Over at Outside the Beltway Stephen Taylor remarks on the pernicious history, particularly in the American South, of amateur blackface. I have no knowledge of that but I did want to make some observations about professional blackface.
When it comes to observations about professional blackface, I’m probably your man. My mother’s family was in vaudeville. My maternal grandmother’s uncle, a headliner in vaudeville (a “headliner” was someone whose name appeared at the top of the marquee), performed in blackface. I’ve posted pictures of him in blackface here. My grandfather was a member of Primrose & Dockstader’s Minstrel Men, the most prominent minstrel troupe of the turn of the 19th century. My grandfather claimed, proudly, that he had never done blackface. It’s possible since not all of the members of the company appeared in blackface but I have my doubts and my grandfather was known for, well, stretching the truth.
A good place to start in commenting on professional blackface performance in the United States is with Frederick Douglass’s comment in 1848. He characterized blackface performers as “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens”. I have no doubt that he was right. Note the date of his comment. The Irish were very heavily involved in professional blackface entertainment. They were Catholics. They spoke English but had few saleable skills other than the ability to clown around and entertain people. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the real establishment, thought of them as not much more than animals, the better to justify the harsh treatment of the Irish by the English. Daniel Decatur Emmett, the most famous composer of minstrel songs and blackface performer of the 19th century, was of Irish descent. The phrase “Jim Crow” derives from blackface minstrelsy.
It wasn’t merely the Irish or whites who performed in blackface. Blacks did, too, lampooning, caricaturing, and maligning Southern black manners. Bert Williams, the only black to appear in the Ziegfeld Follies, performed in blackface. There is no record of what Mr. Douglass thought of them.
I can guess what the performers, white or black, thought of it. There were eking out a living under very trying circumstances with few other alternatives other than being mistreated as farm laborers. WASP employers wouldn’t hire them.
In the early 20th century blackface performance remained popular and many of our prominent composers of popular song composed minstrel-style numbers including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Schwartz & Dietz, and Harold Rome. By the 1930s it was becoming déclassé (hence my grandfather’s claim) although Judy Garland had a big hit with “Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones”, performed in blackface for the movie Babes on Broadway in 1941. The song had been introduced by Rex Ingram in 1938 and was covered by Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald.
The list of prominent white actors who appeared in blackface in film is long including Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Doris Day, and many, many others. Laurence Olivier’s Othello (1965) was done in blackface but by then it elicited critical comment as did his very broad performance.
My view of professional blackface performance is that it should not be excused but understood in context. It is more complex than a simple narrative of whites mocking and abusing blacks although that is surely a component. It should not be excised from our history. To do that would be to bowdlerize that history and remove an enormous and important part of our entertainment legacy.
Thanks, that’s interesting. I know practically nothing about blackface.
Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s in Colorado it was not something I ever saw, even on Halloween.
Clearly you and your ancestors were vile racists……
“My view of professional blackface performance is that it should not be excused but understood in context.“ Of course. This is just another version of controversy over Civil War (pardon me, The War of Northern Agression). monuments seized upon by the Grievance Industry.
The nation has made a grevious error in listening to children. Grow up.
Of my maternal grandmother’s family only two of six kids survived to have kids of their own. The others died of the effects of malnutrition. To whatever extent they were racists they were racists with absolutely no power of any kind.
Seeing kids trick or treating in blackface was not unknown in Southern Indiana in the late 50s and 60s, but I doubt that was done as a racist statement. I think most of that was insensitive or just not caring what it symbolized. Kind of like the kids who used be walk around with swastikas. I dont think many of them really knew what a Nazi was. Heck, Jews were rare enough in Southern Indiana I doubt most kids knew what a Jew is, other than part of the group that helped kill Jesus.
The part that concerns me here is, just how far back do we go in time when we go after these people? Clearly you dont get to running around in a KKK hood last week and try to claim you dont know what it means and why it is a bad thing, but what about 30 years ago, or 40 or 50 or 60? I dont necessarily agree with judging people’s long ago actions based upon current beliefs. Then what if someone was a flagrant racist or whatever 50 years ago, then renounced it and lived an exemplary life since then? Do we never forgive? I dont think this hubris we are talking about.
Steve
I remember House Minority Leader Bob Michel reminiscing about how he enjoyed blackface minstrel when he was younger. That was in 1988 (at age the age of 65), and he apologized.
I’m taking a Schuleresque stance here and thinking this is a Virginia issue; I don’t know that I want to hold something that happened that long ago against anybody; certainly he has to have some record to evaluate.
Much better that white actors smear their faces with paint, put feathers in their hair and speak in the halting , partial English we all recognize as Injun. There’s not much chance you’ll pay any price for doing that.
Blackface in a 1984 yearbook is a head scratcher though. Looks like they were drinking in the photo. Were they still drinking when they published the yearbook?
You do realize, Dave, that was sarcasm. Right?
Sure. I just decided it was an opportunity to add a bit more context. I find the thought that my mom’s family, at least, had any power fantastical. They were incredibly unfortunate over a period of generations.