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The Darker Image: American Negro Minstrelsy through the Historian's Lens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

George F. Rehin
George F. Rehin
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1975 , pp. 365 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 Toll, Robert C., Blacking Up, The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford University Press, New York, 1974, $10.95; £6.25). Pp. 310Google Scholar.

2 Three items may be cited as a sufficient sample of scholarly failure: Bode, Carl, The Anatomy of American Popular Culture, 1840–1861 (Berkeley, 1959)Google Scholar neglects minstrelsy save for a passing reference in connexion with Stephen Foster, who ‘ was simply writing very catchy minstrel songs ’ (pp. 26–9); Glass, Paul, ‘ A Hiatus in American Music History ’, Afro-American Studies, 1 (1970), 111–24Google Scholar, dealing with neglected black American musicians (drawn from Trotter's work, see infra) fails to mention genuine black minstrels and provides one erroneous paragraph, 120, on blackface minstrelsy; Hatch, James V., ‘ A White Folks Guide to 200 years of Black and White Drama ’, The Drama Review, 16 (1972), 5–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is similarly erroneous on the minstrel show and slights the black form.

3 My measure is based on a count of titles listed in Gillis, Frank and Merriam, Alan P. (comps.), Ethnomusicology and Folk Music: An International Bibliography of Dissertations and Theses (Middletown, Conn., 1966)Google Scholar. The two on minstrelsy are Davidson, Frank Costellow, ‘ The Rise, Development, Decline and Influence of the American Minstrel Show ’ (Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1952)Google Scholar and Patterson, Cecil Lloyd, ‘ A Different Drum: The Image of the Negro in the Nineteenth Century Popular Song Books ’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1961)Google Scholar.

4 Boskin, Joseph, ‘ Sambo: The National Jester in the Popular Culture ’, in Nash, Gary B. and Weiss, Richard (eds.), The Great Fear: Race in the Mind of America (New York, 1970), pp. 165–85, 185, 169Google Scholar.

5 From ‘ The Minstrel Show ’ (in Twain's Autobiography) printed in Mark Twain in Eruption, De Voto, Bernard (ed.), (New York, 1968), pp. 110–16, 110Google Scholar.

6 Handy, W. C., The Father of the Blues (New York, 1970), p. 66Google Scholar.

7 Quoted without source, as epigraph, in Marshall, and Stearns, Jean, ‘ Frontiers of Humor: American Vernacular Dance ’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, 30 (1966), 227Google Scholar.

8 K[innard], J. Jr, ‘ Who Are Our National Poets? ’, Knickerbocker Magazine, 26 (1845), 331–41Google Scholar. See also Nathanson, Y. S., ‘ Negro Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern ’, Putnam's Monthly, 5 (1855), 72–9Google Scholar. Both these are conveniently reprinted in Jackson, Bruce (ed.), The Negro and his Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals (Austin, 1967)Google Scholar.

9 De Voto, Bernard, Year of Decision, 1846 (Boston, 1943), p. 138Google Scholar.

10 Deutsch, Babette, ‘ America in the Arts ’, Musical Quarterly, 7 (1921), 307Google Scholar.

11 Dicey, Edward, Spectator of America (London, 1972), p. 198Google Scholar.

12 Trotter, James Monroe, Music and Some Highly Musical People (Boston, 1881), pp. 270–82, 273Google Scholar.

13 ‘ The Negro in Literature and Arts ’, originally in Annals, 1913; reprinted in Meyer Weinberg (ed.), W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader (Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 231–2.

14 Levy, Eugene, James Weldon Johnson: Black header Black Voice (University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 75–98Google Scholar; Johnson, James Weldon, Black Manhattan (New York, 1930), p. 87Google Scholar.

15 Hutton, Laurence, Curiosities of the American Stage (London, 1891), pp. 89–144, 99Google Scholar.

16 White, Newman I., ‘ The Whiteman in the Woodpile ’, American Speech, 4 (1929), 207–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Gaines, Francis P., The Southern Plantation (New York, 1924), Chaps. 5 and 6, particularly pp. 96–111, 130–42Google Scholar.

18 See, for example, Gregory, Montgomery, ‘ The Drama of Negro Life ’, in Locke, Alain (ed.), The New Negro (New York, 1925), p. 155Google Scholar, and other contributions. Before the recent wave of criticism the clearest indictment of racism in minstrelsy may be found in Winter, Marian Hannah, ‘ Juba and American Minstrelsy ’ in Magriel, Paul (ed.), Chronicles of American Dance (New York, 1948), pp. 39–63Google Scholar.

19 Wittke, Carl, Tambo and Bones (Durham, N.C., 1930), p. 135Google Scholar.

20 Rourke, Constance, Troupers of the Gold Coast (New York, 1928)Google Scholar; American Humor (New York, 1931)Google Scholar; ‘ Traditions for a Negro Literature ’ in The Roots of American Culture and Other Essays (New York, 1942)Google Scholar.

21 American Humor, Anchor Books edition, pp. 90, 232–3.

22 My treatment of Rourke is greatly influenced by the fine discussion of Bluestein, Gene, The Voice of the Folk (University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), pp. 64–79Google Scholar.

23 See, e.g., Southern, Eileen, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York, 1971), pp. 100–2Google Scholar.

24 Dormon, James H., ‘ The Strange Career of Jim Crow Rice ’, Journal of Social History, 3 (1969), 108–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, Alan W. C., ‘ “ Jim Crow ”, “ Zip Coon ”: The Northern Origins of Negro Minstrelsy ’, Massachusetts Review, 11 (1970), 385–97Google Scholar; Nye, Russell, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York, 1970), pp. 162–9, 308–15, 162, 167Google Scholar.

25 Huggins, Nathan Irvin, Harlem Renaissance (New York, 1971), pp. 244–70 passim.Google Scholar

26 One substantial and original work not so far mentioned is Nathan, Hans, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman, Okla., 1962)Google Scholar, which incorporates several earlier papers, rightly called ‘ sovereign ’ by a recent historian of American music. Limited space precludes fuller discussion of it here, but its import is that minstrelsy was musically a cultural melange with perhaps Euro-American elements predominating, which also influenced later American music significantly.

27 I deal with some aspects of this issue in a forthcoming paper, ‘ Harlequin Jim Crow: Continuity and Convergence in Blackface Clowning ’, Journal of Popular Culture.

28 Toll, op. cit., p. 33. Further page references are given in brackets in the text.

29 Toll treats ‘ Mose the B'howery B'hoy ’ as the typical common man of urban America (see pp. 14–15), and regards minstrelsy as largely a Northern, urban phenomenon, which leads him to employ the term b'hoy throughout. This is one of the least convincing aspects of this study, a corollary of the inadequate investigation of audiences, for Toll relies on Grimsted, David's findings, Melodrama Unveiled (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar, with little attempt to verify the implied equation of minstrel and melodrama audiences. Since the blackface show was found on many stages throughout America – circus, wagon show, museum – besides the theatrical one, the identification of the common man and typical spectator with the b'hoy seems misinformed and illogical.

30 No shibboleth at that time according to Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker 1840–1860 (Chicago, 1964), p. xv nGoogle Scholar.; see also pp. 25, 42, 84, 94, 151, 225 for examples of the use of the ‘ slave ’ image which suggest a wider resonance.

31 [Harrison, J. B.], Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life and Other Papers (Boston, 1880), pp. 178–87, 181–2Google Scholar. A full understanding of popular entertainment in America can only emerge from a deeper study of the social life, in its widest sense, of the people, such as so admirably exemplified by Gutman, Herbert G., ‘ Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–1919 ’, American Historical Review, 78 (1973), 531–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which provided the original reference to Harrison, 564. Gutman fails to mention that the black singer, who discussed his circumstances with Harrison on a later occasion, was a professional minstrel performer and songwriter, which from my perspective adds considerable point to the episode.

32 Lack of space prevents me from dealing adequately with Toll's study in several respects. An analysis that rests heavily on published lyrics, jokes and skits, that attempts no study of music, that is nor informed by the sociology of communication or the popular theatre (although it is informed by the social psychology of race relations) and has no comparative dimension necessarily poses problems. But minstrelsy was an extraordinarily complex institution; it will continue to defy any but the most polymathic of historians. Saxton, Alexander's paper, ‘ Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology ’, American Quarterly, 27 (1975), 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which treats minstrelsy mainly as a political institution propagating the Democratic party line and defending white supremacy, raises many of the same problems, but it does not advance beyond Toll although it suggests some new avenues of content analysis.