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The general pattern of the use of ethnic symbols in American entertainment follows a rather close script. In it the outsider appears initially as a subject of ridicule, and, in time, assumes heroic proportions. This scenario is rampant in literature and drama. Shakespeare’s Shylock in A Merchant of Venice is a classical example. Today’s movies use the theme over and over, ad nauseum, because the star system tells us before we buy the ticket who will triumph at story’s end.
As a convention of our Revolutionary era there was the “Yankee” character, whose idiosyncrasies of thought and language were used in opposition to the refined “English manners” of his supposed betters. The theme was carried on long after that time. In fact, I think the “Toby” character of tented repertory was an extension of this “Yankee” personage, the rube who in the end proves wiser, or more clever, than his supposed social betters.
The German, the Irishman, and the Jew were all, in turn, characterized in this way in American entertainment. They all began as outsiders, objects of ridicule, and gradually displayed empathetic qualities which transformed them from the butts of jokes into the virtuous heroes of theatrical myth. There was one exception to this metamorphosis, the African as portrayed in the enormously popular minstrel shows of the nineteenth century.
As we know, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom was a sympathetic, though whining creature, but quite likely the very first novelistic treatment of a black man as a normal human being, having the emotional qualities of all humankind. Likewise, black characters on the stage, a phenomenon dating from before the Revolution, spoke the English of their day, without the exaggerations and the comicalities that made the minstrel show what it was, a portrayal of blacks as persons with no serious qualities. In the minstrel show they were seen as clowns, and it is not surprising, therefore, that when we look into the early days of such characterizations, we find them emanating from the circus ring.
Prior to this, however, an Englishman, one Charles Mathews, became fascinated by Afro-American speech and habits during a visit in 1822, and in a lecture titled “Scenes From America” blacked his face to sing a song “Possum Up a Gum Tree,” the first recorded example of a white man borrowing Negro material for a black-faced act. Unlike later portrayals, Mathews took his subjects seriously, and presented them just as he saw them, without exaggeration or condescension.
Robert C. Toll and Hans Nathans have written the most scholarly histories on Negro minstrelsy, and they agree that Thomas D. Rice’s character of “Jim Crow” was the first of what we might call the “rude” theatrical portrayals of black people. Rice observed an apparently crippled and elderly man doing an odd-looking dance while singing the words that eventually became the song “Jim Crow.” Rice copied the gestures and steps, and even purchased the man’s patched and tattered clothing for what became a novelty stage presentation. But most important, Rice performed the act in blackface. By doing this he cemented the racial feature to the eccentric gyrations. Unlike Mathews, Rice can be said to have made fun of his subject.
In all probability this characterization of a black man as poor, simple and comic merely reinforced prejudices already held by some of Rice’s audiences. There had been similar portrayals in the past, but none achieved the immense popularity of Rice’s Jim Crow character. And if in fact most of those who saw him and his followers in minstrelsy had never seen a black man, then they were presented with a cartoon which they had no way of knowing was such. I have to be careful, here, as I know of no study that has attempted to discern what the contemporary percentage of people was who had seen a black person before the Civil War.
The time-frame in which this all occurred is somewhat hazily marked. Rice is reported as doing what are described as “Negro bits” as entreaties as early as 1828, though the Jim Crow piece was apparently perfected a year later. One commentator wrote that it was first presented in Louisville; another claimed it was in Cincinnati. By 1832 he was performing it in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in November of that year made his New York debut at the Lafayette Theatre.
Now let us turn to the thesis of this paper, as embodied in its title, and that is the circus ring as the source of minstrelsy. To do this we must first examine the place of the comic song in the arenic performance, for it was as singers, rather than dancers or instrumentalists that the early performers of what became minstrelsy presented themselves. The art is almost as old as the American circus itself. As early as 1799 there is record of a song being sung in the ring, though it was not comic, nor was it done by the company’s clown. It was, in fact, an aberration, as we don’t find another singer in the ring until 1817. And we don’t see a comic song called that until 1821, this presented by a man dressed as a woman. James West’s Circus of that year had two singers on its roster, one comic, one not. In 1823 a Mister Roberts sang a comic song in the program of the Price &. Simpson Circus, but it was not until the following year that we find a clown offering comic songs. This was Hugh Lindsay, who made a distinction in his autobiography between acting the clown and singing comic songs.
From this point, that is from 1824, most circuses had a performer who sang comic songs, and it was almost always the company’s clown. The titles of the songs were seldom announced, the usual printed program saying simply, “Comic song by Mr. So-and-so.” Nor were comic songs the only ones offered. Female performers increasingly sang in the ring, sometimes in duets with male partners.
I am assuming that you understand I am speak here of the one ring circus, the forty-foot circle that defined the genre until 1873. In this configuration the audience was very close to the action, and a normal speaking or singing voice was audible to all those present.
As we said, T. D. Rice presented his character Jim Crow in 1829. This was the same year in which the song was sung in the circus. George Nichols of J. Purdy Brown’s company was the first to combine the character of the clown with a Negro song; however, he did not do this in blackface until later. In 1831 Brown’s circus had in its program what they called a minstrel scene, titled “Jim Crow.” This is the earliest use we’ve found of the word minstrel in connection with a circus. Moreover, it may be the first use of it in blackface entertainment. We hesitate to make this claim because our research into the matter is not exhaustive. Hans Nathans believed that the word came from a European singing troupe called the Tyrolean Minstrels who performed in America just prior to the time we speak of. The persons who presented Negro songs all seem to have called themselves Ethiopian Delineators or Extravaganza Singers. Why Brown used the word minstrel we don’t know, but suspect it came from George Nichols.
Nichols was a most unusual entertainer. T. Allston Brown in his history of Negro minstrelsy, which ran for two years in the New York Clipper, said of him: “George Nichols, the clown, attached for many years to Purdy Brown’s Theatre and Circus of the South and West, was also among the first of burnt cork gentry. Nichols was a man of no education, yet he was the author of many anecdotes, stories, verses, etc. He was original. He would compose the verses for his comic songs within ten minutes of the time of his appearance before the audience.”
To this point we have made a distinction between comic songs and Negro songs, but in his 1833 advertisements J. Purdy Brown erased the distinction, announcing as he did that Bob Farrell would sing the comic song “Zip Coon.” This was another of Nichols compositions, as was “Clare de Kitchen,” which William Creighton sang in the same circus that same month. Both of these songs became staples of minstrel shows, and, interestingly, represented characters from the opposite ends of the Afro-American existence, as seen by white persons.
Zip Coon was a street-wise urban character, whose dress mimicked that of the white dandies of the day, yet was a burlesque of that garb. In the words of Hans Nathan, he was a “Broadway Swell.” The tails of his coat were longer, his top hat was larger, his shoes were exaggerated just enough to preserve the style yet miss it. Some interpreters of the personage went so far as to use a lorgnette. The song “Long-Tailed Blue,” popular for many seasons, referred to his swallow-tailed coat. On the stage Zip Coon walked back and forth in exaggerated style while singing his autobiography. One verse went: “I sometimes wear mustachers but I lost em todder day for de glue was bad, de wind was high and so dey blowed away.”
The other song, “Clare de Kitchen,” was sung by a plantation woman who described sweeping the floor of her Kentucky home in preparation for a songfest. Clare was supposedly dialect for clear. The song was usually sung by a man in woman’s clothing.
These two depictions of Afro-American characters, the city dandy and the plantation worker, were eventually carried over from entr’ actes to the order of minstrel shows, in which the first part presented a cast dressed as we described Jim Crow above. The second part, after intermission, was a plantation scene with the performers in ragged clothing, burst shoes, and untamed hair styles. The instrumentation was different as well, the city scene using violins and banjos, the country folks having jawbones and tambourines.
To return to the circus ring, and the progressive use of blackface acts, we find Daniel Gardner, a native of New York City, who began his circus career as an eleven year-old property man at the Mount Pitt Circus in 1827. At twelve he sang songs in the ring, after which he learned to juggle and to walk the slack rope. Somewhere along the line he became a wench dancer, that is, a man who impersonated Negro women. In 1836, at twenty-years of age, he sang and danced as “Miss Dinah Crow,” and “Miss Lucy Long,” in Green & Waring’s Eagle Circus. By 1840 he and William Whitlock were performing on stage in duets, Whitlock as the male banjoist and Gardner as the object of his affections. Gardner reverted to the traditional clown’s role by 1842, probably because it paid better, and was steadier employment than wench dancing.
William Donaldson of Poughkeepsie, New York, was another performer who alternated between the clown of the ring and the theatre minstrel. He made his debut in 1836 as “Young Jim Crow,” being thirteen-years old at the time, and ten years later was known mainly as a clown.
The facts of circus and theatre employment in the early nineteenth century were that most circus performers had to find work in the winter. Only those at the very top of the profession could expect yearround positions. Of the two genres, the circus with its year-round traveling, was preferred to the short, peripatetic theatre business, where actors spent much of their time unemployed, just as they do today. To be able, as Ethiopian delineators were, to partake of both worlds, was a decided advantage. Once circuses had side-shows, a man who could appear in the ring as a clown, and in the side-show in blackface, was able to command a higher salary. This type of employment was generally possible after mid-century. Still later, after-show concerts, usually olios, or vaudeville, if you prefer, became de rigeur in the circus offering, and the blackface singers then moved back into the big top from the side-show.
The Macomber, Welch Menagerie of 1836 advertised that it would present a program of Negro singers in a separate pavilion, the earliest such announcement we have found, though we| suspect it was done some years before. A problem we have is that the notices didn’t necessarily distinguish between singing as part of the circus program and as an outside attraction.
The words “Minstrel Show,” as part of a circus appear in 1837 on the bills of the Lion Theatre Circus. And, strangest of all, J. J. Hall’s Boston Circus, in that same year, presented two minstrel scenes on horseback. These were titled “Coal Black Rose,” and “Zip Coon’s Visit to Cincinnati.” We haven’t the slightest idea why they were presented in this manner, but we do know that later in the century a circus did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” on horseback, perhaps the definitive version of that classic tale.
We can see from what has been drawn here that the stage has been set for the emergence of the true minstrel troupe. The combination of the music, the dancing, the comic patter that enthralled audiences for half a century was about to have its naissance. And that birth took place in the circus ring. Daniel Decatur Emmett, famed as the author of the song “Dixie,” was a printer in the winter and a circus musician in the summer. He joined the newly formed Cincinnati Circus in 1840. Fortunately for us, Charles J. Rogers was a partner in this little show, a man who was to become a very successful impresario, and therefore whose memories were in demand in later years. He recalled in a letter to the New York Clipper in 1874 that Emmett was a member of their orchestra, playing drums. In their travels in West Virginia, Emmett found a man named E Ferguson, who was a very accomplished banjo player. Emmett convinced the managers to hire the man. According to Rogers, by the time they reached Lexington, Kentucky, in the fall of 1840, Ferguson and the clown, Frank Brower, had perfected what we now call a minstrel act that was “the talk of the town.” Brower sang and danced, and Ferguson played the banjo.
Dan Emmett, in the meantime, had learned to play the banjo, and in the season of 1841, became an advertised performer. Brower, full name Francis Marion Brower, introduced “bone playing” in that same year. Ferguson disappeared from the bills about this time, and in the winter of 1842, instead of returning to the printing business in Cincinnati, Dan Emmett joined Brower in a show at the Franklin Theatre in New York. Richard Pelham and William Whitlock happened into the boarding house where Emmett and Brower were staying, and the four men began fooling around with their instruments, the bones, a banjo, a violin and a tambourine.
According to the Clipper, the four, without a rehearsal, and not really sure of what they were doing, crossed the street to the Bowery Circus, and brow beat Nathan Howes, the circus proprietor, into listening to them. “Boys, you’ve got a good thing,” Howes told them, and then refused to hire them because they wanted ten dollars a week apiece to play in his show.
They then went to Howes’ rival, the Welch & Mann Circus, where they were hired and gave the first performance by any minstrel troupe of what came to be the classic type. This occurred February 6, 1843. They were advertised in the New York Herald in this way: “First night of the novel, grotesque, original, and surprisingly melodious Ethiopian band, entitled the Virginia Minstrels, being an exclusively musical entertainment combining the banjo, violin, bone castanets, and tambourine, and entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas.”
From this beginning with Dan Emmett, Dick Pelham, Frank Brower and Billy Whitlock, the minstrel business became an independent genre, the first new popular entertainment. It thrived until the end of the century. For sixty years or more Negro minstrel troupes toured the country, growing in number and sophistication. Standard companies had as many as forty men, gave street parades, built their own theatres in larger cities, and though never approaching the size of the circus audience, were certainly a major component of nineteenth-century professional entertainment.
We wouldn’t countenance such performances today, and rightfully so, I believe. There was nothing of value about it beyond the artistry of the individual performers. It was demeaning and debasing to black people in a way no other ethnic impersonation proved to be. There was some disapproval. A writer to a Montgomery, Alabama, newspaper objected to: “The indecent dress and the coarse actions of the performers, obscene jokes, vulgar songs and dances of men who have debased themselves by assuming and playing the part of Negroes make the [entire ensemble] more disgusting than the orgies of Bacchus.”
And another, in an 1836 Norfolk, Virginia, newspaper said: “[The circus] would be more respectable, and more profitable if they would eschew frequent exhibitions of black characters. Singing of gross and meretricious songs beclouds the excellence of the equestrianism.”
But these objections were few in number, and overwhelmed by public acceptance of the entertainment. For one thing, it was seen as an American form, as opposed to most of the entertainment of the day, which was thought to be European, and therefore “effete.” And absent the racial mockery, we can see that the minstrel shows were entertaining. The music was lively and the dances were ingenious, and the comedy was broad and down-to-earth. It glorified humble characters with earthy song and dance. It is said that these shows were the seedbed of jazz music, and it is not difficult to accept that opinion.
Yet over all of it hung that haze of ridicule, that stigma of racism that makes it seem to us today simply unacceptable. Maya Angelou, our Poet Laureate, has written: “Minstrel shows caricatured every aspect of the black man’s life, beginning with his sexuality. They portrayed the black man as devoid of all sensibilities and sensitivities. They minimized and diminished the possibility of familial love.”
That was its weakness, but it was half-a-century before it bore the worm that killed it. Essentially, the minstrel show allowed white people to justify their racial feelings. That it originally sprang from the most popular of public entertainment, the circus, which offered no moral attitudes, no political agenda, seems strange indeed.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.