Minstrelsy

Minstrelsy, a popular form of nineteenth‐century urban entertainment.Between 1843 and the Civil War, dozens of troupes of white men in blackface performed minstrelsy in cities across America. Presented as a loosely structured series of songs, jokes, dances, variety acts, and skits, minstrelsy depicted foolish, sensual, and sentimental images of African Americans for native‐born workers, Irish immigrants, rural newcomers, and other white working‐class males who constituted its primary audience. By presenting images of a degraded Other, minstrelsy helped to bridge ethnic and cultural differences among white workers, who consequently came to define their class allegiances in racial terms. After the Civil War, the production and reception of minstrelsy changed, as women and African Americans performed on the minstrel stage and audiences included more middle‐class, white spectators and some African Americans. Blackface acts remained generally racist, however, even as individual performers joined vaudeville, burlesque, and other forms of popular culture in the 1890s.

The conventions of white performers “blacking up” derived from European traditions. The black face had long signified a trickster figure in folk rituals of inversion, including charivari shaming rites and many Anglo‐American festivals. Thomas D. Rice, George Washington Dixon, and other blackface performers popular in the 1830s combined these musical and theatrical traditions with African‐American costuming, dancing, and instrumental practices. After the formation of the first minstrel troupe in 1843, blackface musicians appropriated other performance elements from the intercultural life of the plantation South. These included the corn‐shucking ritual, which influenced the beginning of the show and the banter among minstrel comics.

Both Jacksonian republicanism and northern conceptions of the slave South shaped this working‐class entertainment. Idealized images of happy slaves and generous masters (especially evident in the minstrel music of Stephen Foster) pervaded minstrelsy in the 1850s, encouraging audiences to denigrate free as well as enslaved African Americans. At the same time, minstrelsy lampooned professional pretensions by parodying lawyers and politicians, and undercut elite power by satirizing the rich. In addition to sentimentalizing light‐skinned female slaves, minstrelsy attacked assertive women through its ridicule of the “wench” character; men played both of these female roles in ways that encouraged homosocial enjoyment.

Although African Americans had appeared on minstrel stages before 1861, their numbers increased after the Civil War. Successful in part because of their claim to delineate authentic Negro life, black troupes nonetheless continued the stereotypes of the carefree Jim Crow, loyal Uncle Tom, and dandified Zip Coon. The interracial popularity of African‐American performer Billy Kersands induced some southern theater owners to suspend racially segregated seating practices when his troupe came to town. The success of burlesque in the late 1860s spawned several all‐female white troupes performing standard minstrel routines in whiteface. Bourgeois interest in gender difference and sexual desire also led to the popularity of female impersonators. The large companies and sumptuous productions of Jack H. Haverly revived minstrely in the 1880s, but the rise of vaudeville soon splintered the troupes and dispersed their performers.

Minstrelsy traditions continued to shape the careers of such performers as Bert Williams and Al Jolson; popular entertainment, including the “Amos ’n’ Andy” radio show; and the larger contours of race relations in the United States. Minstrelsy also proved immensely popular in England and the British Empire; indeed, it influenced the social construction of “whiteness” throughout the world.
See also Antebellum Era; Gilded Age; Music: Popular Music; Race and Ethnicity; Racism; Slavery; Social Class; Working‐Class Life and Culture.

Bibliography

Robert C. Toll , Blacking‐Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth‐Century America, 1974.

Bruce McConachie