in a blackface skit.

Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951), is based around a young child who finds a rest home for retired minstrel performers. In "flashback" sequences, a number of actual minstrel veterans, including , Freeman Davis (aka "Brother Bones"), Ned Haverly, Phil Arnold, "endmen" Cotton Watts and Slim Williams, the dancing team of Boyce and Evans, and the comic duo Ches Davis and Emmett Miller, perform in the roles they popularized in Minstrel shows.

Scatman Crothers

(1952) aka I Dream of Jeanie (with the Light Brown Hair), a completely fictional film biography of Stephen Foster. Veteran performer Glen Turnbull makes a guest appearance as a blackface Minstrel performer in Christy's Minstrels.

I Dream of Jeanie

(1953), starring Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, and Marjorie Rambeau, contains a musical number, done in blackface, entitled "Two-faced Woman."

Torch Song

(1954), features a full-scale minstrel show number, but without blackface. The lyrics to the songs do not insinuate that minstrel shows involved blackface, but invoked much of the same linguistic mechanisms as minstrel shows, such as double entendre. The lyrics to the song also include the line "I'd pawn my overcoat and vest / To see a minstrel show".

White Christmas

(2000), a satirical film using minstrelsy to lampoon American popular culture written and directed by Spike Lee.

Bamboozled

(2003), set in a dystopian future. Ed Harris plays a blackfaced character in one scene.

Masked and Anonymous

A small number of films available today contain authentic recreations of Minstrel show numbers and routines. Due to their content they are rarely (if ever) broadcast on television today, but are available on home video.

, a British television and theatre show of the American traditional genre in the 1960s and 1970s

The Black and White Minstrel Show

Eldred Kurtz Means

List of blackface minstrel songs

List of blackface minstrel troupes

List of entertainers who performed in blackface

the stereotyped portrayal of Irish people once common in plays during the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries

Stage Irish

Alexander, Michelle (2012). . New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-819-7.

The New Jim Crow

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Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights

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Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound

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Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World

Jackson, Ronald L. II (2006), , Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-306-80495-3. Reprinted 2003.

Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media

Lenz, Beth (1989), The Bones in the United States: History and Performance Practice. M. A. Thesis, University of Michigan.

(1993), Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-509641-5

Lott, Eric

Malone, Bill C.; Stricklin, David (2003), Southern Music/American Music (Revised ed.), Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky

Marc, David (1997). Comic Visions: Television Comedy & American Culture (2nd ed.). Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

Nathan, Hans (1962), Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy, Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press

. 50states.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021.

"Official Song of the State of Virginia"

Oliver, Paul (1972), The Story of the Blues, Penguin,  978-0-14-003509-4

ISBN

Paskman, Dailey; Spaeth, Sigmund (1928), , Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, archived from the original on September 10, 2006, retrieved August 21, 2021

A Working Model

Sacks, Howard L.; Sacks, Judith (1993), Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem, Washington:

Smithsonian Institution Press

Smith, Peter Dunbaugh (2006), (PDF), Florida State University, archived from the original (PDF) on March 26, 2009, retrieved May 3, 2009

Ashley Street Blues: Racial Uplift and the Commodification of Vernacular Performance in Lavilla, Florida, 1896–1916

Sotiropoulos, Karen (2006), Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Stark, Seymour (2000), Men in Blackface: True Stories of the Minstrel Show, Xlibris

Strausbaugh, John (2006), Black Like You, Tarcher,  1-58542-498-6

ISBN

Sullivan, Megan (2001), "African-American music as rebellion: From slavesong to hip-hop", Discoveries, 3: 21–39

Sweet, Frank W. (2000), A History of the Minstrel Show, Backintyme,  0-939479-21-4

ISBN

Toll, Robert C. (1974), Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America, New York: Oxford University Press

Toll, Robert C. (April–May 1978), , American Heritage, 29 (3), archived from the original on January 9, 2009

"Behind the Blackface: Minstrel Men and Minstrel Myths"

Watkins, Mel (1994), On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor, New York: Simon & Schuster

Watkins, Mel (1999), On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books,  978-1-55652-351-9

ISBN

Wald, Elijah (2004), , New York: Amistad, ISBN 978-0-06-052423-4

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

Zapata-Rodríguez, Melisa M. (2016). "Minstresy: Iconography of Resistance During the American Civil War". Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography. 41 (1–2): 111–127.  1522-7464.

ISSN

"" performed by the Edison Minstrels (possibly The Haydn Quartet)

Minstrel Potpourri

"" performed by the Heidelberg Quintet (from the Internet Archive)

Waiting for the Robert E. Lee

From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University

Ruckus! American Entertainments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The , compiled by minstrel performer and manager Frank Dumont, containing more than 50 years of documentation about minstrelsy and its origins is available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Frank Dumont Minstrelsy Scrapbook 1850–1902

The JUBA Project: Early Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain, 1842–1852

at Houghton Library, Harvard University

Guide to American Minstrel Show Collection

Princeton University

American Minstrel Show Collection

includes biographical sketches of many black minstrel composers and access to their music.

Historical Notes for Collection 1: African-American and Jamaican Melodies

Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois newspaper)

"Popular culture once embraced racist blackface minstrel shows"