Transcripts For CSPAN3 Blackface Minstrel Shows In 20th Century Media 20240713

Our program tonight is presented in honor of black History Month for the purposes of Public Education and civil discourse. And our guests are to american historians. Our keynote speaker is a historian of television, radio and the Recording Industry in the united states, a former network and Cable Television executive, and the author of nine books. Tim brooks. His talk tonight is based on his newest publication, the blackface minstrel show in mass media 20th century performances on radio, records, film and television. Recently published by mcfarland. Among tims many accomplishments is a grammy award, which he received for a double cd and book titled lost sounds blacks and the birth of the Recording Industry 18901919. Joined in aen be seated conversation by fellow historian bill doggett. Timprogram will conclude in and bills taking questions from you, our live audience. Now, please turn off the sounds , and join me in welcoming historian and author, tim brooks. [applause] tim thank you, raul. Later on as he mentioned, there will be time for questions and i hope we have some good ones coming up at the end of this conversation and presentation. I would like to start with a question for you, the audience. How many people here have seen a minstrel show, a live minstrel show . Anybody . Interesting. How many have seen one on film perhaps . Remember, im talking about a whole minstrel show, not a clip somewhere, a full show. Anybody . Ok, if i had asked that question 100 years ago, every hand in the audience would have gone up. Part of American Culture at the time. Everybody, we will get into the reasons for that and what it was, but it was on radios, television, when television came along, it was in movies, it was on records. While a lot has been written about the gardens of minstrel, very little has been written about the later years and why it was not only the product of the 19th century but it lasted well into halfway through the 20th century as well. Explore in wanted to explore in this book why it lasted for more than a century here, right into the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, how it changed over that time, and what finally brought about its downfall and how that came about. That is basically what the book is about and what is fairly new to studies of this field. We have to start with where it came from. In the first place. In the 1830s, there were entertainers, white men, always men, who blacked their faces ended dances and songs and so forth. This was in the 1830s. In 1843, 4 of these performers, out of work at the time, decided to get together and put on a show in which they interacted with each other. They called themselves the virgina minstrels. This was an unexpected success. It was the talk of new york where it was launched. And as a result, it attracted a lot of imitators, as you might imagine. As business show business often does. T these shows did was to and this is all in the northeast, by the way. Many of these were irish immigrants putting these on. Were usually four to eight men, this one is five men, the these are the virginia sarah naders, one of the followon groups. Their instrumentations, their instruments were symbol simple, tambourines, they had a banjo for rhythm, a fiddle. So it is small, and they basically were doing parodies. They were doing parodies of every conceivable group in society. Not just blacks, but also other immigrant groups, also the rich, also politicians. It was parity. It was the middle and lower classes of america basically making fun of pretension and the eccentricities of all kinds of groups. Although they did it, as you can see, and blackface. In blackface. It was very populist. It was kind of like, i call it the saturday night live of its time. It was very populist and it was a very american. You have to remember, at this time in 1840s, what americans were use were imports from britain. Almost all plays, many of the actors and comedians, drinking, songs, all of those things came from england. We were still culturally very much under the english umbrella at that time, even though we were an independent country. There was a huge moment in the country to assert something more american. This is the jacksonian era, the era of changed politics as well. First,strel show was the really, that grew out of that. It was very popular, as i say, and quickly began to evolve. The costumes, which were rough beginning, turned into either tuxedos or an exaggerated parity of tuxedos which you will see later on. A man by the name of edward christie, he was a real promoter at the time, and he developed what was essentially a three act format for these shows, as they grew and grew in popularity. The first act, which was called the minstrel first part, was where all of them were on stage interacting with each other, joking back getting up to sing songs and so forth. The second act was called the olio. That was a succession of individual acts on stage much like vaudeville later on and many argue that is where vaudeville came from. They may or may not have been in blackface with those. The third act was called the after piece, which was an extended parody of a play or opera, especially something pretentious that they could make fun of. Acts, the minstrel first part, the olio, and the after piece. Another wason, added, that was an imposing man who would sit in the middle of the group and serve as the mc of it. And go back and forth. A lot is said about the fact that he was the boss, the straw boss or something. In the recordings you hear later, he might be that, but he also be one of the gangs, the person who organizes it and keeps it going. He might not be in blackface or he might, not was different as well. A lot has been said about minstrel songs and songs that came out of the minstrel show. The minstrel show, throughout its history, was a reflection of whatever the popular music was of america at that time. 1850s, it wasnd Stephen Foster because he was writing enormously popular songs. Later on it became songs of the late 1800s or ragtime, when that came in, some of the late minstrel shows in the 1940s and 1950s, featured a big band songs, rock n roll and some of them. Whatever was popular at the time. There were some songs written for the minstrel show but mostly it was a reflection for the current popular music. And a very important part of it is that it was sold as clean entertainment. Entertainment for the family. That may sound strange considering what they are doing up here. But in fact, there was never innuendo in minstrel shows. There was never sexual innuendo, which did appear in other kinds of performances of the time of plays and things. That meant you could bring your family and it was very upbeat. Many of the songs were upbeat kinds of songs. It was kind of a happy, laughing thing. And it was a partylike atmosphere, particularly in the opening minstrel first part where they are all together and it was like a party going on onstage that you, the audience felt you were part of. That is what sold it originally. Jumping ahead, this is a very interesting picture of four or five black minstrels entertaining union troops during the civil war. It 1850s,1860s, and 1860s, it continued to morph and get bigger and black minstrels began to be seen, we will say more about those in a minute. And in fact, during the late 1800s, because i want to jump through this ticket to the media, the minstrel shows got much bigger and much more elaborate. And they started using names like mega variance and gigantic inns to emphasize how many people were up there. It was a spectacle at that time. Some of their some of them were integrated like this one, primrose and wests minstrels 40 white performers and 30 black performers in the same show. Not interacting with each other but alternating through the show, giving employment to a lot of black actors of course. That is the late 1800s. , some of themps as many as 100, drew big audiences too. These big shows, primrose and west and have earlys minstrels, traveled around the country. They were no longer in the northeast. They were appearing in cities big and small. They had tense sometimes, big theaters. There would be hundreds, up to thousands of people watching. It was a very prominent entertainment in the late 1800s. Significantly,y the time that black minstrel shows began to gain traction. Shows put on by africanamericans themselves. I alluded to that before, there were a few before the civil war. After the civil war, troops of blacks putting on these shows began to become popular with white audiences, general audiences and they produced their own stars like this gentleman here, billy kerr sands, one of the biggest of the stars. They are often called georgia minstrels because that was one of the first black troops, they were from georgia. 1870s,he late 1800s, 1880s, 1890s, those, along the white troops, began to become bigger and more prominent. Thisis significant because was the first time, if you think about it, and American History, that african, newly freed from slavery, had an opportunity to bring their child and their talents to a stage before a general audience. And they would tone down the racism of it and they would introduce the music they made and introduce america eventually to blues and to jazz and the things that were enormously influential in this country in the 20th century. This was an open door for them. 1800s. S in the late usually, these troops were managed by whites, owned by whites, who hired the blacks to do it. But not always. Charles b hicks was a pioneer who was a manager who managed many troops and promoted these shows himself. Media, the modern mass media, came around in the early 1890s. Actually,he year, that the edison phonograph, which he may not think of this, but was the first of the modern technological media. It became well enough developed to be sold to the public. The man on the right there is named len spencer. He was a young performer who came up with the idea and really perfected the idea of making recreations of the minstrel first part on a record. An audio version, as true to life as possible, of a minstrel show which everyone was familiar with at that time. Things, heuce these assembled a troupe of four people, including himself. The man on the left was one member of that troop, george w johnson, who was the most popular black recording artist of the 1890s. It was in effect an integrated troop. Three of the four, including spencer, had experience in minstrel shows at the time. They knew what they were recreating. Of minstrel shows produced not only by spencers group, which he called the imperial minstrels, but also by others that came later, became a very popular type of recording for the next 20 years. Basically from the mid1890s to the mid1910s, and hundreds of them were made. They are found in collections of old records now. Not much has been written about them but they recreate what a minstrel show sounded like, at that time. Lasted, as i say, about 20 years. This is an edison ad from 1904 showing the family, an idealized family, laughing and dancing, the kids are dancing to the minstrel show coming out of their edison phonograph on the righthand side. Lp era. Asted into the these are some 1950s lps with the stars of that era. Bill cullen, milton burrow, jack benny, some oldtimers who made comebacks like eddie foy made minstrel recordings in the 1950s. It lasted quite a while on record. What about radio . Radio came on the scene rather quickly, as the audience saw it, in the 1920s with the earliest stations, commercial stations, launching in 2021 1920, 1921. From the start, they started putting on minstrel shows. This man, daily pass men, how many people have heard of him . Anybody . 1, 2 . You would, i know, gary. [laughter] a was the general manager of new york station that came on on air called w gbs still the air, and he felt that there was this voracious need for programming and he wanted more comedy too. Which was not much on television. He put together his own minstrel troupe in 1925. And had them get experience with it on radio, and put on a weekly or biweekly show. That show from 1925 to 1928 was very popular. And was heard throughout the northeast because stations got through a wide range at that time. It was in new york citybased, although it was heard in the northeast, as i say, and the radio networks, which were just Getting Started at that time, heard this and saw this success he was having with the permanent troupe of mist of minstrels on his radio station. Cbs, as they were launching their networks, scratched their heads and said maybe we ought to do some of that. And formed their own minstrel troops, particularly nbc, which was just beginning to spread across the country, launched in 1926 and slowly spread out. They organized a Dutch Masters minstrel troupe, which was a Network Level production with a ,ig orchestra and was writers the whole thing a network could bring to it. And that show which ran from 1928 to 1932 on nbc was one of the early hits of radio. When it started many of the artists in this troop were taken from the record industry. Al bernard who had recorded a lot in the 1920s was the star man. Steve porter who had been the interlocutor on many of those records i talked about early on was the interlocutor and so forth. They went into that industry for the talent. Interestingly in the studio, they wore minstrel costumes. Particularly the end men, the two in blackface here. Even though it was radio, nobody could see them of course, but it was felt that it would be a more authentic performance if they actually formed the traditional minstrel troupe. Shots, theylicity also of course war that. Were notime, there racial jokes, the sensors saw to that, although they did wear blackface, especially in publicity. The jokes were about marriage, insult humor, that kind of humor at that time. WindDutch Masters began to down in the early 1930s, nbc looked around for a replacement for the successful show and found its chicago affiliate was producing a successful show of that type. The became on the Network Sinclair minstrels sponsored by the sinclair oil company. That had a big studio audience. 500 people for a live broadcast. The minstrels were in the background here. They are hard to see, the audiences turning around on looking at the camera behind them. The minstrels are in full minstrel regalia up there for this Live Performance which was broadcast over nbc. That show, the sinclair minstrels, was actually one of the most popular programs of the 1930s. It is not written about much. There were some primitive audience measurements at that time, like in the top five shows right up there with jack benny and the big stars of the day. In the audience could accommodate 500 people. Nbc said it had 20,000 people on a waiting list to get tickets to see this. It ran from 1932 to 1939. And was extremely successful. Also, many other shows featured minstrel segments in them. Like they would devote an episode to it. This is a variety show that ran from 1932 to 1937, i believe. On the two ends are pick and path, they were two of the most popular blackface minstrel performers of the 1930s on radio and on film as well. There were also episodes of the jack benny soap show, the bing crosby show that were even harry cuomo who had a very suave, sophisticated musical show in ae 1940s, even he put on minstrel show. With these two guys, actually. Mr. Como is the interlocutor of all things. It is beauxarts to hear today it is bizarre to hear today. They too had some episodes where they staged an minstrel show. Radio, theheard on minstrel show, quite a bit, not only as a standalone but as part of other popular shows. What about movies . We will move quickly through this. Movies of silence had a minstrel show on a silent film. They tried. In 1913, edison introduced his phone which was a primitive kind of sound system. And one of the movies he film was a six minute called the edison minstrels. And it recently has been restored. It was lost for a long time. It has been restored and you can see here the minstrel outfits of the two end men on the left and right, the interlocutor in the stiff, anding rather everybody else is white face and in what appears to be 18thcentury Court Costumes from england. Something like that. Diduse minstrel shows perform differently. Some of them have that kind of performance as well in different kind of costumes like this. Kind of odd that the orchestra leaders stands his back to the camera mostly. That is movies in 1913, i guess. When sound came in, of course, the music, the minstrel show was too much to resist. This is a 1930, his minstrel behind him. Shirley temple got into the act. Her minstrels and she is singing forth. Cing and so big stars were in minstrel shows, and it wasnt just old folks either. Two of the most popular youthful stars of the 1930s, hard to believe they were once young, Mickey Rooney and judy garland put on a fullfledged minstrel show in babes in arms in 1939. It was enormously successful at the time. So much so, they made another one later called babes on broadway. You notice that garland here is in what was called brown face which was a subdued blackface that was often used for women in the later periods. Were also a lot of biographical movies, may be some of you remember this, in the 1930s and 1940s, including three different films are about Stephen Foster. They all dealt with his relationship with edwin christie who had hired him to write songs. In this one, jolson plays christie, really over the top, too. You would see minstrel shows recreated in those. See them in the westerns. Veryhas been recognized widely. That was a plot device. I can get in how they used to this as a plot device. They would stage a menstrual show of these would be smaller ones with smaller budgets. And they would arrive in the mining camp, and that is what happened in the 1800s. These were more realistic recreations than some of those big, elaborate garland and rooney things. Showswere what minstrel were like. You see the archetypal minstrel bastions of the wide lapels and kind ofted tuxedo outfits that they had. And similar instruments. Lateision arrived in the 1940s. They were minstrel shows there as well, even on the networks. This is fred waring on Cbs Television. He produced three minstrel shows on Cbs Television network. Between 1950 and 1953. , his chorusanians in the background are in blackface, looking uncomfortable but who knows what they were thinking. There were no songs or jokes about race by this time. Proper in was made terms of the lyrics and jokes but they were using blackface and dialect as well. Ed sullivan also staged by the way, they tried to make these authentic. They had academic experts advising them on how a minstrel show was staged which waring did a lot for different music now it bizarre. Sullivan staged a minstrel show in 1953 for the 50th anniversary of the Ford Motor Company which was that year. Local stations also put on minstrel shows usually with a professional troop that they had within the station releases from wlwt in cincinnati. Not a very clear shot. It was run on other stations in the midwest, kind of a mini network. This was sponsored by dodge on oversized tambourines. 1948 this is 1948. Ofe in l. A. , it was a hotbed minstrel shows. Hard to believe but in the 1940s and 1950s los angeles stations, as they came on the air, three of them put on minstrel shows. This is dixie showboat on ktla in 1950 to 1953. And it was syndicated across the country by paramount on kinetoscope. It had 10 or 12 stations around the country. The two men on the left and right are peanuts and popcorn. They are the men who did jokes. Different costuming by then. The man in the middle is captain whatever his name was, captain lane who was the mc and interlocutor. They did jokes back and forth but by this time there were jokes in the cast. Scat man caruthers was a part of this, and ginger smock, the efficient autos of afficion ados of jazz. Had minstrels shows. This is when the protest really started to ramp up against these shows. There were protests against this show but not for these two guys but rather because the dixieland jazz band which provided the music for the show was in blackface in the first couple of episodes. That is what they protested against. They took off the blackface makeup from the band and the show continued for three more years with these guys with no more protests. That is a theme that runs through a lot of these shows. The protests were number elong. I will get into that more. Not very long. E i will get into that more. Nothing really has been said or studied much about this. But what this is is the number of mentions of a minstrel show in a large database of american newspapers organized by year. I will not tell you for various reasons the number of minstrel shows but it will tell you the trends. You notice it is steady through the 1910s and 1920s. Surge ine search the 1930s. They were turning up in radio listings a lot because of the shows i mentioned before. There was a surge in minstrel exposure during the 1930s. There was a deep dive during the world war ii years not surprisingly. The Second Surprise for me was how strongly they came back right after the war in the late 1940s, peaking in 1949 at the level they had been in the 1920s and going up. Finally did the rollback against them get Strong Enough that they start to fall off abruptly during the 1950s. I go into some detail about how that happened. In the 248 for example, nbc radio honest a show announced a show called the national drew fire. Ow which ,bc television announced one which attracted fire. In each of these cases, there were protests from various people, but the Africanamerican Community was very split surprisingly enough. In each of those cases, when there would be protests, there would be counterprotests against it. Maybe blacks defending the shows at the time. I go into reasons for that. We can talk more about that later. Perhaps the most erotic example was in 1931 on amos and andy, the most dramatic example was in 1931 with amos and andy are there were three black newspapers at the time. The pittsburgh courier started a petition drive. They wanted to get one million signatures to take this terrible insult to africanamericans off the air. The other two nationally distributed newspapers in chicago and new york came out against that. The chicago defender in particular gave an award to the white creators of the show and held celebration for them in one of the parks in chicago. We could not even agree among themselves on it at that time. Because of his division in the community most affected by this this division in the community was affected by this and the public at large largely considered it a secondary or nonissue, the shows continued until the early 1950s, the protests began to have an effect. Now, to wrap this up, the minstrel show that we consider abhorrent today, particularly for its use of blackface, was a major part of the american scene as we have seen for more than a century. It lasted into the 1950s. It was in all of media that we are so familiar with and it was considered acceptable by practically everybody. Abraham lincoln went to it, franklin roosevelt, the leaders and those considered most sympathetic to black goals considered this Something Else through the black community itself was divided on it. This Something Else and the black community itself was divided on it and put on their own shows. Not until the Civil Rights Era began to take hold in the 1950s did the protests it Strong Enough and the networks get Strong Enough and the networks realize the blowback. They continued, and we can talk inut this, on a local level the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s but they were off the media by that time. With that i would like to thank you and have a little conversation with bill. [applause] walked off with it. Raul well, tim is my microphone on . Let me introduce you. Jump right in. A graduate of ucla, bill duggan is a lecturer on africanamerican performing arts history, performing arts producer and an authority on diversity and inclusion. Bills a Compass Minerals include being commissioned in accomplishments include being commissioned by the library of congress to have recordings for the National Jukebox which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. And now a conversation by bill duggan and tim brooks. [applause] bill thank you, raul, and thank you, tim, for your research and dedication to the subject to one that is of great interest, continuing interest and timeliness, topically. It is an amazing feat. I am so impressed and i want to congratulate you on it. Tim thank you. Bill you are welcome. I want to set the stage with a brief scripted series of comments that i think really set the stage and follow through with the topic area, the theme tim was ending with. Setting the stage, america postworld war ii, the atomic bomb, the age of anxiety caused by the moral and ethical issues bomb, america pining for nostalgia for a time before pearl harbor when life for many had an idyllic quality and for some a perfect order. A minstrel show had been glorious american tradition, a grand tradition that called out for revival of this expression. Minstrelcy was as american as betsy ross and apple pie. A very well known entertainer by the name of noble, africanamerican singer and composer, who was part of the writing team with the legendary uride pianist suv blake blockake brought the old remarked in defense of abcs american minstrels of 1949 in , i have neverte yet got the thrill in a theater the minstrel show gives me how i can ever since childhood every church, club, ymca, school, north, south, east, west, australia, england and around the world loved and imitated the minstrel. Egro when people stop loving spirituals, then i will stop loving the minstrel. They both are they are both sacred to me and some american. Know that however a year earlier he had cohosted the national minstrel swing time and love the producers to create a more intensified minstrel show. What is interesting about this, here is an africanamerican of note, well known in entertainment and famous, a famous pair and still are legendary. This is 1948, 1949. Here we are speaking and talking in 2020 in los angeles which had film in theilent 1910s all the way through today as we have the oscars this weekend, has been the center of american entertainment. But what was it like in los angeles post world war ii particularly for africanamericans . Black los angeles i grew up here and what is called old black los angeles was always the side. It was limited for racial reasons to the Central Avenue and the east, what was known as the east side. But by 1948, the Supreme Court california, have struck down the racial covenants in housing that limited black los nos to the east. They began to migrate west, especially the welltodo segment of doctors and lawyers, the hudsons and houstons if you know black l. A. , started to migrate and many were in the west adams. In what was known as sugar hill. And a very famous section of los angeles called Berkeley Square that was unfortunately lost to the freeway, the santa monica freeway that came in in the 1950s. Wasblack los angeles progressive. The other los angeles, entertainment los angeles didnt have the idea something was wrong with the idea of these minstrel shows. Tv, abctv and of course al jolson who is famously known for his blackface minstrels, he was planning to do a new minstrel show that would air on tv and he died before it could happen. The questions this begs the question, how is it possible, and i first want to ask you to as well as you can consider it in the audience, how is it possible for there to have been such a cultural and perceptual divide, not just nationally between white and black but also here in los angeles . Los angeles was the centerpiece of the west, a pioneering, progressive place in california has always been progressive. Progressive place. California has always been progressive. Tim there are many books interpreting what this means. I choose to let you know what happened. I wont tell you what to think about things. That part of this was when you are born into an era when something is taken for granted, not only by people generally but cultural leaders, like president roosevelt, like Abraham Lincoln for crying out loud, and in later years it is seen all over the media and nobody seems to have a problem with it, are you going to be the one who questions it . Most people dont. That is a question our own times. Approach crowd type of to things. Groupthink. Beware of that. Beware of an environment that is seemingly making you feel comfortable because that is what everybody does now. That works both ways. The things they should they tell you you should not like, question is. You need to know what actually , not some Cartoon Version that picks out the port like the protests, nobody writes about the other two newspapers in the amos and andy case. They like the career that agrees with them but they dont talk about the fact that the defender , chicago defender, post it, certainly not the new york posed it. Certainly not the new york paper. What they to imagine did and why they did not see what we see. They were not living in our times. Within their times some of them were quite progressive and gradually, not fast enough but gradually reducing these barriers. Some of them were trying to keep the old way and a lot of them were in the middle. Everybody is in that kind of time. It is this kind of groupthink. I will mention something i mentioned in the introduction of the book which needs to be more recognized and you have probably heard this elsewhere, enough to get too academic. There is something called cism. Ntism and histori is you look at the past and compare against our values. Historicism is you look at them in their time and were they progressive or not . You have to look at both of those. If you go exclusively to either one of those, you dont want to be all historicist and only that because hopefully we have made moral progress, because and you dont want to be the other way either. Try to imagine yourself in that world with that kind of leadership and that kind of media and that kind of social leaders and president s. Even Frederick Douglass said after a while, maybe there is something here that could be good for the black community. I think that gets to that kind of groupthink. Bill very true. I am curious to ask this. Ont is it about putting comicalellac that was or made one feel that there was a likeness and an ability to become something . We both have worked and researched in this area. To referencing that famously dubois when he talks about the mask. People,kface for many especially the early irish minstrels, a way of putting on a mask to be able to act out in a greater way their inner character or to make fun of those who they were mocking . Was that the device, if you will, for that, but comedic, political comedic kind of vehicle . Dubois was writing in the early 1900s. Africanamericans, largely enslaved at that time, were an exotic part of society for most of white america. They had never met any, didnt know any, didnt socialize with any greater might be a few around depending on the community but it was exotic basically. Could they be made fun of . Sure. They are making fun of everybody. To use that as it is called the menstrual mask, as it served minstrel mask, to use that particular mask was a way of bringing is not a system exoticism. How do you explain the fact the british picked up on this at the same time the americans did . Written, which had hardly any black population at all, not the old south, they adopted it because it was exotic to them, even more so than here. It was a mask. It was in our view and even in the view of some men, the meaning to those people that they were slaves, but they were slaves, the other. Irish americans were beginning to assimilate. This was a way of them saying we are one of you to what america. Contrasting themselves with this exotic. Had somerel mask purposes. It separated the performer from the material he was using. It was like a cartoon or a clown who can say and do things that will look strange if a person in ordinary garb did them. And for some of them, it was a their inner self if they were selfconscious about that. Now they are behind a mask and they can say things and do things they would not otherwise. I think it was that dynamic. As we know from both of our shared research, there were white entertainers who use dockface famously like stiller who then use this in a way to become something more the actual person he might have been parodying. How does that work . Lou, who was the minstrel king, got to be a portly man and looked like Teddy Roosevelt. He imitated Teddy Roosevelt and other politicians. He was not doing racial material. He was doing mockery of politicians but he always wore blackface. What did that have to do with Theodore Roosevelt . Nothing. That was the convention. People understood the mask. Even while he was doing material that was totally nonminstrel related, in his minstrel show he was still wearing this blackface. He did other things. The black minstrels often did that. Wore blackface. Not all of them. Some of them did. Men. Cularly for the end that movie in 1913 were the two end men, that is the constant. And they were good but guidebooks and would tell you mostwo end men were appropriately in his costumes and blackface. The rest of them didnt have to be. They often wore it. They would be normal. And they would really open it up. Kind of marker of the minstrel show was those two makeupend would wear the and often dialect as well. And the dialect is quite interesting. At the dawn of recorded sound with Billy Goldman and forward and others, and i how thatys wondered translated, it was very to your point, what medicine and other, victor at columbia, find the best artists of their era to put into wax is great hits from the various shows. But the power of the minstrel show in recorded sound, and for some because of the ability thinking of collins in particular, a huge team, they were really, really talented at black voicing. Gave the voicing impression of the blackface in the recording. How that, indering your opinion and research, how andfeel that translated messaged out to those who are consuming more purchasing these photographs and the recordings that were available to play on these new machines, how that and what would i say, how did that come across . To did that come across them . Was it something that was a simple recreation of the minstrel show, or did it have a different messaging because of the intensity of the voicing . Tim in records and later radio you can see the performance cant see the performance. So there is no blackface marker of a minstrel show in an audio only medium. You can imagine it but it is not there. The dialect is the marker. Clue the queue, the oral aural clue. I think it was used for that. It has an interesting history because prominent black poets and traders of the 19th century used dialect literally recreate the speech patterns of real people and how they actually spoke. [indiscernible] it becomes offensive arguably ,ne is used to mock or demean especially if the person is not educated and mingling of words. Dialects by itself is not necessarily that but if you take it to that level, it can be. It was the audio marker. You cant look inside their heads to know what they were thinking, but it was the audio marker. Back not to overdo it for the purposes of intelligibility because people might not understand what you are saying. There is a balancing act of not overusing it. Using it as a marker. Bill we go forward out from recorded sound and radio into a film. And what i find interesting and for the audience this is kind of new to hear, i discovered, as the nephew and namesake of the wellknown jazz canonist and later 1950s jazz organist bill doggett, when he went from philadelphia to harlem to work with luckys band, they were making films about entertainment. In his first film from 1939, paradise in harlem, there is an embedded minstrel show that africanamerican entertainers, there was a normative expectation if you will in entertainment even in the black community that not necessarily blackface minstrelcy , but it was the foundation of the minstrel show that became translated or transferred if you will into a black comedic routine. That speaks to the dissonance in the community. That was just standard. You have actors who, essentially became famous for comedic routines that were transferred minstrel routines into blackness. Any rochester, anderson, some of the sourcing of the black comedic tradition is out of minstrelcy. Camestrelcy alluded out of many things. I alluded to the platform of real africanamerican talent who were absent from the stage, let people, some of the actors become quite rich and become more influential. Sometimes williams and his partner george walker, sometimes they had to kowtow to the expectations at the beginnings of a career, Getting Started and to write songs that were to meaning, watermelons of the kind of things that were expected of them. As soon as they got traction and white clout and producers wanted them, the certitude tone down the material. Walker george unfortunately died quite young but wrote explicit we explicitly about this in the book. And williams, who went on to star in the follies and left until the 1920s, was quite explicit. That was their way of Getting Started, getting the economic power to be able to tone down. Later in his career he was singing and writing songs about the human condition. They were not about race. They were about things anybody could relate to. It is sometimes a way of getting in the door. Once you got into the door, some of them were able to turn that to their advantage. That is what Frederick Douglass was referring to. It had an impact on culture, and boy, did they. Jazz and blues. Bill we are here in hollywood, North Hollywood, extension of hollywood. Exactly, in 2020. It is interesting to look back to be and i was fortunate a little boy when the iconic nbc building was on hollywood and vine and that was the era of early tv. I want to talk to you. I want to ask you about the power of eligible son al jolson. We know he is iconic but after to war, he continued register in a very important way , jolson sings again, the jolson story. An unsung power, kind of backroom power to helping the revival of film nowy to go from into tv at the dawn of tv . Tim yes, he was certainly one of the ones. He was considered kind of old americay by a lot of with his sentimental songs and tearjerker stuff. But he was famous for it. Some of the most prominent blackface entertainers of that era, eddie cantor is another, were jewish. They made a point of the similarity of the experienced use had had, terrible experience experience jews had had, terrible experience, not to equate them, but we understand you. The blacks responded in kind. York reduce a film, millions and think it is called, and he featured a couple of. Oung black dancers in it the nicholas brothers. They were so proud of that,hese were talented youngsters the nicholas brothers this is 1936. He features them in his show. Preposterous plot, but he features them and they were proud of that. They welcomed it with open arms, wrote this long interview, and he talked about that, how he wanted to help africanamericans with their struggles just as his people had to struggle. There was that kind of simpatico between money, and all but many of the blackface entertainers who were jewish entertainers who did this and africanamericans. Did we know they are progressive and they were engaged and supportive of racial equality essentially but how did a career made extensionface and by blackface mockery . Whether they wanted to see it that way or not. How did they reconcile . Tim it is a good question. Why did they do that . Get back to the present historicism business about the world they were in and the fact they were not getting pushback from the very people who were being mocked. Many were saying thank you for doing this. Were given awards for representing africanamericans on the radio. They did. That with that and acceptance from that very group is one of the things that made it happen. What wouldve happened if the folks had started earlier . What if in the 1840s there had been put back . In particular the people being mocked. Maybe we would not have had 100 plus years of it. Groupthink. Issuei think part of the for africanamericans post right at the end of or actually at the end of the war, distraction. There was this whole intense africanamericans, both men and women who had fought to liberate hitlers europe who came back and work forced into, especially in the south, to this box of jim crow segregation and threaten violence. Threat and violence. To havethey manage other things to think about. I would have to say. Where this wasnt a big deal. The bigger deal was, am i going to be able to get a job . Feed my family . Which is what happened, but something happened by 1953. Tim think about the other things on the table, lynching, physical violence. If you are prioritizing you are the naacp and you are prioritizing what you will fight against, Lobby Congress and push against, it is going to be that kind of thing. Also economic and sustainability, sharecropping. Minstrel shows are like, ok. We dont like that either but we got bigger bill fish to fry. I think that is very true. Getting iy im would say this has been wonderful. I am grateful we are all having the opportunity to know whats more about this story and it to know much more about this story and topic and what is in front of us. And in the era we are living, the topic of race and race history and issues around this focused van better in my opinion, having an opportunity to read about that in my opinion to read about that history. On i would put a period that by saying history, the value is what we learn from it in our own times. Part of it is groupthink. Part of it is always question. No matter if the person agrees with you, question them. Think for yourself basically. If people had thought for themselves, maybe we would not have had this 100 year history. Thank you. [applause] i think for questions we are going to ask people to step to the microphone because we are being recorded. Go ahead. I want to address this when you give that Opening Statement about the influential blacks living up and how did they take that this was still going on, it was a good answer, it was a good question, but that is for me no different than tyler power tyler perry, how we are taking what he started than how we are still taking people with the n word. We all took things that matter what era it was. I wanted to say that but my real question is, i wonder what research you have found on was there ever people doing whiteface and what would have happened if they would have done whiteface . Bill i dont know. We can both answer. I dont know a lot about that other than more recently done, for example, Ralph Ellison. This is someone who has reinterpreted Ralph Ellison or richard wright. These are progressive and controversial black authors that are known for their cutting edge material. I believe that is the case. It occurred to me. Blackwas someone who was but did whiteface. His name was france i think he was a French Public french author in the 1950s french, black french author in the 1950s. Server. Sir. Thank you so much for the great presentation. This is a great book. I wanted to make a point about the irish playing with blackface in the minstrel show. We have to have in mind that the irish were the blacks of europe, and [indiscernible] ,irst applied, developed incorporated on the experiences of the irish in great britain. Whyt is very understandable in the united states, the irish migrants will play those kind of roles and deal in black mask. I want to point out the earlier status of the cinema, we have exchanged between the races. The races and pretty much act, which made obscene the communication between the races. Made certain gender roles unacceptable like women working outside of the family and being divorced, business women, so forth. That also determined and gays and lesbians as being obscene in cinema. In this regard i think it is important when we are talking about minstrel shows to look what else was going on in society, not only to look into black and white relationships but what was going on in the womens communities and lgbt, immigrant and so far. In this regard i would like to predominantlys male type of show and were there any women, if there were no women, why there were no women who were in blackface in those minstrel shows . Bill when the minstrel show began, it was allmale. There were attempts after the civil war in 1855 1865 to launch female troops. They did not really take off. The madam the mail once a day but not the ones with males ones did but not with women. There were always men in drag in those times. We got into the 20th century and the principal part of this book is about the media and how it brought in minstrelsy. You started to get women as part of the cast. By the 1920s, 1930s, you were seeing quite a few women. A local productions, if you see a picture of the local grange hall, it will be full of women. Sometimes it would be singers, sometimes they would be in brown face as opposed to full blackface. Overtime women became part of this. Not in the beginning but later on, is that answers your question. Ok. Thank you. You for a really interesting discussion. I write books about forgiveness, Human Behavior and living with love. My wife was africanamerican. We were married at a time when interracial couples were not that common. We went through some stuff. It was interesting when Whoopi Goldberg and 10 deanza there was a big uproar about the whiteface and blackface. My wife and i were talking about that. She has passed away. She had some insights and she said that not all of these minstrel shows were necessarily insulting of black culture. In some ways she said this is a way for some of the black culture to get out there to the White Communities because africanamericans were not allowed to perform or be in certain situations. So it actually in some ways could enhance black culture because it is seen in that light. The other thing is she said it is possible the resentment africanamericans had about these minstrel shows was that it was like stealing their culture. They werent given the credit. At the time you had so much racism like all of the stereotypes in the movies, africanamericans can only play the nannies, but it was interesting, my step daughter, who is black, was in her teenage years in the mid1980s, she would be watching these shows like what is happening at some other shows i thought were degrading to africanamericans but she also enjoyed watching Threes Company which made buffoons out of whites as well. That is what my comment is. Do you have something to add . There is a disconnect oprah. There is a disconnect with a lot racistle who would be but they can love africanamerican music and again stole from the black community. Do you have comments about that . Is thenteresting what difference between stealing from and honoring or stealing from and celebrating. Two sides of the same thing. Mentioned noble cecil. Another thing blacks said about this was the really liked amos and andy because they could hear their own. It wasnt, but they could hear their own culture on the radio finally when Everything Else was really white at the time. I dont know if you have ever listened to that were studied it , it is sophisticated writing and very sensitive. There were buffoons like amos i think was the schemer and antiwas the horse andy was the more sensible one. So they were being recognized at last. Someunderstanding understanding of community overrode outrage they might have had for being demeaned by them. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Truly enjoyed this hour. Very enlightening. Mr. Doggett, you said something that resonated with me when you , how do you,estion how do you reconcile the fact that performer like al jolson, jewish performer, could be excluding a people at the same , doing perhaps something that we can interpret as being humanitarian . My sense is sometimes good things result from back thanks bad things. Listening to you and thinking about listening to you both and thinking, if i had been present in the 1860s and 1870s and exposed the minstrel show, i with the come to it liberal progressive perspective that i have now but how does it become, how do i make it sense is itand my is sort of cultural evolution. It was going to have to happen. Society would at some point have to start to acknowledge disparity. Racism. Thats overwhelmingly prevailed. First step. The we put people in blackface, expose them a little bit to africanAmerican Culture, but we know they can wash it off. We sit back and watch them. We dont feel threatened because they are not really black. Perhaps anfering us exposure into black life in some regard. It is notnegative but threatening. Because they can wash it off afterwards. People sitting there must have been able to enjoy it and not feel threatened and i think somebody said these exotic people that they didnt really know the black community. Know it is when they left the stage and they they did notter, have that sense of threat they had to deal with, exposed to something that would overwhelm them. That is a tiny step. It is a very tiny step but it is the first one in a sense. Of thely in terms theatrical world. Does that make sense to you . Sure it does. There has been quite a bit written on, dissertation, kind of heady stuff about the issue of whites, not only the exotic issue of the ability to come up blackface as the minstrel mask or as the mask to have an experience of what blackness must be like but not have to own it and be able to remove it but to somehow experience it as an out of body or something that is not permanent. Spike lee uses in his bamboozled, there is an amazing sequence yes sorry. Hello. [laughter] bamboozled, a in film that looks at minstrelsy, revisits it, requiring us to the people he was working with found all of the most amazingly stereotypical filmnces in cartoons and in the past from essentially 1900 to 1950 and juxtaposed them in ways which was extraordinary. One of the, eddie cantor is putting on blackface and is being assisted by a dark skinned africanamerican assistant or waiter if you will let has the blackface canister, etc. What is telling is that eddie cantor says this is hard to put on and take off. And he says you are looking. You dont have to do this at all. The guy was at first smiling, the africanamerican assistant, and began to frown because yes, he, eddie cantor doesnt have to go out in the world, in the city, whatever. He can go out in mobile, alabama , atlanta, georgia he mentioned in 1930,cap walk 1940 and walk out to the finest restaurant and not be escorted to the back or we dont serve colored here. It is an interesting dynamic and diffidence. I appreciate your point, that you noticed that. It seems like blackface has been a part of minstrelsy from the beginning. There is some interesting aspects which you touched on. Seems like there could be eight n interesting discussion. You described the minstrel shows as like general comedy, music, entertainment and parodying all sorts of roots. Im wondering all sorts of groups. When did the material towards the racial mockery that is characterized as today, and when you have the black minstrels in black minstrel shows who were roman performers and recognized and successful in the field, who were successful performers and recognized in the field, or the using the same material . After the civil war, like minstrel shows began to attract black minstrel shows began to ct mass audiences. They toned it down. The white minstrel shows had shows that had nothing to do with africanamericans. They might use the makeup what it was about the sinking of the battleship maine or chinese immigration, or Teddy Roosevelt dockstetter. F lou they went in different directions. The word changes. I described how it was like said it and everybody. It was like saturday night live and mocking everybody. During the 1950s, real divisions, but you did have divisions then, the minstrel shows took the side of proslavery and became more political into the civil war. Afterwards, they split apart. The minstrel shows changed over time. I would mention one other thing that hasnt been brought up. When your close to something, close to it, it is happening tonight and tomorrow and all your life, and you see it up close, you noticed changes in it but we might not see from a distance. If you are looking at the minstrel show in the 1900s or the 1890s, there were not seeing you are not seeing the 1840s version of it. With television and radio, they took out the explicitly racial. Looks like it is getting less and less racial overtime. Looking from our perspective we say it is still racial. When you are up close, you dont see the big changes. You have to back off to see the forest. I have seen a lot of literature that indicates at the time with what they saw, they saw changes for the better. Therefore, that is how fred waring got away with it or somebody like ed sullivan. Being up close as opposed to stepping back was part of what sustained us over that long time too. Address thiske to question a little bit. I agree completely but what he was also working with going was talking about the era of the minstrel show were coon songs were really prominent. Those were explicitly racial. Thehat period would be 1880s until 1910. Tim just wrote an article about that. Derogatory songs. They took off in the 1880s specifically. In the mid1890s, they got married up with what was now new ragtime music which for the time was like rock n roll or something coming on, very upbeat, very syndicated syncopated music. The lyrics are racist and the songs were these upbeat happy songs. Mentioned, thei minstrel show reflected the Popular Culture of its time. I will tell you from the recordings i have studied quite a bit, some of the songs in the minstrel shows were those kinds of some of them were ill take you home again, sunk that had nothing to do with it. So yes, those are in the mistral shows, so are other things. When they finally and thankfully passed largely from the scene from world war i, they passed from the minstrel show. In the 1920s and 1930s, you would not hear those songs anymore. If were considered degrading. They pray reflection of a kind of music we can get into a discussion at we did about by those songs came about. As far as the minstrel show, they were reflecting the music of that time. The fact that they were upbeat fit perfectly with the minstrel show. Reflection of that of that period. That. Bang also had a political cultural element to it, post reconstruction was the era of jim crow. I should mention, i worked on reissue of those early recordings so you can hear what those records sounded like. Some of these offensive songs from that period. [inaudible] it must have changed during the jim crow period. Period began in the 1880s and gained traction in the 1890s when Southern State started to change the constitution to disenfranchise. The pure bang after the civil war the period after the civil war was a liberating period. Gradually,lled back than plessy versus ferguson and i kind of thing at that time. During that period, that is onedimensional show did reflect like saturday night live reflects what was going on in society at the time. You get reflections of that in the mitchell show during that , 1880s, 1890s. It continued jim crow continued to the 1940s up until the 1950s, when it finally started to get eroded. The minstrel show part of the show wasof the mental the rollback of jim crow. We will conclude with two last questions. Thank you for the material, it was informative. I wish i were as optimistic as this gentleman here in terms of society seeing the things that we need to be seeing around racism. This gentleman up here who cited the and word being used because for me, i think about people watching these shows, and i see a show on television such as the jet Propulsion Lab and those jobs are white, i find that highly offensive. I want to ask you questions about the film. Monday night on pbs, they had a film, the moneys that go to emergency preparedness. ,hey talked about in chicago the 1995 heat deaths and how those deaths were in the black community, poor black community of chicago. That it showed chicago in those areas in the 1930s and now that area has been flattened because of redlining. I wanted to ask, when it showed the performance that was popular , they were always sold out of tickets, it was hard to get tickets, but there were no black people in the crowd. So i presume that was why, because of the racism then. That is my question. The second question was, when was traveled, i think it 4000 whites and 3000 blacks. So the blacks, i assume they stayed in housing that would have been known to the people. In other words, because blacks had a hard time getting into hotels. Last thing is, i noticed the third thing. Albumnstrels, they had an , i presume from the 1960s, they had a black face something on it. I was wondering if there was commentary about that when that came out. The last thing i cant remember but i will remember the time you address what i asked. I hope i can remember all three of those. Tot album was an attempt exploit the popularity of the new christie minstrels, a popular folk group, it was not a minstrel show or anything like that. It was a pop chorus in the polk. Rea the folk area they organized that as christie minstrels and somebody had this music so they put it out as attribute. I think it was exploitation. The audience, all white. Most audiences in that time were either separated, like one show for blacks or segregated. Part of the theater was reserved for blacks and part for white. It was clearly whites that were dominating at least in that shot, the show. One last question. Thank you for your work on this. You spoke about different kinds of mediums. Talked about radio, television, film, by bill. Did you discover any evidence of minstrelsy on the broadway stage . Didnt make it to broadway . . Usit did, can you enlighten on to whether it follows the pattern of the peaks and valleys of your graph as to representation on the great white way . Was neverat white way a home base for minstrel shows. They played all around new york and had their own theaters and things like that. There were sometimes incorporated into broadway shows, particularly in the 1920s when it was a nostalgic thing to look back on. Broadway show in 1926 that had this minstrel finale. There were a couple others. There were some broadway shows that inc. Minstrel routines. The minstrel show was a particular kind of entertainment. Cannotee acts, judgment be seated, everybody on stage at once. The broadway stage evolved into plays and musicals that had their own everchanging structures. ,here were two different worlds maybe attended by the same people, but two different world. People scholars who mistakenly say that the minstrel show died out at the end of the 1800s because it was replaced by vaudeville at the theater, they shared the stage with them. It was not the dominant form anymore, but it was still prominent. Broadway shows and plays generally became much more prominent at there is a history of that. They were kind of parallel entertainments. Show of notene that youd minstrelsy and contemporary times, it was used as ironic metaphor, that is discuss pros boys, this will from five or six years ago. , iaw that in San Francisco was floored. Metaphor and aa deep irony. Other than that, i have not seen minstrelsy in our times. The friends of the North Hollywood library believe the Public Library in america is a place of learning where everyone in the community is welcome. We hope you have felt about them tonight and leave having learned something important, maybe something disturbing about American History and culture. Please join me in a right of applause for two historians who have shared their professional knowledge and personal perspectives, tim brooks and bill doggett. [applause] thanks also to cspan for taping this program for later broadcast on American History tv. Ood night [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this is American History tv on cspan3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. From the annual meeting at the American Historical Association in new york city, professor Thomas Balcerski talks about the prevalence of drinking in the political and social life before the civil war. Host joining us from the new york is a professor in eastern connecticut state university, the author of the book bosom friends the intimate world of buchanan and king. Thanks for joining us on American History tv. I want to begin with research you conducted on the congressional Temperance Society back in the mid1800s. Exactly what was that and why is it significant