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. Vaudevillians knew you don't get nasty about the Irish in a theater full of 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 minstrel show's coming to town beginning in the 1840s the minstrel show was america's first entertainment craze it started with northern white performers who observed blacks or negroes or slaves at that point really entertaining themselves say i have an idea yes You'll be around here about a half hour before the show. You mean you're going to let me watch up close?
Jim Crow? You'll practically be right on the stage. Woo!
Wheel about and turn about, J.J. Wheel about and turn about and do just so. Every time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow. Give me back my clothes, please.
What they did was to imitate. some of the actions they saw, some of the songs that they saw these slaves singing, and to put on grease paint or blackface. Blacks had little power to protest their characterizations, although many tried.
Whites could parody them, but they could parody no one. Eventually, African Americans formed their own minstrel companies, billing themselves as real Negro delineators. Whites couldn't compete with their authenticity and often their talent, so they turned their own minstrel shows into vaudeville, but blackface characterizations were still an essential part of the act.
At the same time, African Americans were being lynched by the hundreds and shunned by mainstream society. They were the subjects of the most popular music of the time, so-called coon songs, that, like minstrel shows, depicted black life as free, careless, and non-threatening to anyone. Whites were led to believe that this young man's sole desire was to sing and dance for them. If I saw a black-faced performer at that time, I guess I was in my early teens.
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 realize my mother and father were bigots. But I think everybody, everybody in Chicago were bigots. Settin' by the river on a summer evening, listenin' to the darkest hum.
White vaudevillians maintained that white fantasy begun during minstrel times. That separate but equal was okay with Mammy. 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.
Listen to the steamboat blow. The myth lasted a very long time, as Topsy and Eva, Vaudeville's Duncan sisters, were still working it in 1960. The Duncans 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 Sambo or Zip Kun.
Because Sambo was the willing retainer, he was that slave who would sing songs like Carry Me Back to Old Virginia. On the other hand, Zip Coon then becomes an aggressive black man who's still ignorant, but is pretentious. Black performers almost always had to be in a racial context. I don't know why I feel this way Eunice 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? I had added a wonderful song called Shoe 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 of it with an orchestra and so forth. And I was booked into the Oriental Theatre in Chicago. And they had a, it was a wonderful theatre with a wonderful line of chorus girls and a great choreographer and producer and so forth. And when she heard about the Colored Boy coming to work at the theatre, Her mind began to click apparently and when I got there she had a whole big production number about Shoeshine Boy and of course I was in it and I had to give up my nice arrangement and then perform in her production which included running up and down the chorus girls in front of them with a shoeshine 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 owes me a nickel. And I used to go like, why do you talk like that?
I said to my mother, why do you talk like that? The white performers who did Menstrual C did not really do black comedy at all. I mean, the jokes had nothing to do with blacks. They were basically gags that were taken, and they were of show business origin. They were riddles and gags taken from 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 definition for acting is to do. All of this is an act.
Leonard Reed is an African-American... who played in both all-white 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 can move your 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 vaudevillians was a mask so that... When they came offstage, they could disappear into the crowd and nobody would know 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. But some wanted to, like the great comedian Dewey Pigmeat Markham. And that bull is so fast and... so smart, every afternoon about five o'clock, he goes way after the four in that pasture and raced that train five and a half miles.
Oh, yeah? Would you believe it? That bull beat that train by half a mile. No.
Some bull. I know it's some bull. And when Pigmeat took off his cork, he lost the edge that he had in laughter. I said, Pigmeat, 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 cork on. And he was brokenhearted till the end. Pigmeat was brokenhearted till the end that he had to take off cork. Pigmeat 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 lightening up, not blacking up. for 40 years. In mainstream vaudeville, only one black act was allowed per show, if that. But black performers did have a place to work and learn their craft, the toba circuit.
The TOBA circuit consisted of a whole black theater circuit consisting starting with Chicago Grand Theater to St. Louis to Kansas City to Tulsa to Oklahoma City. I get excited just thinking about, you know, realize this has been 70 years ago since I did these days.