Minstrel shows (1843-1950s) were one of the main forms of entertainment in America in the middle 1800s. White men (and later black men too) would paint their faces black – called blackface – and then sing and dance and make whites laugh at black people. At the time whites considered it to be wholesome family entertainment.
Most songs that Americans know from the 1800s come from either church or the minstrel show. Songs such as “Dixie”, “Camptown Races”, “Oh Susannah”, “Old Folks Home” and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” started out as songs in minstrel shows.
The minstrel show started in 1843. In a land without television, minstrel acts travelled America, and even England, going from town to town. They also played on Broadway. In the 1860s New York had 20 separate minstrel shows going at the same time! (The more I find out about the past the worse it gets.)
In the 1880s vaudeville grew out of the middle, singing part of the minstrel show. Vaudeville killed off its parent. By the 1920s minstrel shows no longer made money, but amateur ones lasted into the 1950s.
The radio show “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and Al Jolson’s blackface character in “The Jazz Singer” (1927), the first full-length film with sound, grew out of the old minstrel shows.
Al Jolson, a Jew who came to America from Russia, was perhaps one of the greatest American performers of all time. He got his start in minstrel shows. He was better in blackface than in his own face. He said blackface made him freer.
Blackface is older than the minstrel show. By the 1790s there were travelling shows in America that had blackface characters. Jim Crow, who would later become one of the main characters in the minstrel shows, started in 1828. But it was not till 1843 that whole shows were based on blackface. White people could not get enough of it.
Blackface is still with us in 2008, by the way. Look at Shirley Q. Liquor.
In the late 1800s blacks started performing in minstrel shows. They wore blackface too: their own skin was not black enough. In those days it was about the only way for blacks to make a living as a performer. One of them wrote a huge hit song of the 1890s: “All Coons Look Alike To Me”.
This came at a huge cost: the laughable images of blacks that minstrel shows spread lived on in the minds of white people for years.
Minstrel shows painted blacks as a people who sang and danced and laughed their troubles away. They did not mind being slaves or being poor.
The minstrel show is dead but something very much like it has arisen since the late 1990s: hip hop songs and music videos that picture blacks as violent and oversexed. Most of the people who watch and listen to them are not black but white. Those images will live on in the minds of white people for years.
See also:
Abagond 
Minstrel shows are disgusting! What’s even more disgusting is that some Black producers and actors are still promoting them,i.e. Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, Soul Plane, and various hip hop videos and live performances. Add insult to injury, we now have the spectacle of Shirley Q Liquor.
That’s disgusting and we need to do something about it.
Steph
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I wonder what role white money in Hollywood has to do with that.
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Minstrel shows WERE in poor taste but the violence and promiscuity found in rap and hip-hop is entirely the fault of blacks. Blame where blame is due, ladies, no white man writes those lyrics for them.
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Some of the minstrel songs were written by blacks too. But in either case they were written for a largely white audience and played up (down) to their ideas about blacks.
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The minstrel show will never die. It will live on one way or another.
It’s a shame.
😦
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OH LAWDY, I DO LOVES SOME CHIKINZ AND WADDYMELONZ!
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I did a post on the watermelon stereotype:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/the-watermelon-stereotype/
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it’s really sad that poeple din’t realize how racist the minstrel shows were when they first started. even now minstrel shows are a big problem in cartoon and many othe types of shows.
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“Minstrel shows WERE in poor taste but the violence and promiscuity found in rap and hip-hop is entirely the fault of blacks. Blame where blame is due, ladies, no white man writes those lyrics for them.”
Sigh.. OK, I can’t let it slip.
Rap/Hip-Hop spent a long time developing in the community outside of the mainstream. It used to show up in club contests, on the street/park, in talent shows, even poetry readings. During these years, rap styles were pretty diverse. Rap could be:
-Political
-Funny
-Romantic
-Educational
-Poetic
-Historical
-Gangster (but not that often)
There used to be all kinds of rap out there, and it was as diverse as the Black community itself. SO what happened?
Rap began to move enough product that record companies began representing rap artists. A&R people where crawling all over the Black community looking for new talent and jumping onto the new music form. By time the labels got interested, Gangsta rap acts were just becoming more popular. And it was THEY who decided to promote this new form of youth culture rebellion music. Soon after, every other form of rap couldn’t get in the door, all they were looking for was gansta acts.
IT IS IMPORTANT to understand that there WERE other forms of rap but they were disqualified by the record companies. They no longer wanted “message rap” of “rap pop” or “poetic rap,” they were convinced that gansta was the way to go. And they have made enough money out of it that I’m sure that they are glad that they did.
Before long, all of the big money rappers were Ganster troubadours. It changed the face of how rap was perceived and performed everywhere. BUT, when rap was just in the Black community, there were many other variations of the craft. Some extremely benign.
Most of the “shot callers” in the record industry who made the call were White. Now, I’m not going to go so far as to say that they were more comfortable promoting the most crass, violent, and degrading aspects of rap, as the face of the Black music form. But you can make up your own mind.
All I’m saying is that it is not, and has not been, an ALL black problem.
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Deutoronomy 28* curses of the true 12 tribes were in full effect…
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Look at Dragonball Z anime a character named Mr. Popo. Racism! http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070304224844/dragonball/images/a/a1/Mr._Popo_watering_his_garden.jpg
It’s disgusting.
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I love reading your posts. Keep speaking the truth.
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Sign the petition TODAY Then tag and share it with everyone you know. Quick question. If receiving stolen property is a fairly serious crime punishable by fines, incarceration or both. Has amerikkka committed the above mentioned crime by allowing stolen african slaves to enter it’s borders?
Also, should those responsible for said crimes be made to pay reparations and restitution to all injured parties? We must be made whole if indeed a crime was in fact committed right? amerikkka was built on the backs of slave labor and the big banks (the co-conspirators) have become rich off of our ancestors misfortune to this day. Punk-ass amerikkka, I’m making a citizens arrest, the charge: Over 100 million counts of receiving stolen property. I need a lawyer. Sign the petition and share if you agree.https://www.change.org/p/the-united-states-of-america-the-department-of-the-navy-monetary-damages-for-unpaid-services-rendered-from-1619-2015?recruiter=282415426&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=mob-xs-no_src-custom_msg
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I only previously learnt about the British music Invasion to the US in the 1960s.
Yesterday I learnt about an American invasion to Britain in the 1950s.
I never knew that in the 1950s, an American invasion to Britain took place leading to the most popular show on the BBC from 1957-1978: Black and White Minstrel Show. It was essentially a minstrel show featuring performers in blackface singling and performing songs harking back to the blackface minstrel shows in the USA between the mid 19th century to mid-20th century.This spilled well into my lifetime already (when I was in college!).
By the 1950s, blackface minstrel was no longer acceptable in the USA. But it apparently was the rage in Britain until the late 1970s. And by the 1970s it even featured black men in blackface (also a feature of American minstrels) and real black people not in blackface doing minstrel style performances.
BBC4 TimeShift : Black and White Minstrel Show
(https://youtu.be/h8uZ6o6m_J0)
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