[Music] as each new immigrant group got more of a foothold in America they filled more theater seats and what they saw of themselves on stage changed for the better V vilans knew you don't get nasty about the Irish in a theater full of [Applause] Irish but with African-Americans segregated in the balcony or excluded entirely from the audience there was no such thing in mainstream Vaudeville as a theater full of them and it was that way for almost a century hey skinny the my Show's coming to town beginning in the 1840s the minstral show was America's first entertainment craze it started with Northern white performers who observed blacks or Negroes or slaves at that point um really entertaining themselves say I have an idea yes you'll be around here about a half hour before the show you mean you going to let me watch up close Jim Crow you'll practically be right on the stage wo about turn about weel about and turn about and do just so every time I wheel about a jump Jim [Music] CR give me back my clothes please what they did was to imitate some of of the actions they saw some of the songs that they saw these slaves singing and to put on uh grease paint or black face blacks had little power to protest their characterizations although many tried whites could parody them but they could parody no one but [Music] themselves [Music] [Music] eventually African-Americans formed their own menstral companies billing themselves as real Negro [Applause] delineators whites could compete with their authenticity and often their talent so they turned their own menstral shows into Vaudeville but blackface characterizations were still an essential part of the [Music] [Music] act at the same time African-Americans were being lynched by the hundreds and shunned by mainstream Society they would the subjects of the most popular music of the time socalled [ __ ] songs that like minstral shows depicted black life as free careless and non-threatening to [Music] anyone whites were led to believe that this young man's sole desire was to sing and dance for them if I saw a blackface performer at that time uh I guess I was in my early teens on V I didn't think anything of it because it was the time that I was living it was the late 20s I can look back now I dislike having to say this but I realized my mother and father were bigots but I think everybody everybody in Chicago were bigots set by the river on a summer evening listen to the dark white V villans maintained that white fantasy begun during minstral times that separate but equal was okay with Mami and that blacks were simple happy creatures who loved to entertain and had lots of time to do it with just a little cotton picking here and there between fish fries and Steamboat arrivals the will crack my Knuckles the myth lasted a very long time as Topsy and Eva vaudeville's Duncan Sisters were still working it in 1960 The Duncan were the last minstrels real African-Americans were forced to go along with the myth by wearing ridiculous or stereotype clothing on stage and only playing versions of [ __ ] or zip [ __ ] because [ __ ] was the Willing retainer he was that slave who uh who would sing songs like car me back to Old Virginia uh on the other hand zipcon then becomes an aggressive black man who's still ignorant but uh is pretentious black performers almost always had to be in a racial context I don't know why feel this way Unice Wilson sings A Fine number that has nothing to do with fruits and vegetables so why does she have to do it in front of giant watermelons now [Music] I [Music] you will when you give in I won't give up because I'm sure to I don't know why I feel this way I remember once I had added a wonderful song called Sho shine boy to my repertoire and it was a perfect song for a kid of 12 13 to sing and I sang this song I had an arrangement up with an orchestra and I so forth and uh I was booked into the the Oriental Theater in Chicago and they had there was a wonderful theater with a wonderful line of chorus girls and a great choreographer and producer and so forth and when you heard about the colored boy coming to work at the theater her mind began to click apparently and when I got there she had a whole big production number about Sho shine Bo Bo and of course I was in it and uh I had to give up my nice arrangement and then perform in her production which included running up and down uh the chorus girls in front of them with a shoe shine cloth and shining their shoes and my nice white tail suit had been tossed aside and I was wearing some kind of stylized version of tatters and Rags that was my final week in Vaudeville now I remember as a kid you know you know hold on there now now Sapphire done told me that you ow me a nickel and I used to go like why they talk like you know to my mother why they talk like that the white performers who did menaly um did not really do black comedy at all I mean the jokes had nothing to do with blacks whatsoever they were basically gags that were taken and and they were of um show business origin they were riddles and gags taken from uh the Northern Stage when blacks came in you had the emergence of an authentic form of Black Entertainment although they still veiled it with the stereotypes that had been set up by the white performers the the definition for acting is to do all of this is an act Leonard Reed is an African-American who played in both allh and all black Vaudeville I told you why they put on cork not to be black but to get the expressions from the face when you put on Cork and white lips you you can move the lips around and everybody can see them moving around and that's a laugh and I think anything that you can do to get a laugh should be in Show Business show business is Show Business and I think that burnt cork for a lot of those VA vilans was a mass so that when they came off stage they could disappear into the crowd and nobody would know who who they were almost all the black comedians before 1950 wore blackface even for black audiences in the beginning they had to yeah let me tell you about that bull of my father you see right father like the great comedian Dey pig meat Mar 5:00 and that bull is so fast and so smart every afternoon about 5:00 he goes way up to the fall of that pasture and race that train 5 and 1 half miles oh yeah would you believe it that bull beat that train by half a mile no mhm some I know it's some and when pig meat took off his cork he lost the edge that he had in laughter I said pig meat what's happening I said the bit isn't going he said I don't know I can't express myself anymore he said they made me take off the Cork and the cork was not to prove that I was black they knew I was black he said but I negro that's what he said but I just lost the edge I can't feel like I felt when I had the Cor on and he was broken harded till the end pig meat was broken harded till the end that he had to take off cork pig meat Markham was one of the last American performers to take off the mask his fans were surprised to discover that his face was darker than his makeup he had been lightning up not blacking up for 40 [Applause] [Music] years in mainstream roeville only one black Act was allowed for show if that but black performers did have a place to work and learn their craft the Toba [Music] circuit the TOA circuit consisted of a whole black theater circuit consisting starting with Chicago Grand Theater to St Louis to Kansas City to Tulsa Oklahoma City I get excited just thinking about you know realiz this has been 70 years ago since I did these dates on the Toba circuit monologist mom's mayy developed a routine that spans six decades they fired me of course when they fired me when I lose my job I lose my man that is s i gut well kind of oh you know I don't get me wrong and ain't no this grace to be all oh but darn if it ain't inconvenient I can tell you that much about it knock me out [Music] L I love the dance at least I used to love the Dan am I blue am I blue [Music] in [Music] his there was a lot for artists to be blue about working Toba an acronym that stood for theater owners booking Association but for performers it always meant tough on black asses white owners bad theaters hardly any pay and mostly in the South there was a [Music] when I was his only one but now I the sad and lonely one L they call up and say Bailey we got a [ __ ] here says he's yours his name is so and so and and Bailey would say yeah that's one of my [ __ ] he's at the theater let him alone and they would let him go you could not walk the street after dark in the Sun me ladies and gentlemen I like it this timeone phone just rang this one here didn't you hear it oh no I didn't hello matter with this guy yes Mr Reed's office Mr Reed yes for you must be for me got to make him think you're big time always have a secretary hello Leonard Reed and Willie Briant became Stars at the Apollo in New York like the Toba theaters a place where African-American performers could work before their peers to find their own voices in their own communities but to become National Stars they had to deal with the white world and that was really easy as a young black performer I was not allowed to stay in many of the hotels where I worked I think that's to people who are young today unimaginable but it's quite true we never saw them at the same hotel we stayed at and they tried to keep this from the kids but I knew as a kid that the the black people and the ethnic people had to go miles out away out of the way to to get to a boarding house or get to a place that would serve them food if it was a white you know uh bill and the white audiences white people on this stage and everything they would want us to stay in in a black Hotel you know but uh and that's another thing where my brother and I we sort of tried to slip that down too you know go stay in in the hotels where the other people stay hey that's mommy yeah yeah man put my trust in good for dust you know may through Talent courage and a refusal to be stereotyped some performers overcame like the Nicholas Brothers y [Music] naturally we going to say no if they ask us to black face and put on [ __ ] thing no they never did ask us that I mean and in all the years that we've been in Show Business I think they thought we'd be out of character to do that because they always see in the tuck seeders and the tails with class and Grace and all they maybe that's why we never got too many uh Parts in movies you know cuz we wouldn't do we wouldn't do the m sing you know and stuff like that so UI Blake always wore dinner jacket on stage he was proud of his music and insisted on showing that [Music] pride of all the Vaudeville performers who overcame huge obstacles to achieve success and dignity the first the greatest was Bert Williams he started out a minstral in 1893 and by 1910 was the most respected comedian on the American Stage Bert Williams sampo character although he himself said it was the same shuffling [ __ ] that was being portrayed by other people was done with such subtlety that he came across as a human [Music] being [Music] Bert Williams mesmerized the audience as a matter of fact one of the bits that he did in the 1919 fols was a shoe store and he describes how the shoes are too tight and uh my dad who was a straight man he says well uh what size do you wear he says well I wear 10 but 11s feel so good I wear twelves he just seemed to relax and uh everyone knew there was going to be a punch line but he waited and waited and he milked it for all it was worth and then he would say the punch line very calmly and his sense of timing was uh remarkable sat on his uh knees as a matter of fact when I was about 5 years old he was a very nice kindly gentleman and all business in a 1916 film The Natural Born Gambler Bert Williams recreated one of his most famous sketches a m poker game performed [Music] alone [Music] I Bert Williams was as Robert Townsen says the Jackie Robinson of Show Business not only the first black American to star with an otherwise white cast on Broadway but the first black American in our history to be admired and respected by people of all Races he died in 1922 only 46 years old he worked himself to death trying to prove something he had already proved decades before many times [Music] over what of I proudest of I'm proudest of that the brother and I or me get the opportunity to to do what we wanted to do on stage and nothing nothing took that away from us and we did it all