Minstrel show (minstrelsy)

The minstrel show, also referred to as minstrelsy, is one of the earliest native forms of entertainment in the United States. The first steady minstrel shows began in the North in the early 1800s with the creation of the character Jim Crow by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice. Rice, a white performer, used blackface, as well as exaggerated song and dance, when he performed as the highly stereotypical Black character to entertain crowds. White entertainers, usually men but later also women and children, painted their faces with burnt cork or shoe polish and performed dances and songs reputedly from the Black community. In addition to Jim Crow, other characters included Mammy, Lucy Long, Zip Coon, and Sambo.

Minstrel shows peaked and then generally declined in the mid-1800s as vaudeville performances ushered in a new type of theatre. Some minstrel troupes continued after the American Civil War (1861–1865). These newer minstrel troupes consisted primarily of Black performers who sang, danced, and played instruments. Some troupes also included white performers. American abolitionist Frederick Douglass criticized blackface performers for essentially stealing Black culture and using it for financial gain.

By the mid-twentieth century, the blackface of minstrel shows was acknowledged as racist and the shows largely disappeared from professional theatres. However, some of the stereotypes they created and reinforced were still found in more modern programming including television shows such as The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son. Although the stereotypes and racism found in minstrel shows may not be as apparent in the twenty-first, they have not disappeared entirely. The appropriation of culture is a frequent topic of discussion not only for the Black community, but also for other groups of people.

Overview

Minstrel shows began in the late 1820s and created a satirized image of Blacks as singing and dancing buffoons. From the blackface of white actors to the use of overly simplistic language, minstrelsy was one of the first ways that American popular culture controlled and manipulated Black culture for the benefit of the white population. Among the most famous early performers was Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who was born in New York in 1808. While performing at the Chatham Theatre in New York in 1829 he created the character Jim Crow, which he performed in blackface. He left the company the following year, taking Jim Crow. Within a year, he had developed a complete blackface show and was performing regularly in theatres. The Jim Crow character wore torn and shabby clothing and mimicked stereotypes of people enslaved on Southern plantations. Crow’s speech and mannerisms indicated he was too simple-minded for anything beyond basic farm labor.

By 1845, Rice had helped usher in an entirely new type of performance art that not only reinforced Black stereotypes of the time, but also created new stereotypes, including Black men as lazy, unintelligent, hypersexual criminals. The stereotypes often fell under one of two broad categories. The Sambo stereotype represented the happily enslaved person who was pleased to serve his enslaver. The savage stereotype was hypersexual and aggressive. It took less than a decade for the name Jim Crow to become a slur used against Black men. By the end of the nineteenth century, the name was more commonly used to reference state laws that reduced the rights Black people had obtained during Reconstruction. Some of the most famous and successful companies were the Virginia Minstrels, a quartet; Bryant’s Minstrels; Campbell’s Minstrels; and Haverly’s Minstrels. They were surpassed in popularity and success by the Christy Minstrels, a troupe that played in New York City for almost a decade on Broadway.

Rice was one of the most significant developers of minstrelsy, but other stars emerged as well. Philadelphia-born Edwin P. Christy also left an important mark on the evolution of minstrel shows. Christy founded the Christy Minstrels in 1842 and created a specific format for productions, the two-part minstrel show that became the typical design for future productions. The first part of the production had performers create a semicircle around a speaker. A tambourine player, Mr. Tambo, stood at one end of the group, and a clapper, Mr. Bones, was at the opposite end. The interlocutor wore whiteface and formal attire, while the others wore blackface and more outlandish attire. The performance began with a song before the center-man asked the audience to sit while he and the end men engaged in a mélange of jokes and musical numbers. The act frequently ended with some sort of dance, often a walkaround or cakewalk. In the walkaround, a soloist would often begin the dance, with the remaining performers joining before the end. Some people say the roots of the dance trace back to West Africa, while others maintain the walkaround was a satirical portrayal of a religious dance performed by enslaved persons. Over time, the walkaround and cakewalk become synonymous with one another. The cakewalk was a predecessor to the Lindy hop and was considered a dance of Black resistance. The cakewalk is a circular promenade enslaved people performed to mock their enslavers. The best couple was awarded a cake, which gave the dance its name. The enslavers enjoyed the entertainment aspect of the dance but did not recognize they were being mocked.

The second part of the performance, also called the olio, consisted of actors performing solo dances, playing musical instruments including banjo or violin, or showcasing unconventional talents. The act concluded with Mr. Tambo or Mr. Bones performing a political or socially relative speech, similar to a political stump speech. During the speech, the orator would speak in a contrived Black dialect. This highly anticipated aspect of the minstrel shows also afforded the performers an opportunity to provide social commentary on a given topic under the guise of humor. On occasion a third component, or afterpiece, was added to the performance. This might involve a burlesque, comedic, or farcical skit. Although the afterpiece is often considered its own distinct entity, some performances rolled it directly into the olio, making the second part of a performance longer than the first.

Post-Civil War

The popularity of minstrel shows steadily declined during and after the Civil War. Noteworthy during these decades was the creation of Black minstrel troupes, some of which had Black managers, too. Some of the larger troupes also brought on white performers. Troupe members sang and performed music for parades and nighttime shows. The players continued the same traditions as those in pre-Civil War troupes, including darkening their faces with shoe polish or burnt cork. This held true even for the Black performers. The troupes supported Black composers like James Bland, who wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” and also composers from the earlier days of minstrelsy like Stephen Foster, who found fame on Broadway with the Christy Minstrels. Foster wrote more than two hundred well-known songs, including “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” “Oh! Susanna,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, native crafted some of the most famous nineteenth century American music by emulating Southern culture and Black music.

Minstrel troupes with Black performers helped ease tension and fear in the South following the Civil War. Many white Southerners were angry, fearful, and in denial that their way of life was changing. The humor of minstrel shows gave Black troupes an opportunity to appear less threatening. Cake walks continued to reinforce the image of the Black man as a buffoon.

Initially, the Black troupes were all male; however, by the twentieth century, women were permitted to join them. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey were two of the most famous female minstrel performers. Rainey toured with her husband, Pa Rainey, as part of a song and dance duo. Smith performed throughout the South in the early 1900s before making her way to Philadelphia in 1920 and beginning her career as a blues singer. Smith had been a student of Rainey, who became known as the mother of the blues.

Vaudeville surpassed minstrel shows in popularity in the late nineteenth century. Vaudeville comes from the French term vau-de-vire, referring to the Valley of the Vire in Normandy, where singers often performed risqué music for audiences. Vaudeville performances had no real plot or storyline. Instead, they featured an array of acts ranging from dance routines to animal acts. Sometimes, they included aspects of minstrelsy. The vaudeville style of theatre was popular until the early 1930s, when live acts began to be replaced by films.

The movie industry also sounded the death knell of minstrelsy, but the theatre style’s legacy continued in some films and later television. Though blackface was no longer considered a valid form of entertainment, the stereotypes constructed and reinforced through minstrel shows bled into television programming. Buffoonery, criminal behavior, hyper-aggression, hyper-sexualism, and ignorance were used to reinforce racist stereotypes. This continued emphasis extended beyond entertainment and into everyday life.

Further Insights

The stereotypes of Black men and women that were created through minstrel shows endure nearly two centuries later. For Black men, stereotypes fall typically in one of two categories: the Sambo or savage. The Sambo category exemplifies the intellectually limited Black man. Before the Civil War, the Sambo was the happy, non-threatening enslaved person who dutifully obeyed his enslaver. The savage represented the hyper-aggressive and/or hypersexual Black man. Stereotypes in this category are some of the most detrimental and long-lasting misrepresentations of Black men. Scholars point not only to portrayals in entertainment, but also to how police, journalists, and other groups with presumed power treat Black men. Most commonly, racial profiling, skewed or biased reporting, and prohibited social mobility are topics surrounding the stereotype.

The category of savage encompasses more specific stereotypes like the buck. Bucks represent hyperaggressive and hypersexual Black men. To further intensify an us-them relationship, bucks are depicted assaulting or otherwise taking advantage of women—most frequently white women. The term Black buck was used as a racial slur following the Civil War. It was reserved for those Black men who were said to be primitive, violent, and with no redeeming qualities. The slur coon, which comes from the word raccoon, was also used to describe Black men who were painted as sneaky or thieving. Like the buck stereotype, it dehumanizes Black men by comparing them to animals.

The category of Sambo also encompasses multiple common stereotypes that were and are still used as identity markers for Black men. Similar to the overarching category of Sambo, Uncle Tom is a name used to indicate a Black man is obedient and subservient, particularly toward a white man. The term, which was once considered a positive label, comes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’sCabin. The character Uncle Tom was a martyr who was devoted to his people. However, in modern times the name Uncle Tom is used to accuse an individual of being a traitor to the Black community or a sell-out.

Minstrel shows also constructed the identities of Black women. The stereotype of a mammy is the female equivalent to the obedient enslaved man and signifies someone who is jovial and motherly. Pearl Milling Company, formerly named Aunt Jemima, removed its trademark mammy from its packaging of products like maple syrup and pancake mixes in 2021 because of the racist connotations of the character. Two additional stereotypes of Black women include the Sapphire and the Jezebel, caricatures that appeared to varying degrees in minstrel shows. The term Sapphire paints the identity of an angry, loud, and overbearing Black woman but is often used to describe any powerful, confident, and assertive Black woman. A ramification of this stereotype is that young women fear their self-confidence may be taken as aggressiveness. Thus, they may limit themselves and their potential.

The term Jezebel dates back to Europeans first seeing Black men and women in Africa. African polygamy and tribal clothing were considered indicators of promiscuity. Black women were viewed as innately sexual, leaving them particularly vulnerable when they were kidnapped in Africa and enslaved in the United States. Black women were not only expected to take care of the children and homes of their enslavers but were also forced to submit to their enslavers’ carnal desires.

The music of the minstrel shows draws on Black culture to entertain white audiences. This is also seen in the twentieth century when white composers and artists drew on Black music to create songs for white audiences. Irving Berlin, for example, styled operas such as Porgy and Bess after African American music. His first hit song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” likewise mines Black culture. In the years that followed white artists emulated Black artists to create rock and roll for white audiences.

About the Author

Kalen Churcher earned her PhD in mass communications from the Penn State University in 2014. She is an associate professor of communication studies at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Before entering academia, she worked in both journalism and public relations fields.

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