Men in Blackface: True Stories of the Minstrel Show

Copyright © 2000 by Seymour Stark.

Library of Congress Control Number:   00-193435

ISBN: Hardcover   978-0-7388-5735-0

            Softcover    978-0-7388-5736-7

            Ebook         978-1-4535-8288-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

The Minstrel Show Will Never Die

Jim Crow and Tom Thumb

Irishness of It All

Irving Berlin Titillates

Gershwin’s Racial Profiling

Jews in Blackface

Jolson the Shlemiel

Strutting to Redemption

Endnotes

Dedicated

to

Nora, Julie,

Darel and Lucas

The Minstrel Show Will Never Die

For most folks the minstrel show disappeared from the American scene with the death of Al Jolson in 1950. Fifty years later Spike Lee resurrected blackface in his film, Bamboozled, as his way to shock into recognition how race plays out now in popular culture.

The reason blackface remains so powerful a symbol of race is its longtime penetration into the consciousness of blacks and whites. The minstrel show, in fact, gave birth to American popular culture in 1843, and continued to influence music, dance, stage and film performance for more than 100 years.

The rise and span of the minstrel show is clearly shown through the lives of the key players, such as P. T. Barnum, Edwin Christy, Dan Bryant, Ned Harrigan, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Al Jolson.

Blackface portrayal is not solely a racial issue. Ethnic and religious conflict were integral parts of the minstrel show and its progeny (coon songs, musicals and movies). Irish Catholics and Jewish immigrants gained American whitehood through the secular stage ritual called the minstrel show.

Five elements identify a ritual (secular as in a courtroom trial or religious as in a funeral).

(1) Repetition of form (format).

(2) Self-consciously acted like a part in a play.

(3) Special behavior or stylization—the actions or symbols are extraordinary,

(4) Order—an organized event, having a beginning and an end. Order is the dominant mode and is often quite exaggeratedly precise.

(5) By definition ritual has a social meaning. Its very occurrence contains a social message. Ritual symbolizes the social cohesion of the assembled group and simultaneously acts as the vehicle for bringing about social solidarity.

After the Civil War African Americans were recruited into all-colored minstrel shows, but were required to wear the stigma of blackface. In a later period the all-colored minstrel show provided a golden portal to Broadway and the genesis of black dominance in American music and dance.

Jim Crow and Tom Thumb

Everything known about the evolution of blackface performance from a single clown in a circus act to eight men on stage in a minstrel hall took place in New York City between 1828 and 1847. One man recorded the City’s entertainment history in the colossal, definitive and unique 15-volume Annals of the New York Stage. George C.D. Odell, Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University, spent 25 years cataloguing and describing every play … every opera, concert, dance recital, vaudeville and minstrel show in the metropolitan New York area from 1701 to 1894.¹

Odell also noted that the first circus in New York City opened on Greenwich Street August 21, 1793. The clown, Mr. McDonald, wore the riding costume of the English equestrian circus. The first uniquely American clown (by the name of George Washington Dixon) appeared in the City in 1828. He was distinguished by the black makeup on his face and the comic love song he wrote and performed by the title of Coal Black Rose.²

Over the next three years Dixon had a small vogue as a negro-singer at the Chatham Gardens, Park Theatre and Bowery Amphitheatre. Dixon faded from the scene after his performance on May 23, 1831 at the Chatham Gardens, where he sang Coal Black Rose, and Mr. Weaver, the strong man, bears on his breast 1500 lbs. weight to decide a bet of 500 dollars.

Coal Black Rose, the song that gave Dixon his short-lived fame, became a classic over the next 30 years (published as sheet music and in songsters). The lyrics portray a black lover (Sambo) who visits Rose in the kitchen of her slavemaster. He plucks his banjo while singing (in dialect), I laff to tink of you as mine, lubly Rose, I’d gib you a plenty, the Lord above knows, Ob possum fat and hominey and sometime rice, Cow heel an sugar cane an ebery ting nice.

As Sambo confesses his love for Rose, he spys a rival hidden in the corner of the kitchen. The lyrics turn to jealousy and revenge. What in de corner dar, Rose, dat I py? I know dat nigger Cuffee by de white ob he eye … Let go my arm, Rose, let me at him rush, I swella his two lips like a blacka balla brush. Sambo then vents his anger against Rose. I wish I may be burnt if I don’t hate Rose, Oh, Rose, you blacka snake Rose.³

The message of Coal Black Rose for white audiences was that black women were promiscuous and black men were jealous fools. Slavery in the South made romantic love and life-long marriage impossible for blacks. In the North, the blackface performers justified the slavery system by humorous stories about the natural instincts of black women. By making Rose Coal Black, white men were supposedly repelled (even though the system made her easily available).

A year after Dixon bowed out of New York City, Thomas D. Rice arrived at the Bowery Theatre on November 12, 1832 as the sensation of the season. Rice has drawn crowded houses in Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc., with his celebrated song Jim Crow. Rice’s Jim Crow was the name of a song and the name of a dance (which he performed as he sang).⁴

Jim Crow also had a unique costume: a ragged jacket, mismatched patches on his breeches and a floppy hat. And, of course, his face was covered in black makeup. Rice had established for the first time a total stage character in blackface who was the prototype for the endmen of the minstrel show. His contribution was duly recognized by future minstrels who called him Daddy Rice.⁵

Jim Crow was meant to be no more than a diversion between acts of a play, but the famous negro eclipsed all else as the audience rushed to the stage to join Tom Rice (like a contemporary rock performer). A lithograph, dated 1833, shows Rice surrounded by a mob on stage while the rest of the audience crowds the footlights. The audience’s response to Rice was unprecedented in the records of theatrical attraction. Identified as Mr. T.D. Rice of Kentucky, he was actually a native New Yorker who grew up in a City district populated by Irish immigrants.⁶

Rice began his stage career at the Park Theatre, moving scenery and playing small parts. He left New York City for the life of an itinerant player in the new frontiers of Kentucky. At the Southern Theatre in Louisville, he combined acting with stage carpentry and lamp lighting. Rice switched to the Louisville Theatre for a role as a cornfield Negro in a drama. While playing his small part, he had an idea for a blackface song and dance act.⁷

The unrivaled success of Tom Rice led to a slew of articles tracing the genesis of Jim Crow. Seven years after Rice’s death in 1860 (start of the Civil War), the Atlantic Monthly traced his brilliant career. The article described in mythic terms the reincarnation of Thomas D. Rice into an authentic Negro (at least by song and dance if not by true skin color).⁸

The miraculous event began in Cincinnati when Rice heard a voice ringing clear and full above the noises of the street, and giving utterance, in an unmistakable dialect, to the refrain of a song to this effect: ‘Turn about an’ wheel about an’do jis so, An ebery time I turn about I jump Jim Crow.’

Rice waited until he moved on to Pittsburgh before turning the brief song of an unseen Negro into a performance. Quite by chance as Rice walked by a Pittsburgh hotel on his way to the theater, he encountered Cuff, a Negro attendant. Slight persuasion induced Cuff to go with Rice to the theater where he was led through the private entrance, and quietly ensconced behind the scenes. Rice then having shaded his own countenance to the ‘contraband’ hue, ordered Cuff to disrobe, and proceeded to invest himself in the castoff apparel.

On stage Rice sang O, Jim Crow’s come to town, as you all must know, An’ he wheel about, he turn about, he do jis so, An’ ebery time he wheel about he jump Jim Crow. According to the Atlantic Monthly, The effect was electric. Such a thunder of applause as followed was never heard before within the shell of that old theatre.

Cuff meanwhile hidden behind the scenes grew impatient waiting for the return of his clothes. After calling to Rice many times, Cuff in ludicrous undress … rushed upon the stage … called out excitedly: ‘Massa Rice gi’ me nigga’s coat, gi’ me nigga’s hat, gi’ me nigga’s t’ings.’ … the incident was the touch … of such convulsive merriment that it was impossible to proceed in the performance.

Rice’s ascendancy as the icon of blackface minstrelsy continued 30 years after his death when The New York Times in 1881 revised the details of the birth of Jim Crow. In the Times account Rice studied the movements of an old and decrepit slave employed in a livery-stable at the back of a theater in Louisville.⁹

The negro slave was very much deformed—the right shoulder was drawn up high, and the left leg was stiff and crooked at the knee, which gave him a painful but at the same time ludicrous limp. He was in the habit of crooning a queer old tune, to which he had applied words of his own. At the end of each verse he gave a peculiar step, ‘rocking de heel;’ and these were the words of his refrain: ‘Wheel about, turn about, Do jes so, An’ ebery time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow.’

In the two different accounts of how Tom Rice converted black clothes, song and dance into the persona of Jim Crow, the undercurrent of degradation and pain is at the same time ludicrous. For the New Yorkers of the 1830s the appalling conditions of slavery were transformed into a parody.

Jim Crow Rice was a hit as never seen before on the New York stage. During the winter and spring of 1833, Rice continued performing Jim Crow and wrote two Ethiopian farce operas, Long Island Juba; or, Love By The Bushel and Oh, Hush! or, The Virginny Cupids. In the hot months of summer New York theaters closed, but in 1833 with Rice’s success the Bowery stayed opened in a flood-tide of prosperity. Rice’s popularity knew no bounds, as he played in whiteface in the role of Hector for Life in Philadelphia, jumped Jim Crow between plays and starred in the Ethiopian opera farce, Oh Hush! or, The Virginny Cupids. The Ethiopian opera had characters by the name of Rose, Cuff and Sambo Johnson, and a chorus which accompanied the stage action with blackface circus songs.¹⁰

The power of Rice’s Jim Crow character transcended the American theater. In 1836 he traveled to London, England, playing Jim Crow every night to audiences at both the Adelphi and Surrey Theatres, drawing crowds from one to the other to see his act again. Within a month English imitators appeared in theaters. Rice created a character that became a permanent part of the English pantomine. One example was Cowardly, Cowardly, Custard; or, Harlequin Jim Crow And The Magic Mustard Pot, in which Jim Crow turns into a clown. ¹¹

A review in the London Times in 1836 revealed the strength of the Rice character even when played by another: Much amusement was excited by Mr. Bedford’s appearance (with a song) in the character of Jim Crow; and so excellently did Mr. Bedford personate the ‘Yankee Niggar,’ that it would be difficult to say which is the funnier presentation of the two—that of Mr. Rice the original or that of Mr. Bedford.

Back in the United States after his rave reviews in England, Rice created new Ethiopian farces with clones of the original Jim Crow. His characters included Ginger Blue in The Virginny Mummy (or the Sarcophagus) and Pompey in Ten Miles from London. Rice starred in a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the National Theatre in January, 1854. The play was so popular that two theaters had Uncle Tom’s Cabin productions in 1854.

The Spirit of The Times (a newspaper of that time), observed: Whatever may be the prejudices, political or otherwise, for or against the ‘colored bredren’ of this country, the feelings provoked by the representation of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ do us credit … ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ holds out yet at the Bowery and National theatres … the performance of this drama has made converts to the abolition doctrine many persons, we have no doubt, who have never examined the subject, and know nothing of its merits.¹²

Among the minstrel men of his day, Rice was acknowledged as the father of the minstrel show. Twenty-four years after he created the Negro character of Jim Crow, Rice starred in a rare engagement with Wood’s Minstrels in August, 1858. Two years later he died in New York. At the end of his career he was noted for his eccentricity of dress; the buttons on his coat and vest were five and ten dollar gold pieces, which he would give indiscriminately as souvenirs.¹³

George Washington Dixon and Tom Rice provided the core symbol of blackface for the minstrel show. They also provided the basic concept that parody ruled blackface performance. Parody—in the clown usage to mimic, to mock, to ridicule—guided the minstrel show, giving a smiling face to white racism. Jim Crow (aka colored) was another Rice legacy.

Eleven years after Rice jumped Jim Crow in New York City, Dan Emmett and three blackface companions from the circus created the first minstrel troupe. Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham, Frank Brower and Emmett were the four who first performed in a minstrel show at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City on February 6, 1843. The overwrought words for their public announcement could give them the added honor for the discovery of hype. The four minstrel men invented the style for all subsequent minstrel advertising: The first night of the novel, grotesque, original and surpassingly melodious Ethiopian Band entitled THE VIRGINIA MINSTRELS¹⁴

Since this was the first of its kind, the four minstrels described their offering: Being an exclusively minstrel entertainment combining the banjo, violin, bone castanets and the tambourine, and exempt from the vulgarities and other objectable features which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas.

The Viginia Minstrels acknowledged previous negro extravaganzas which raises the question, what was first by the Virginia Minstrels? Credit for the first goes to the Virginia Minstrels for the use of the word minstrels and an ensemble of four white men in blackface for a full evening of fun. Previously, blackface performance was two men (banjoist with dancer or singer) in the circus or between acts of a play.

George C.D. Odell saw an accumulation of critical mass immediately prior to the birth of negro minstrelsy. "From the last nights of that regime at the Amphitheatre emerged the first band of negro minstrels, inaugurating an art that was to endure for many decades …