Blackface: Encyclopedia II - Blackface - History and the shaping of racist archetypes

Blackface - History and the shaping of racist archetypes

It is commonly believed that Lewis Hallam, Jr., an Anglo-American comedic actor, brought blackface to prominence as a theatrical device when playing the role of an inebriated black man onstage in 1789. The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style. White comedian Thomas D. Rice later popularized blackface, introducing the song "Jump Jim Crow" accompanied by a dance in his stage act in 1828. The song had a syncopated rhythm and purportedly recreated the dancing of a crippled, black stable hand, Jim Cuff, or "Jim Crow", whom Rice had seen in Cincinnati, Ohio:

Rice traveled the U.S., performing under the pseudonym "Daddy Jim Crow". The name later became attached to statutes that further codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction.

Initially, blackface performers were part of traveling troupes that performed in minstrel shows. In addition to music and dance, minstrel shows featured comical skits in which performers portrayed buffoonish, lazy, superstitious black characters who were cowardly and lascivious, lusted after white women, who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. Such troupes in the early days of minstrelsy were all male, so cross-dressing white men also played black women who often were either unappealingly and grotesquely mannish; in the matronly, mammy mold; or highly sexually provocative. At the time, the stage also featured comic stereotypes of conniving, venal Jews; cheap Scotsmen; drunken Irishmen; ignorant white southerners; gullible rural folk; and the like.

Minstrel shows were a very popular show business phenomenon in the U.S. from 1828 through the 1930s, also enjoying some popularity in the UK and in parts of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. As a result, the genre played a powerful role in shaping racist perceptions of and prejudices about blacks generally and African Americans in particular. Blackface provided an outlet for whites' fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar. It was a socially acceptable way of expressing their feelings and fears about race and control. Writes Eric Lott in Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, "The black mask offered a way to play with the collective fears of a degraded and threatening—and male—Other while at the same time maintaining some symbolic control over them." (Lott, 25)

White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music and speaking ersatz black dialects. Reminiscing about such shows he had seen in his youth, American humorist and author Mark Twain commented in dictated notes almost 50 years later:

…I suppose, the real nigger-show—the genuine nigger-show, the extravagant nigger-show—the show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but…the nigger-show [is] a standard and a summit to whose rarefied altitude the other forms of musical art may not hope to reach.

The songs of northern composer Stephen Foster figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period. Though written in dialect, they were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Foster's works treated slaves and the South in general with an often-cloying sentimentality that appealed to white audiences of the day.

By 1840, African-American performers also were performing in blackface makeup. Frederick Douglass wrote in 1849 about one such troupe, Gavitt's Original Ethiopian Serenaders: "It is something to be gained when the colored man in any form can appear before a white audience." Nonetheless, Douglass generally abhorred blackface and was one of the first people to write against the institution of blackface minstrelsy, pointing to its racist nature and inauthentic, northern, white origins.

When all-black minstrel shows began to proliferate the 1860s, however, they in turn often were billed as "authentic" and "the real thing". Despite often smaller budgets and smaller venues, their public appeal sometimes rivalled that of white minstrel troupes. In the execution of authentic black music and the percussive, polyrhythmic tradition of "pattin' Juba", when the only instruments performers used were their hands and feet, clapping and slapping their bodies and shuffling and stomping their feet, black troupes particularly excelled. One of the most successful black minstrel companies was Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels, managed by Charles Hicks. This company eventually was taken over by Charles Callendar. The Georgia Minstrels toured the United States and abroad and later became Haverly's Colored Minstrels.

African-American blackface productions also contained mocking buffoonery and comedy, but for many black artists it was simply good-natured self-parody. In the early days of African-American involvement in theatrical performance, blacks could not perform without blackface makeup, regardless of how dark-skinned they were, but blackface minstrelsy was a practical and often relatively lucrative livelihood when compared to the menial labor to which most blacks were relegated. Owing to the discrimination of the day, "corking up" (or "blacking up") provided an often singular opportunity for African-American musicians, actors, and dancers to practice their crafts. Some minstrel shows, particularly when performing outside the South, also managed subtly to poke fun at the racist attitudes and double standards of white society or champion the abolitionist cause. It was through blackface performers, white and black, that the richness and exuberance of African-American music, humor, and dance first reached mainstream, white audiences in the U.S. and abroad.

Blackface remained a popular theatrical device well into the 20th century, crossing over from the minstrel-troupe touring circuit to vaudeville, to motion pictures, then to television. In the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), an all-black vaudeville circuit organized in 1909, blackface acts were a popular staple. Called "Toby" for short, performers also nicknamed it "Tough on Black Actors" (or, variously, "Artists" or "Asses"), because earnings were so meager. Still, TOBA headliners could make a very good living, and even for lesser players, TOBA provided fairly steady, more desirable work than generally was available elsewhere. Blackface served as a springboard for hundreds of artists and entertainers—black and white—many of whom later would go on to find work in other performance traditions. In fact, one of the most famous stars of Haverly's European Minstrels was Sam Lucas, who became known as the "Grand Old Man of the Negro Theatre". It was Lucas who later played the title role in the first cinematic production of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Many well-known entertainers of stage and screen also performed in blackface, including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Bob Hope, as well as actor and comedian Bert Williams, who was the first black performer in vaudeville and on Broadway. But apart from cultural references such as those seen in theatrical cartoons, onstage blackface essentially was eliminated in the U.S., post-vaudeville, when public sensibilities regarding race began to change and blackface became increasingly associated with racism and bigotry.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History and the shaping of racist archetypes", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki