Blackface

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This reproduction of a 1900 minstrel show poster, originally published by the Strobridge Litho Co., shows the transformation from white to "black".

Blackface is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to affect the countenance of an iconic, racist, American archetype, that of the "darky" or "coon". Blackface also refers to a genre of musical and comedic theatrical presentation in which blackface makeup is worn. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork, then later greasepaint, to affect jet-black skin and exaggerated lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tails or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.

Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for over 100 years and was extremely popular overseas, as well. The negative archetypes that comprised the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a seminal role in cementing and proliferating racist images and perceptions of, and attitudes about, blacks worldwide. The once ubiquitous racist caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist in some quarters to the present day and are an ongoing cause of controversy.

By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. However, it remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device, mostly outside the U.S., and is more commonly utilized today as edgy social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring impact of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African American culture to an international audience—albeit through an often grotesquely distorted lens. Blackface minstrelsy's groundbreaking appropriation, exploitation and assimilation of African American culture—as well as the inter-ethnic artistic collaborations which stemmed from it—were but a prologue to the lucrative packaging, marketing and dissemination of African American cultural expression, and its myriad derivative forms, in today's world popular culture.

History and the shaping of racist archetypes

It is commonly believed that Lewis Hallam, Jr., an Anglo-American comedic actor, popularized blackface as a theatrical device when playing the role of an inebriated black man onstage in 1789. The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style. White comedian Thomas D. Rice later popularized blackface, introducing the song "Jump Jim Crow" and an accompanying dance in his stage act in 1828. The song had a syncopated rhythm and purportedly recreated the dancing of a crippled, black stable hand, Jim Cuff, or "Jim Crow", whom Rice had seen in Cincinnati, Ohio:

This postcard, published circa 1908, shows a white minstrel team. While both are wearing wigs, the man on the left is also in blackface and drag.
First on de heel tap,
Den on the toe
Every time I wheel about
I jump Jim Crow.
Wheel about and turn about
En do j's so.
And every time I wheel about,
I jump Jim Crow.
-- 1823 sheet music

Rice travelled the U.S., performing under the pseudonym "Daddy Jim Crow". The name later became attached to statutes that further codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction.

Initially, blackface performers were part of travelling troupes who performed in minstrel shows. In addition to music and dance, minstrel shows featured comical skits in which performers portrayed buffoonish, lazy, superstitious black characters who were cowardly and lascivious, lusted after white women, who stole, lied pathologically and mangled the English language. Such troupes in the early days of minstrelsy were all-male, so cross-dressing white men also played black women who often were either unappealingly and grotesquely mannish or highly sexually provocative. At the time, the stage also featured comic stereotypes of conniving, venal Jews; cheap Scotsmen; drunken Irishmen; ignorant white southerners; gullible rural folk; and the like.

Minstrel shows were a fantastically popular show business phenomenon in the U.S. from 1828 through the 1930s, also enjoying some popularity in the UK and in parts of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. As a result, the genre played a powerful role in shaping racist perceptions of and prejudices about African Americans in particular and blacks, generally.

By 1840, African-American performers also were performing in blackface makeup. White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music and speaking ersatz black dialects. Reminiscing about such shows he had seen in his youth, American humorist and author Mark Twain commented in dictated notes almost 50 years later:

…I suppose, the real nigger-show—the genuine nigger-show, the extravagant nigger-show— the show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but…the nigger-show [is] a standard and a summit to whose rarefied altitude the other forms of musical art may not hope to reach.

The songs of northern composer Stephen Foster figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period. Though written in dialect, they were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Foster's works treated slaves and the South in general with an often cloying sentimentality that appealed to white audiences of the day.

Bert Williams was the only black member of the Ziegfeld Follies when he joined them in 1910. Shown here in blackface, he was the highest-paid African-American entertainer of his day.

When all-black minstrel shows began to proliferate the 1860s, however, they in turn often were billed as "authentic" and "the real thing". Despite often smaller budgets and smaller venues, their public appeal sometimes rivalled that of white minstrel troupes. In the execution of authentic black music and the percussive, polyrhythmic tradition of "pattin' Juba," when the only instruments performers used were their hands and feet, clapping and slapping their bodies and shuffling and stomping their feet, black troupes like Charles Hicks' "Georgia Minstrels" excelled. The company became highly successful and eventually was taken over by Charles Callendar, the troupe's first white manager. The Georgia Minstrels toured the United States and abroad, and later became Haverly's European Minstrels.

African American blackface productions also contained mocking buffoonery and comedy; but for many black artists it was simply good-natured self-parody. In the early days of African-American involvement in theatrical performance, blacks could not perform without blackface makeup, regardless of how dark-skinned they were; but blackface minstrelsy was a practical and often relatively lucrative livelihood when compared to the menial labor to which most blacks were relegated. Owing to the discrimination of the day, "corking up" (or "blacking up") provided an often singular opportunity for African American musicians, actors and dancers to practice their crafts. Some minstrel shows, particularly when performing outside the South, also managed subtly to poke fun at the racist attitudes and double standards of white society or champion the abolitionist cause. It was through blackface performers, white and black, that the richness and exuberance of African-American music, humor and dance first reached mainstream, white audiences in the U.S. and abroad.

Blackface remained a popular theatrical device well into the 20th century, crossing over from the minstrel troupe touring circuit to vaudeville, to motion pictures, then to television. In the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), an all-black vaudeville circuit organized in 1909, blackface acts were a popular staple. Called "Toby" for short, performers also nicknamed it "Tough on Black Actors" (or, variously, "Artists", or "Asses"), because earnings were so meager. Still, TOBA headliners could make a very good living, and even for lesser players, TOBA provided fairly steady, more desirable work than generally was available elsewhere. Blackface served as a springboard for hundreds of artists and entertainers, black and white, many of whom later would go on to find work in other performance traditions. In fact, one of the most famous stars of Haverly's European Minstrels was Sam Lucas, who became known as the "Grand Old Man of the Negro Theatre". It was Lucas who later played the title role in the first cinematic production of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Many well-known entertainers of stage and screen also performed in blackface, including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope and actor and comedian Bert Williams, who was the first black performer in vaudeville and on Broadway (see: List of entertainers known to have performed in blackface for more). But apart from cultural references such as those seen in theatrical cartoons, onstage blackface essentially was eliminated in the U.S., post-vaudeville, when public sensibilities regarding race began to change and blackface became increasingly associated with racism and bigotry.

Blackface and darky iconography

Florence Kate Upton's Golliwogg and friends in 1895. Described as "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome," for many children, he was their introduction to black people. Note the formal minstrel attire.

The darky icon itself — googly-eyed; with inky skin; exaggerated white, pink or red lips; and bright, white teeth — became a common motif first in the U.S., then worldwide, in entertainment, children's literature, mechanical banks and other toys and games of all sorts, cartoons and comic strips, advertisements, jewelry, textiles, postcards, sheet music, food branding and packaging, and other consumer goods.

In 1895, the Golliwogg surfaced in Great Britain, the product of American-born children's book illustrator Florence Kate Upton, who modelled her ragdoll character Golliwogg after a minstrel doll she had in the U.S. as a child. "Golly", as he later affectionately came to be called, had a typically jet-black face; wild, wooly hair; bright, red lips; and sported formal minstrel attire. The generic, British golliwog later made its way back across the Atlantic as dolls, toy tea sets, ladies' perfume and in a myriad of other forms; and, it is believed, contributed the ethnic slur wog to the English lexicon.

American darky images and Upton's minstrel doll-inspired Golliwogg had a profound influence on the way blacks were depicted worldwide. Black and white minstrel troupes toured Europe and were somewhat successful for a time. As in the U.S., there was a history of involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and an ongoing European colonial presence in Africa and the Caribbean, as well. Shared notions of white supremacy contributed to the popularity of darky iconography, which proliferated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unlike in the United States, however, in Europe and Asia, scant resident populations of people of black African descent posed little challenge to the racist attitudes of the day. As a result, blackface and darky iconography and the stereotypes they perpetuated prompted no notable objections and, consequently, sensibilities regarding them often have been very different from those in America. For Europeans and Asians, many of whom had never seen a black person in the flesh before World War II, the racist iconography of the blackface darky — grotesque caricatures born of whites ridiculing blacks — as in the United States, became de rigueur. Internationally, darky icons proliferated far beyond the minstrel stage and, for many nonblacks, became reified in the human beings they denigrated. The grinning, pop-eyed distortions acquired a life of their own. By the 1920s and '30s, for example, French posters advertising performances by even respected and beloved performers like Josephine Baker and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson routinely were in the darky mold. After the Second World War, Japan flooded the U.S. with darky and mammy kitchenware, ashtrays, toys and ceramics.

Darky iconography frequently adorned the covers of sheet music from the 1870s through the 1940s, but all but disappeared by the 1950s.

U.S. cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s often featured characters in blackface gags as well as other racial caricatures. Blackface was one of the influences in the development of characters like Mickey Mouse. The United Artists 1933 release "The Mellerdrammer" — the name a corruption of "melodrama" thought to harken back to the earliest minstrel shows — was a film short based on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mickey, of course, was already black; but for this role he was depicted with exaggerated, orange lips; bushy, white sidewhiskers; and, of course, his now trademark white gloves.

In the U.S., by the 1950s, the NAACP had begun calling attention to such demeaning portrayals of African Americans and mounted a campaign to put an end to blackface performances and depictions. For decades, darky images had been omnipresent, particularly in the branding of everyday products and commodities such as Picaninny Freeze ice cream, the Coon Chicken Inn restaurant chain and the like. With the eventual successes of the modern day Civil Rights Movement, such blatantly racist branding practices ended in the U.S., and blackface became an American taboo.

Modern-day manifestations

Over time, blackface and darky iconography became artistic and stylistic devices associated with art deco and the Jazz Age. By the 1950s and '60s, particularly in Europe, where it was more widely tolerated, blackface became a kind of outré, camp convention in some artistic circles. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a popular British musical variety show that featured blackface performers, and remained on British television until 1978. Actors and dancers in blackface appeared in music videos such as Taco Ockerse's "Puttin' on the Ritz" and Grace Jones's "Slave to the Rhythm", which aired regularly on MTV during the 1980s.

Darky iconography, while generally considered taboo in the U.S., still persists around the world. When trade and tourism produce a confluence of cultures, bringing differing sensibilities regarding blackface into contact with one another, the results can be jarring. Darky iconography is still popular in Japan today, but when Japanese toymaker Sanrio Corporation exported a darky-icon character doll in the 1990s, the ensuing controversy prompted Sanrio to halt production. Foreigners visiting the Netherlands in November and December are often shocked or appalled at the sight of whites in classic blackface as a character known as Zwarte Piet, whom many Dutch nationals love as a symbol of Christmas. Travellers to Spain have expressed dismay at seeing "Conguito", [1] a tubby, little brown character with full, red lips, as the trademark for Conguitos, a confection manufactured by the LACASA Group. In Britain, "Golly", [2] a blackface golliwog character, finally fell out of favor in 2001 after almost a century as the trademark of jam producer James Robertson & Sons; but the debate still continues whether the golliwog should be banished in all forms from further commercial production and display, or preserved as a treasured childhood icon. The influence of blackface on branding and advertising, as well as on perceptions and portrayals of blacks, generally, can be found worldwide. Black and brown products, particularly, such as licorice and chocolate, remain commodities most frequently paired with darky iconography.

The Netherlands' Zwarte Piet

A white Netherlander in blackface costume as Zwarte Piet

Zwarte Piet, or "Black Peter", is a character in Dutch Christmas lore, described variously as a slave or servant of Sinterklaas whose feast, mainly targeted at children, is celebrated December 5th or 6th. Some sources indicate that Zwarte Piet originally was a conquered devil, rather than a Moor. [3] A less sinister, Dutch version of the evil Knecht Ruprecht, Zwarte Piet is often characterized variously as buffoonish, mean, mischievous and stupid. Once portrayed realistically, Zwarte Piet became a classic darky icon in the mid-to-late 19th century, contemporaneous with the spread of blackface iconography. To this day, holiday revellers in the Netherlands blacken their faces; wear afro wigs and bright, red lipstick; and walk the streets, throwing candy to passers by, many behaving dim-wittedly and speaking mangled Dutch as embodiments of Zwarte Piet.

Accepted in the past without controversy in a once largely ethnically homogeneous nation, today Zwarte Piet is somewhat controversial and is greeted with mixed reactions. Many see him as a cherished Christmas tradition and look forward to his annual appearance. Others, most notably, perhaps, many of the country's people of color, detest him. Parents often tell their children that Zwarte Piet will punish them if they have been naughty. As a result, some Dutch children fear Zwarte Piet and have been known to cling to their parents, bursting into tears when approached by Zwarte Piet impersonators. Other white Dutch children believe their black classmates will grow up to be Zwarte Piet. Still others stare and point at black people they encounter on the street, exclaiming, "Look! There's a Zwarte Piet!" Blackfaced, googly-eyed, red-lipped Zwarte Piet dolls, diecuts and displays adorn store windows alongside brightly displayed, smartly packaged holiday merchandise. Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, are often bewildered and mortified. As a result of the allegations of racism, some attempts have been made to replace the blackface makeup worn by Zwarte Piet impersonators with face paint in alternative colors such as green or purple. This practice, however, has not caught on. So, at least once a year in the Netherlands, the debate over the harmlessness, or racism, of Zwarte Piet resurfaces—along with, the usual, smiling golliwog dolls; strolling "Zwarte Pieten" tossing sweets to eager children and other passersby; and the sometimes jarring Yuletide, storefront-darky images.[4]

The "coons" of Cape Town and Auckland

Inspired by blackface minstrels who visited Cape Town, South Africa, in 1848, former Javan and Malaysian slaves took up the minstrel tradition, holding emancipation celebrations which consisted of music, dancing and parades. In the African-American cakewalk tradition, their songs often parodied their former masters and the privileged, white class. Such celebrations eventually became consolidated into an annual, year-end event known as the Cape Coon Carnival.

Today, carnival minstrels are mostly Coloured ("mixed race"), Afrikaans-speaking revellers. Often in blackface, they parade down the streets of the city in colorful costumes, in a celebration of Creole culture. Participants also pay homage to the carnival's African American roots, playing Negro spirituals and jazz featuring traditional Dixieland jazz instruments, including horns, banjos, and tambourines.[5]

The term "coon" has been appropriated by carnival participants over time, who don't regard it as a pejorative. However, the name was changed to the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival in 2003, so as to avoid offending tourists. Former South African president Nelson Mandela endorsed the carnival in 1986, and is a member of the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association, which presides over the event. Now officially more than a hundred years old, the carnival has become a major tourist attraction, vigorously promoted by the nation's tourism authority, complete with corporate sponsorship.

A multi-ethnic group of New Zealanders, taking their cue from the Cape Town tradition, have started their own "Cape Coon troupe", calling themselves the "Auckland City Dukes". Wearing modified minstrel attire and pared down blackface makeup, the Dukes participate in the annual Cape Town Minstrel Carnival and enthusiastically embrace the "coon" moniker.[6]

In the U.S.

The darky, or coon, archetype blackface played such a profound role in creating remains a persistent thread in American culture. It continues to resurface. Animation utilizing darky iconography aired on U.S. television routinely as late as the mid-1990s, and still can be seen in specialty time slots on such networks as TCM. In 1993, white actor Ted Danson ignited a firestorm of controversy when he appeared at a Friars Club roast in blackface, delivering a risqué shtick written by his then love interest, African American comedienne Whoopi Goldberg. Recently, gay, white performer Chuck Knipp, has used drag, blackface, and broad racial caricature while portraying a character named "Shirley Q. Liquor" in his cabaret act, generally performed for all-white audiences. Knipp's outrageously stereotypical character has drawn criticism and prompted demonstrations from black, gay and transgender activists. [7]

Blackface and minstrelsy also serve as the theme of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled (2000). It tells of a black television executive who reintroduces the old blackface style and is horrified by its success.

In 2002 and 2003, there were several inflammatory blackface "incidents" where white college students donned blackface as part of presumably innocent, but insensitive, gags—or as part of an acknowledged climate of racism and intolerance on campus. [8] Further, commodities bearing darky iconic images, from tableware, soap, toy marbles to home accessories and t-shirts, continue to be manufactured and marketed in the U.S. and elsewhere. Some are reproductions of historical artifacts, while others are so-called "fantasy" items, newly designed and manufactured for the marketplace. There is a thriving niche market for such items in the U.S., particularly, as well as for original artifacts of darky iconography. Prices for many vintage pieces have skyrocketed since the 1970s.

Despite its racist portrayals, blackface was the conduit through which African American and African American-influenced music, comedy, and dance first reached the American mainstream. It played a seminal role in the introduction of African American culture to world audiences. Wrote jazz historian Gary Giddings in Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, The Early Years 1903-1940:

Though antebellum (minstrel) troupes were white, the form developed in a form of racial collaboration, illustrating the axiom that defines—and continues to define—American music as it developed over the next century and a half: African American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.

Virtually every important stylistic innovation in popular music in the United States, from the twilight of the 19th century to the dawn of the 21st century—from ragtime to blues and jazz, to swing, to rhythm and blues and rock and roll, to classic rock to hip hop— is due to the contributions of African-Americans. Indeed, the broad spectrum of popular music as it exists today would be unrecognizable absent the influence of African American culture. Classical music as well has benefited from African American influence. Standard early jazz tunes included numerous numbers such as "The Darktown Strutters Ball", a song about the slave cakewalk tradition, and "The Birth of the Blues". Even into the '50s, R&B artists from Louis Jordan (in, for example, "Saturday Night Fish Fry") to the Dominoes (in "The Deacon is Moving In") harkened back to minstrelsy. A lot of vaudeville shtick, and its earliest comedians, musicians and actors as well, were transplants from the blackface minstrel tradition—among them Laugh-In's Pigmeat Markham. The radio antics of "Amos 'n' Andy", which featured white actors impersonating blacks, were straight from the minstrel stage. The popular radio show lasted more than a decade and then moved to television, utilizing black actors, in the 1950s. Under fire from critics as being demeaning to blacks, it ran until only 1953.

Country music and humor, too, were deeply influenced by blackface minstrelsy. According to Dale Cockrell's account in The Encyclopedia of Country Music, many traditional hillbilly fiddle tunes, including "Turkey in the Straw" and Old Dan Tucker came from minstrelsy, as did much of the format and content of the (still running) Grand Ole Opry radio show. In part because of the popularity of blackface minstrelsy, the banjo, which is African American in origin, became a standard feature of country and bluegrass music. Cockrell notes that Hee Haw "in structure, humor, characterization, and, in many ways, music, was a minstrel show in 'rube face'". As with jazz, many of country’s earliest stars—such as Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills—were veterans of blackface performance.

The immense popularity and profitability of blackface were a testament to the power, appeal, and commercial viability of not only black music and dance, but also of black style. This led to cross-cultural collaborations, as Giddings writes; but, particularly in times past, to the often ruthless exploitation and outright theft of African American artistic genius— by other, white musicians and composers; agents; promoters; and record company executives. The precedent set by blackface, of aggressive white exploitation and appropriation of black culture, is alive today in, for example, the annointed, white so-called "royalty" of essentially African American musical forms: Benny Goodman, widely known as the "King of Swing"; Paul Whiteman, who called himself the "King of Jazz"; Elvis Presley, known as the "King of Rock and Roll"; and Janis Joplin, crowned "Queen of the Blues".

For more than a century, when white performers have wanted to appear sexy, (like Elvis); or dangerous, (like Eminem); or hip, (like Mezz Mezzrow); or cool, (like actor Henry Winkler's Fonzie); or sophisticated, (like Frank Sinatra), they have turned to African American performance styles, stage presence and personas. Sometimes this has been done out of genuine admiration, as in the case of Eric Clapton or innumerable other blues revivalists. Sometimes it is done with a good deal of calculation by, for example, the many white lead performers who use black backup singers and musicians; or, as (bell hooks argues), when Madonna uses black male dancers to give her stage show a transgressive, sexually charged patina. [9] The referencing and cultural appropriation of African American performance and stylistic traditions by whites and others— often resulting in tremendous profit— has its beginnings in blackface minstrelsy.

The international imprint of African-American cultural expression is pronounced in its depth and breadth, in a myriad of blatantly mimetic, as well as subtler, more attenuated forms. This "browning", à la Richard Rodriguez, of American and world popular culture arguably began with blackface minstrelsy. It is a continuum of pervasive African American influence that is, perhaps, most evident today in the ubiquity of the cool aesthetic and hip-hop culture.

Blackface spinoffs

Related types of performances are yellowface, in which performers adopt Asian identities, brownface, for Latino or East Indian, and redface, for Native Americans. Whiteface, or paleface, is sometimes used to describe non-white actors performing white parts, although more commonly describes the clown or mime traditions of white makeup.

References

Bibliography

  • Cockrell, Dale and Wilmeth, Don B., Demons of Disorder : Early Blackface Minstrels and their World, Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama, 1997, ISBN 0521568285.
  • Fox, Anna, Zwarte Piet, Black Dog, 1999, ISBN 1901033864.
  • Henderson, Stephen. 1972. Understanding the New Black Poetry. William Morrow and Company.
  • Levinthal, David. Blackface, Arena, 1999, ISBN 1892041065.
  • Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 019509641X.
  • Matthews, Gerald E. (editor), Journey Towards Nationalism: The Implications of Race and Racism. New York: Farber, 1999.

General

Zwarte Piet

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