They were directed not at the Fair but at the American public. Of the demonstrators, less than half were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct that were later dropped, and seven people sustained minor injuries.
Both sides were eager to avoid the violence that continued to rage in the South. Less than eight months prior, four black girls were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church. In January , Louis Allen, a black Mississippi man who had witnessed the murder of a voting-rights activist, was shot to death in his driveway.
Critical response was mixed, but all of the reviewers commented on the politics of the production. There is nothing in this show detrimental to or ridiculing Negroes.
In fact, it is a satire on the old-style minstrel show. At one point, it was even something of a critical success: in , it won the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux. In May , for instance, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination submitted a petition calling for the show to be axed. There was at least one determined voice of opposition within the BBC.
The current protest has renewed the passions. The BBC says that the Black and White Minstrels is "a traditional show enjoyed by millions for what it offers in good-hearted family entertainment". I think it was George Melly's comment that the same was said of throwing Christians to the lions. Bean, p. The most important masquerades are those through which the spirits enter the human world.
In these, the human performer is not simply hidden from view, but is the embodied spirit. The supernatural and secret ability makes the mask, the masker, and the masquerade sacred and powerful.
While Africans in the Americas did not have the physical mask, they often continued these sacred rituals by subsuming African sacred practices in Christian religious practices and icons, which gave rise to such syncretic religions as Vodun, Candomble, and Santeria.
Masking was also used to conceal secular rituals such as the African martial arts calinda and capoeira. I venture to think and dare to state that our profession does more toward the alleviation of color prejudice than any other profession among colored people. The fact of the matter is this, that we come into contact with more white people in a week than other professional colored people meet in a year and more than some meet in a whole decade…When a large audience leaves the theatre after a creditable two and a half hour performance by Negroes, I am sure the Negro race is raised in the estimation of the people….
Yet, masking did not always shield these performers from danger. Shortly after midnight on the morning of Sunday, February 16, , black minstrel performer Louis Wright was lynched by hanging in New Madrid, Missouri. Prior to the performance, he was involved in an altercation with several white men from the town.
The performance itself was marred with insults and jeers hurled from the audience. After the minstrels left the stage, a few white men rushed it in an apparent attempt to harm or even lynch some of the performers. However, there was something minstrel audiences did not see.
They did not see how Africa took to the American stage and created what would be the first known American theater form. They would not know that the banjo itself is an adaptation of the West African kora and continues the tradition of the djeli in the Americas. In these, the human performer is not simply hidden from view, but is the embodied spirit, through stomping, clapping, and the percussive striking of the body.
During the next half century, the minstrel show would be the most popular form of entertainment in America, for it was perfectly suited to the tastes of everyday Americans. As the upbeat overture quieted the noisy crowd and the curtain rose, the eight minstrels would burst into action, strutting, singing, waving their arms, banging their tambourines, and prancing around a semicircle of chairs.
He dances to the tune, he throws open the lapel of his coat, and in a final spasm of delight, he stands upon his head on the chair seat and for a thrilling and evanescent instant extends his nether extremities in the air. Cruel and crude racial stereotypes were were the minstrel's stock in trade.
Created by the original Virginia Minstrels, he was one of hundreds of similar preening, irresponsible, impossibly overdressed characters who strutted their gaudy stuff on the minstrel stage. Collection of Lester Levy. Born in Pittsburgh in , Foster was exposed in his youth to all types of music. Foster's genius as a songwriter was that he combined the qualities of black and white folk music in songs that were easy to sing and play.
Minstrel humor ranged from skits to one-liners, from slapstick to riddles. In this punchy language play, minstrels were beginning to introduce the rapid-fire humor of the city, the humor later perfected in vaudeville, burlesque, and radio. The courting couple was another minstrel staple, with the girl typically played by a man. Such lovers were usually lampooned less savagely than the dandy, since their carefree plantation world represented little threat to city audiences.
Minstrel slapstick could be quite elaborate. Finally, the canine hydrophobiac pounced on the thief, biting, snarling, and barking as the stage exploded with action and real fireworks. It was a top-notch variety show performed in blackface and black dialect. Race was a central part of its initial and enduring appeal.
The Northern white public before the Civil War generally knew little about black people. Minstrels created two sets of contrasting stereotypes—the happy, frolicking plantation darkies and the foolish, inept urban fools. Not even religion was off-limits to minstrel performances. Hughey Dougherty played another stock character, the elderly preacher haranguing his enthusiastic flock, mispronouncing big words and parading misinformation.
In rural America, scuffling tent-show troupes like Atkins Brothers, Medicine Men Minstrels, traveled the countryside performing under canvas, and peddling a little snake oil on the side. The stereotyped plantation was also the home of an idealized, interracial family: master and mistress were the loving parents and all the darkies, regardless of age, their children.
The most popular black members of this family were the mammy and the old uncle, specialty roles that provided some minstrels with long, successful careers.
These aging black folks stood for the loyalty, love, and family values the minstrel plantation preserved in a mythic setting.
In minstrel shows, blacks lived either on Southern plantations where they were contented and secure, or in Northern towns where they were bewildered and insecure-which is probably very much the way life seemed to the many minstrel fans who had recently moved from farms to cities.
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