{"id":73,"date":"2024-11-26T11:46:32","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T11:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/?p=73"},"modified":"2024-11-27T07:43:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T07:43:15","slug":"minstrelsy-in-victorian-britain-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/?p=73","title":{"rendered":"Minstrelsy in Victorian Britain Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Reclaiming of an Authentic African-American Contribution: Part Four: From Seaside to West End<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stage & Seaside Entertainers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Poster for the Alabama Minstrels in Hull 1861<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When the white American blackface minstrels first arrived in Britain, they were immediately able to take up formal residency in auspicious, professional theatres. Rice performed in the West End at the Adelphi theatre in 1836, while in 1843, Dan Emmet was able to take his Virginia Minstrels <\/em>directly into the Theatre Royal,Liverpool, as did Sam Hague with his Great American Slave Troupe <\/em>in 1866. The vast majority of black musicians would enjoy no such opportunity. Their playing was largely restricted to the taverns and dance halls of the port city waterfronts and urban centres. However, it was during these same decades that the burgeoning coastal resorts such as Blackpool, Hastings, Bournemouth, Brighton and Margate were beginning to establish their seaside promenades, piers, and beaches as performance spaces. These represented a natural territory for the black buskers “wandering the country” (as observed in The St James\u2019 Magazine <\/em>in 1868).92<\/sup> Their means of transport was also becoming much more easily facilitated by the vastly expanding railway system that had been underway since the 1830’s. Thus, the circumstances were entirely ripe for black minstrelsy to establish itself amid the flourishing holiday culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would have undoubtedly added a certain piquancy to their presence was the overall atmosphere of perceived exoticism and less inhibited tolerance that pervaded these environs. The coastal resorts were generally characterised by a faux imperial style of mock-oriental architecture complete with elaborately ornate piers and concert halls. They characteristically displayed such features as Moroccan domes and minarets, decorous ironwork depicting entwined dragons and serpents, and arabesque ceramics and mosaics. They were places deliberately designed to cater for the indulgences of pleasure-seeking, carefree consumption and uninhibited bathing, their verdant winter gardens bedecked with palm-trees and tropical flora and flag-adorned bandstands. It was an atmosphere replete with ironies that were elegantly captured in a later period by Joan Littlewood\u2019s Brighton pier setting of the 1963 Theatre Workshop production Oh, What A Lovely War!<\/em> And it represented an exoticism that would have seemed quite familiar in its extravagance to contemporary American visitors who were enjoying their own home-grown excesses in the form of fantastical \u2018Indian songs\u2019 for middle-class parlours, P.T. Barnum\u2019s circuses and the touring spectacle of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West extravaganzas. Itinerant African American minstrels would fit perfectly into such a setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the language of the time also reflects worsening racial attitudes as the century progressed. In contemporary parlance the performance space of these travelling players was commonly referred to as the \u2018n***** ring\u2019; a term that persisted even when these spaces began to be usurped by white performers in blackface make-up. These busking pitches constituted little more than a simple plot of sand on the beach, or a podium of plain boarding encircled by a ring of rope or a makeshift fence. They might enclose a few rows of deckchairs or benches arranged to entice a passing audience to sit and watch for a token price.93<\/sup> There is scant evidence of who exactly these early \u2018plebeian\u2019 performers might have been, but Sophie Nield has rightly observed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[\u2026] minstrelsy was not only performed by white men in black masks. [..] In 1861 an advertisement for Messrs Woolfenden and Melbourne\u2019s \u2018Annual Gratuitous Tea Party and Ball to 500 Old Women and their last Gala\u2019 in the Zoological Gardens, Hull, listed the Alabama Minstrels as a \u2018Troupe of Real Blacks with negro melodies, dances and conundrums\u2019. <\/sup><\/a><\/em>94<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This troupe made a sufficiently strong impression to be invited to perform once again in Hull the following year, this time at the Queen\u2019s theatre on Paragon Street.95<\/sup> But for a chance finding of these advertising posters, such information would have remained entirely lost, thus underlining once more the difficulty of obtaining primary sources in these matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A<\/strong> Growing Black Presence in Victorian Britain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Ester Ann ‘Hettie’ Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It has been a common consensus that the size of the black community in Britain declined during the first half of the nineteenth century from its height in the Georgian era.96 <\/sup>As evidence it is cited that in his survey of the London poor, Henry Mayhew only encountered one genuine \u2018negro\u2019 among the 50 or so blackface minstrels he encountered in the 1850’s.97 <\/sup>Reasons given are, for example, the end of the British slave trade in 1808 and the inter-marriage of black migrants with the white population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I would respectfully challenge this view and suggest that these appraisals may represent an underestimation of the numbers involved. Race or colour as such was never specified in census returns of the period. And with regard to intermarriage, it is not uncommon, even after a second generation, for those of mixed ethnicity to identify (and be identified) with the black community. Furthermore, there is strong circumstantial evidence of a continual and steady migration into Britain from America. In support of this, I would cite the anecdotal evidence of Hawthorne and Melville and others regarding the arrivals of migrants between the 1830’s and the 1850’s. Furthermore, I would cite Petersen\u2019s research into the declining black population and the diaspora from New York and other north-eastern cities, along with the increasing repression and hostility in America towards that community. (See Part Three of this article).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As additional evidence, I would propose the relatively large number of African Americans taking to the sea for employment and refuge. And one might equally speculate that those African Americans who had fled America as fugitive slaves would have had an added incentive to avoid official-looking, information-gathering figures in the main urban centres; figures like Henry Mayhew in London and Charles McKay in Liverpool. In such circumstances, it would be only logical for them to operate in the more remote and provincial parts of the country away from officialdom, and beyond the reach of slave-catchers and kidnappers; especially in the seaside resorts that offered the opportunity of casual employment. After all, even a relatively protected and celebrated figure such as Frederick Douglass had recourse to purchase his freedom while still in the United Kingdom in order to guarantee his future liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presence of black performers is further highlighted by those increasing numbers who, as the century progressed, were accepted onto the mainstream, professional stage; not only William Henry \u2019Master Juba\u2019 Lane \u2013 but also, \u2018Japanese\u2019 Tommy Dilward who appeared with Sam Hague\u2019s Georgia Slave Troupe<\/em> alongside Abe Cox, Neil Solomon and Aaron Banks.98<\/sup> Indeed, in 1866 Hague\u2019s original troupe featured no less than 26 black performers who had formerly been slaves. However, when they failed in his eyes to give an adequate representation, most of them were summarily dismissed and replaced by a white blackface cast. Abandoned to destitution, those who did not return to America further swelled the ranks of Liverpool\u2019s itinerant musicians.99<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the all-black Wilmington Singers <\/em>and The Fisk Jubilee Singers <\/em>would also establish themselves on the mainstream circuit, as would Billy Kersands, James Bland, The Bohee Brothers, Richard Little and John Alexander Little.100 <\/sup>Among these black American performers were many who chose to remain and settle in Britain, among them Isaac Cisco of the Wilmington Singers<\/em>; while Esther Ann \u2018Hettie\u2019 Johnson, Birmingham-born daughter of the American singer John Alexander Johnson, along with many others, took advantage of the employment opportunities offered by the many popular stage adaptations of Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin.<\/em>101<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most, if not all, of these performers were constrained to follow the parameters of a white-dominated idiom, even to the point of having to apply burnt cork make-up to their own skins and to adopt many of the racist tropes of the performance style. Yet at the same time they were able to establish a first foothold on the mainstream stage, a first step that would gradually lead to others \u2013 a process, one might say, still in progress. Simultaneously, these artists could stake a valid claim to the original contribution that black culture had made to this very idiom of minstrelsy and the modern musical show song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zadie Smith writes in her foreword to Gretchen Gerzina\u2019s Black England, <\/em>\u201cI wanted to know for reasons of my own self-esteem \u2013 that the history of the African diaspora was not solely one of invisible, silent suffering. I wanted to hear about agency, heroism, revolt.\u201d102<\/sup> Here, surely, is one example. Against enormous difficulties, and repressive hostility, elements of an authentic African American musicianship established itself in the bars, saloons, taverns, dance halls and coastal promenades on either side of the Atlantic; and from those same beginnings that had initially spawned black minstrelsy, there would subsequently emerge a whole host of genres from the \u2018ragged\u2019 rhythms of ragtime and jazz through to swing, pop culture and the modern musical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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The Bohee Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

So, to summarise, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that there existed an authentic black minstrelsy and that it was introduced and established in Britain prior to the appearance of its blackface parody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first place, the essential and characteristic instruments of minstrelsy, the banjo and percussive tambourine and bones, owe their origins to African American and plantation heritage. Secondly, the African American playing style of these instruments migrated throughout the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and informed the techniques of all minstrelsy, often through direct contact between African American and white performers. While it is virtually impossible to definitively unravel the various elements in the fusion of styles that took place between Anglo-Celtic folk and Black folk music, it is clear there was a strong African American input and many tunes have been traced to their original plantation sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, there came to be established a significant community of black musicians in the \u2018free\u2019 north-eastern states where white blackface minstrelsy first emerged. These musicians had their own playing spaces outside the mainstream in the markets, saloons and dance halls, where their authentic (i.e., non-parodic) music thrived. Subsequently, many such performers, including James Hewlett, Ira Aldridge and Master \u2018Juba\u2019 Lane made their way across the Atlantic where they would have found an already well-established black community that had its origins in the mid to late eighteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the increased repression of \u2018free\u2019 and fugitive former slaves in America from the 1820’s onwards, intensified by the 1850 Fugitive Law, instigated an increase in the flight and diaspora of black people both to Canada and to Great Britain. Given the evidence of a depleted black population in New York and other northern cities and of contemporary testimony (such as by Hawthorne and Melville) it seems probable that the migration of African Americans to Britain in the nineteenth century may well have been underestimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, while contemporary observers such as Henry Mayhew counted relatively few black beggars or buskers on the streets of London for example, those African American fugitives who found themselves in desperate straits would have had every incentive to avoid detection by the authorities, and therefore to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the burgeoning coastal resorts. Finally, there is clear evidence of the continued presence of black minstrel entertainers well into the 1880s and beyond in the form of such players as the Alabama Minstrels, James Bland, the Bohee Brothers, Billy Kersands and many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Engraving of a bania from Suriname by Captain John Stedman circa 1790<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

However off-putting it might initially sound, imagine for a moment a contemporary re-staging of The Black & White Minstrel Show, <\/em>in the light of recent scholarship. Imagine a show that would reflect the very first minstrelsy that those early black musicians brought to the dance halls and taverns of Liverpool and London, and thereafter to the promenades and concert halls of provincial towns and seaside resorts of Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first place, the cast would be genuinely diverse, without the deplorable application of \u2018burnt cork\u2019 make-up and it would consist of male and female performers in equal numbers and of equal diversity of age and background. The costumes could reflect contemporary dress, as did those of the original street performers themselves. The programme might begin with renditions of those tantalizing \u2018scraps\u2019 from the Hans Sloane Collection as performed by Rhiannon Giddens \u2013 the authentic sound of the prototype banjo as played in the Caribbean and southern states. This might be followed by a series of genuine plantation songs, such as the misappropriated tune of \u2018Jump Jim Crow\u2019 presented in its original form of a children\u2019s singing game from the Georgia Sea Islands. To this we might add \u2018Get Off the Track!\u2019 which is the anti-slavery, emancipation song version of \u2018Old Dan Tucker\u2019, the tune itself having its origins in late eighteenth century Elbert County, Georgia. We might invite a performer to represent Ira Aldridge offering his anti-slavery rendition of \u2018Opossum Up A Gumtree\u2019 or of Aaron Banks delivering his signature number, the \u2018Emancipation Song\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the African American work songs such as \u2018John Henry\u2019 (that originates from West Virginia), and \u2018The Road Gang Song\u2019 and \u2018Gonna Leave Big Rock Behind\u2019, all of which are featured in John Work\u2019s collection compiled in 1940.103<\/sup> Time then for a selection of spirituals from the repertoire of the Fisk Jubilee Singers<\/em> – \u2018Shout for Joy\u2019, \u2018Swing Low Sweet Chariot\u2019, \u2018Deep River\u2019 and \u2018Nobody Knows the Trouble I See\u2019.  A whole host of tunes owe their origins to the mixing of English, Celtic and Black styles in Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and the western territories; tunes such as \u2018Turkey in the Straw\u2019, \u2018The Yew-Pine Mountain\u2019 and \u2018The Kicking Mule\u2019. We might then take to the sea with a selection of sea shanties that feature the traditional African American call and response lyric form \u2013 \u2018Blow, Boy, Blow\u2019, \u2018Round the Corner, Sally\u2019, \u2018Old Stormy\u2019 and \u2018Time for Us to Go\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grand finale might consist of a rousing medley of numbers from In Dahomey.<\/em>104<\/sup> First produced on Broadway in 1903, this was the first all-black musical comedy performed in a major American theatre, and a precursor of the modern musical. The score utilizes a blend of ragtime, minstrel and operetta styles and was composed by Will Marion Cook, a descendant of slaves who had studied at the National Conservatory of Music with Anton Dvorak. It is a recognisably modern piece, far removed from the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and Gaiety \u2018Girl\u2019 musicals so popular at the time. It transferred to London\u2019s Shaftesbury theatre in April 1903 and was even performed at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of the Prince of Wales\u2019 birthday. Numbers such as \u2018The Czar\u2019 or \u2018Society\u2019 or the \u2018In Dahomey Overture\u2019 would capture the spirit and flavour of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a final coda to the event, we might hear once more those fragments of the original Caribbean scores from the Hans Sloane Collection \u2013 a reminder of the source of so much of this music. It is not possible to definitively separate out all the various strands of the cross-cultural process that represents nineteenth century minstrelsy, but is possible to recognise, clarify and celebrate an authentic Black American contribution. As Rhiannon Giddens concludes in her interview with David Harewood:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minstrelsy is horrific. I mean it\u2019s an horrific art form that contains within it really important stuff. And we can find the beauty within the music because [\u2026] I always say to people you can\u2019t talk about the banjo if you don\u2019t talk about slavery. The Caribbean is really the birthplace of the banjo. So, the idea for me is how do I find my way to that sound.<\/em>105<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A very different version of this show, from a highly personal black perspective, has in some respects already been written. It\u2019s by the American playwright and poet Dave Harris and takes its title Tambo & Bones <\/em>from the two endmen of the classic minstrel line-up. It is a sardonic and cutting satire on black history and the contemporary African American predicament, and as energetic (and energizing), insightful, and thought-provoking a piece of theatre as I have seen in the past ten years. If anybody might be tempted to think that the history of the minstrel show is a somewhat arcane subject, and hardly relevant to the modern world, then I would urge them to go and see (or read) this play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Using the three-act format of the minstrel show, part one offers us the two eponymous clowns in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pasture. But like a fake-ass pasture. Some fake-ass trees and a fake- ass bush. A fake ass-sky with a fake-ass sun. A lil bit of fake-ass grass. Yo it\u2019s a fake-ass pastoral out here.<\/em>106<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the illusory Hollywood setting of Gone with the Wind<\/em>, of a fantastical Deep South plantation contentment presented in the slapstick, comedic \u2018walkaround\u2019 routine of the Virginia Minstrels. <\/em>This pantomime exterior is layered however, with bitter irony and shades of Pirandello and the Beckett-like existential dilemma of Waiting for Godot. <\/em>Along with the joke-strewn banter we are given a spoof \u2018stump speech\u2019, \u201ca brief treatise on: Race in America\u201d, which leads us into \u201cTambo & Bones; A Minstrel Show\u201d<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TAMBO.         I\u2019m saying we real niggas pretending to be white niggas pretending to be fake niggas!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BONES (stupefied). WELL WHY WE STILL NOT GETTIN\u2019 NO QUARTERS THEN?!?!?!<\/em>107<\/sup>     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part two takes us into the contemporary world of funk and rap music (two of the more recent incarnations of polyrhythmic \u2018ragged\u2019 time) where paradoxically performance remains one of the only means to acquire the white man\u2019s quarter, a world in which the black community is still subject to the \u2018white gaze\u2019. Finally, part three presents us with a seemingly endless cycle of race war and ultimately the genocide of the white race. With bitter irony, the whiteface AI robots, controlled by the victorious blacks are in turn dehumanized and brutalized by their masters just as Africans had been dehumanized and enslaved in the early modern era. The character of Tambo concludes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we\u2019re here. We\u2019ve escaped our oppressors. Think: once, there was an old world where niggas would have to put on shows for people that looked nothing like them. And those niggas would have to figure out what was real and what was fake, and what was true pain and what was just a story, and they\u2019d have to do all that in front of an audience full of white niggas who had money and safety and no idea. How could anyone know freedom in a world where they are always being watched? How grateful I am for the sacrifices that were made to end that world. How grateful I am that those people are extinct<\/em>.108<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play is both an incisive exploration and an urgent warning. It makes vividly plain how the fallout of our very recent history remains living both inside us and around us in our cultural inheritance, in our social structures and attitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways the adoption of blackface minstrelsy and the appropriation and corruption of a genuine black culture was designed to completely erase that culture and that people. If we fail to recognise the contribution of that culture to what became minstrel music, then in many ways we compound and are complicit with that erasure. In terms of the American experience, there seems ample evidence that there was a significant strand of authentic African American minstrelsy that both gave rise to and influenced the form of its more commercialized and distorted blackface imitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side of the Atlantic, authentic black minstrelsy was the first of its kind to arrive on British shores and establish itself in the major ports and urban centres, and even on the professional stage prior to the arrival of the American blackface troupes. It is at the very least arguable that such authentic minstrelsy performed by real black performers, paved the way for the subsequent revolution in seaside entertainment during the Victorian era. Above all perhaps, in shaping the very roots of modern popular music and by virtue of its influence upon twentieth century classical music, it formed a major contributory element in the development of all the various modern musical art forms on both sides of the Atlantic, not to say around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/a>FOOTNOTES<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Blackface <\/em>BBC 2 10 Aug 2023<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Gibbs, Jenna M. Performing in the Temple of Liberty: Slavery, Theatre and Popular Culture in London and Philadelphia 1760-1850 <\/em>(John Hopkins University Press 2015)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Pickering, Michael; Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain<\/em> (Routledge 2016)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Lidington, Tony; Don\u2019t Forget the Pierrots! <\/em>(Routledge 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Pickering, Michael; Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain<\/em> (Routledge 2016)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Roberts, Brian; Blackface Nation<\/em> (University of Chicago Press 2017<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Sammond, Nicholas; Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation <\/em>(Duke University Press Books 2015)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Lott, Eric Love and Theft: Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (OUP 1993).<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Smith, Christopher J; The Creolization of American Culture <\/em>(University of Illinois Press 2014): 6<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Cook, James W. Discourses in Dance <\/em>Vol.3 Issue 2(online article):7-8<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. Binns, Anthony; The Funniest Man in London: The Life and Times of H.G. P\u00e9lissier 1874-1913 <\/em>(Edgerton 2022)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. The Strand Magazine <\/em>Jun.1909: 866-893 (Quoted in Binns: 37)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  13. Ibid.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  14. See Henry Mayhew\u2019s London Labour, and the London Poor <\/em>of 1850: 535-6<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  15. Nield, Sophie; \u2018Popular Theatre 18995-1940\u2019 in The Cambridge History of the British Theatre Vol.3: Since 1895, <\/em>ed. Baz Kershaw (CUP 2004: 86-109)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  16. Pickering:16-17<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  17. Harris, Dave; Tambo & Bones <\/em>(Nick Hern Books 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  18. archive.org\/details\/indsloanemanuscr00scottuoft<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  19. Blackface <\/em>BBC 2 10 Aug 2023<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  20. Winans, Robert; Banjo Roots & Branches <\/em>(University of Illinois Press 2018): 8-9<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  21. Furthermore, I would argue, this telling of stories is hugely significant when we consider how folk tales came to form such an essential element of southern black culture and in particular the narrative nature of some plantation work songs and blues lyrics. This can also be seen as a strong influence on the story-telling element in many maritime shanties, the minstrel show format and later country music.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  22. Baldwin, Brooke; \u2018The Cakewalk: A Study in Stereotype and Reality\u2019 in Journal of Social History <\/em>(OUP 1981): 15\/2: 205-218<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  23. Petersen, Carla L; Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth Century New York City <\/em>(Yale University Press 2011): 71<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  24. Gibson, George R; \u2018Black Banjo, Fiddle, and Dance in Kentucky and the Amalgamation of African American and Anglo-American Folk Music\u2019 in Banjo Roots and Branches\u2019 <\/em>ed. Robert Winans (University of Illinois Press 2018): 223-256<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  25. Petersen: 28-9<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  26. Gibson: 227<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  27. Ibid:227<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  28. Ibid: 228<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  29. Ibid:235<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  30. Ibid: 233<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  31. Ibid:233<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  32. ibid:237<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  33. Kemble, Frances Ann; Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-39 <\/em>(reprint, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1961): 259<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  34. Smith: 39<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  35. Fuld, James J. The Book of World-Famous Music, Classical, Popular and Folk. <\/em>Dover. New York. 2000: 312<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  36. Smith: 32<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  37. Ibid.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  38. Gibson: 244<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  39. Petersen: 190<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  40. Ibid: 28<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  41. Roberts:160<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  42. Ibid: 160-1<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  43. Ibid: (note 12) 328<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  44. Smith: 39<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  45. Smith: 11<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  46. Scott, Derek Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth Century Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna <\/em>(Oxford Scholarship, online: September 2008)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  47. The Baltimore Sun<\/em> 21 Jul. 1837 (quoted in Blackface <\/em>BBC 2 10 Aug 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  48. Gibbs Jenna M. Performing the Temple of Liberty <\/em>(John Hopkins University Press 2015)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  49. Dickens, Charles American Notes for General Circulation <\/em>(Chapman & hall, London 1842)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  50. Cook, James W. \u2018Dancing Across the Color Line\u2019 in commonplace.online\/article\/dancing-across-the-color-line\/<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  51. Birmingham Journal <\/em>16 Dec. 1848<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  52. The Mirror and United Kingdom magazine <\/em>Jul.1848<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  53. Cook, James W. Discourses in Dance <\/em>Vol 3 Issue 2. (online article):13<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  54. Pollitzer, William The Gullah people and Their African Heritage <\/em>(University of Georgia Press 2005)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  55. One might also consider the profound effect this far-reaching emergence of vernacular language would have on the mainstream culture. When Mark twain published Huckleberry Finn in 1884, he placed midwestern and southern American dialect at centre stage, in the voices of both his eponymous narrator and in the figure, though clumsily drawn, of the fugitive slave Jim. \u201cAll modern American literature\u201d wrote Ernest Hemingway in \u2018Green Hills of Africa\u2019 (1935) \u201ccomes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.\u201d Vernacular language had been employed in literary works for centuries past by mainstream authors from Shakespeare to Dickens \u2013 but largely as a matter of adding colour and class characterization. In Huckleberry Finn it would play the lead role as the voice of the main protagonists. This raises the intriguing question of those influences that the author Mark Twain encountered during his antebellum childhood by the Ohio River, the travelling players, the freed and fugitive slaves, the minstrels both black and white, and consequently of the widespread influence of an authentic black minstrelsy and vernacular idiom into the very heart of American literature and the birth of modernism<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  56. Petersen:217<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  57. Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave <\/em>(OUP 1999): 24-5; and see Olusoga, David Black & British <\/em>(Pan Macmillan 2021): 281<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  58. Petersen: 176<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  59. ibid:28-9<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  60. Abraham, Keisha N. & Woolf, John Black Victorians: Hidden in History <\/em>(Duckworth 2022): 164<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  61. Pickering: 7<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  62. Conway, Cecilia African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia <\/em>(University of Tennessee Press 1995)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  63. Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and Negro Minstrelsy<\/em> (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1962)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  64. Pickering: 6<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  65. Abraham, Keisha N. & Woolf, John Black Victorians: Hidden in History <\/em>(Duckworth 2022): 174-5<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  66. Burrows, Edwin G. & Wallace, Mike Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 <\/em>(OUP 1999): 487<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  67. Seed, David American Travellers in Liverpool <\/em>(Liverpool University Press 2018): 185-219<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  68. Roberts :107<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  69. Burrows, Edwin G. & Wallace, Mike Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 <\/em>(OUP 1999): 547-8<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  70. Cook \u2018Discourses in Dance\u2019 Vol. 3, issue 2: 8<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  71. Roberts:107<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  72. Ibid:109<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  73. Seed:114<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  74. Hawthorne, Nathaniel Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches <\/em>(pub.1863) quoted in Speed: 115<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  75. Seed: 128-9<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  76. Melville, Herman Redburn<\/em> (Penguin Classics, London 1987): 263-5<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  77. Ibid: 277<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  78. Roberts: 103<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  79. See <\/em>W.E.B. DuBois The Souls of Black Folk <\/em>(OUP 2008)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  80. Gerzina, Gretchen Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History <\/em>(John Murray, London 1995): 156<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  81. Ibid: 157<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  82. Olusoga, David Black & British <\/em>(Pan Macmillan 2021): 100<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  83. Pickering (2016): 7<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  84. Online article: annkingstone.com\/and-did-black-hands-in-ancient-times-knit-upon-yorkshires-mountains-green\/<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  85. The St James\u2019 Magazine <\/em>n.s.1 Apr-Sep. 1868<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  86. Greenwood, James The Wilds of London <\/em>1874. Republished by Taylor & Francis 1985<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  87. London Mail and Telegraph <\/em>21 Jul. 1860. Quoted in Pickering: 56<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  88. Pickering, Michael \u2018Blackfacing Britain\u2019in Racism and Modernity <\/em>ed. Iris Rigger and Sabine Ritter (Vienna and Berline: Lit Verlag 2011).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  89. See <\/em>Gerzina: plate illustrations.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  90. Pickering (2016): 78<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  91. Pickering (2016): 79<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  92. See note 85<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  93. Pertwee, John Pertwee\u2019s Promenades and Pierrots: One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment <\/em>(Westbridge Books 1979): 8<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  94. Nield, Sophie Popular Theatre 1895-1940 <\/em>in The Cambridge History of British Theatre<\/em> Vol.3 <\/em>CUP 2004, ed. Baz Kershaw):  100, citing facsimile poster, Hull: Humberside Libraries, 1984<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  95. Online article: africansinyorkshireproject.com\/blog\/local-black-history-in-personal-archives<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  96. See Pickering (2016): 76; and Olusoga: 147<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  97. Mayhew, Henry London Labour and the London Poor <\/em>(1861): 425-8<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  98. Pickering (2016): Chapter 2<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  99. Ibid<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  100. ibid<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  101. Green, Jeffrey Black Americans in Victorian Britain <\/em>(Pen & Sword. London 2018)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  102. Gerzina: foreword xvi<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  103. American Negro Songs <\/em>ed. John W. Work (Dover. New York 1998)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  104. Kenrick, John History of the Musical Stage 1900-1910 <\/em>(2006)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  105. Blackface <\/em>BBC 2 10 Aug 2023<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  106. Harris, Dave; Tambo & Bones <\/em>(Nick Hern Books 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  107. Ibid<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  108. ibid<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Reclaiming of an Authentic African-American Contribution: Part Four: From Seaside to West End Stage & Seaside Entertainers When the white American blackface minstrels first arrived in Britain, they were immediately able to take up formal residency in auspicious, professional theatres. Rice performed in the West End at the Adelphi theatre in 1836, while in… Continue reading Minstrelsy in Victorian Britain Part 4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afro-american-minstrelsy-in-victorian-britain","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthonybinns.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}