At the same time, other incidental blackface characters in other plays started having a more important role when it was decided that the public had had their fill of the "lying Yankee" character. ("Yankee" in this case is a geographical reference as in Pre-Civil War usage.) The other folksy and pivotal character was the "backwoodsman" or the "rural rube."  The latter two were particularly popular because they appeared naive and honest.

By 1800, there were famous actors who were known for their blackface performances. But they generally used the term "Ethiopian delineators." All this preceded minstrels and these acts were solos or incorporated into some small acting troupe. These were not the large circus arrangements of the later minstrels.

Blackface minstrelsy is the first distinctly American theatrical form and it originated in New York City. And as such, it was the center of the rise of an American music industry. Blackface was an integrated part of minstrels and when minstrels are mentioned in this article, it should be assumed that many in the cast were in blackface.

The face was painted to resemble a mask, in that the eyes and mouth were as exaggerated in size, shape, and contrast as they had been on masks for many, many centuries. This was an unhealthy makeup because the black was soot and the white was lead oxide. Removing the soot caused the lead oxide to be ingested through the pores.

Not all characters were in blackface but those who were, were pivotal features of the minstrel.

Specific History

A minstrel benchmark is 1845 when Dan Emmett and three other performers donned blackface and staged a concert in New York City. They were billed as the Virginia Minstrels. This was not a short skit or series of skits, but an entire evening of entertainment with a common theme among the acts.

It was simply operetta -- but a new form. This company established the layout of the stage, the sequence of acts, and even the makeup. They took turns telling jokes, doing dances individually and in pairs, and they sang in combinations of voices and songs, and one gave a speech in dialect which later became expected. These "stump speeches" were initially pseudo-political speeches but they later evolved more into semi-sermons with heavy emphasis on the Ten Commandments. At the end of the evening, this acting company naturally had a free-for-all, exciting finale.

Emmett and company simply made the term minstrel synonymous with blackface entertainment, and it was successfully targeting the middle-class New York City audience.

That same year, a successful group, The Ethiopian Serenaders, dropped their burlesque and crudities and became more popular than the Virginia Minstrels.

The one-upmanship of entertainment continued when Edwin Pearce Christy founded the Christy Minstrels. He had beautiful singing similar to the Ethiopian Serenaders but with Christy's composer, Stephen Foster, it was not long before the minstrels were more about music than straight, slap-stick skits.

It was through the minstrels that The Father of American Music, Stephen Foster, introduced, "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home" (known more traditionally as "Way Down Upon The Swanee River"), "Hard Times Come Again No More," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Black Joe," and the always beautiful, "Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair."

But Christy did keep the nonsensical good humor of the joking and jesting. He also kept the format of the Virginia Minstrels but he placed it into a three-act presentation to make it more consistent with what the experienced theater goers would expect.

In the first act, there was a rousing overture by the band and then the whole group danced onto the stage, singing a popular song, and then at the command of the master of ceremonies, who was always addressed as Mr. Interlocutor, the group sat in chairs and on stools in a semicircle. And as such, they performed the same function as the chorus from the commedia dell’arte of the 1550s.

Mr. Interlocutor, who was a pompous and overly dignified fellow, stood in the middle or slightly to one side. At one end of the semicircle was Tambo, and Mr. Bones was on the other end. They traded barbs throughout the evening and their interplay was part of the fun. If it seemed spontaneous, it was the gift of their performing abilities. Not all of the music or voice was in dialect.

"Tambo" had evolved from an early time when he was "Brother Tambo" and was named for the instrument he played -- the tambourine. This percussion instrument remained a part of his character, even when the entire group would be playing tambourine in elaborate rhythms.

And "Mr. Bones" naturally had bone cassonette arrangements that he played vigorously to "Tambo's" playing.

The first act would end with a walk-around to music or a more formal cake walk. It was mostly an exaggerated strut to music. The bounding prance of the current brass bands are a direct take-off from this sort of musical stepping.

The second act was basically a variety show but presented on a theme that would set up the third act. Again, the whole evening was a planned progression of acts and topics on a central theme.

The conclusion of the second act was a dialect speech by a pompous, uneducated, and slightly dim orator. This was the traditional "stump speech." This has carried over into modern musicals with the same sort of speech given in the musical, "Lil’ Abner."

The speech might be intended to make a serious point and it eventually became a faux sermon with all sorts of miss-references to the Bible. Or it dealt with political criticism of the more popular and biting sort. Often, it was accurately ridiculing high-class, white society.

The third act finished the evening and initially it was a skit taking place on an imagined Southern plantation. It had song and dance and slapstick – pure commedia dell'arte. There were pies in the face, the hot foot, and other sources of fire and smoke.

This all contributed to the on-going Northern belief that things were simpler, and therefore happier, down South. "Ignorance is bliss" was more of a Northern hope than a Southern affectation.

Any successful new character or invented stage craft was immediately noticed by competitive minstrel companies and these characters and innovation were quickly incorporated into their own acts.

By 1848, minstrels were the national performance art and had larger audiences than formal performances of plays and opera combined. ‘Theater’ meant minstrelsy. It was reported in a New York City newspaper that they were "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group."

Just as the individual minstrels had been travelers, so were the minstrel companies. But instead of the lone performer or two, now they involved many people, lots of costumes, props, musical instruments, and all the paraphernalia necessary for such a full-blown entertaining evening. They traveled the same theater circuits as any traveling entertainment of the day whether it was an opera company or circus. They needed the same venues and the same type of advertisements.

There have been many stories and movies about such traveling companies and most of the stories were true -- these people lived a hard, but often rewarding life.  They married, had children, and died on the road.  They relied on each other because they had to.  This is called "family."  Many people in a more stable and conventional life did not have this support system. 

This Northern entertainment had a circuit first through the Northeast, but by the late 1840s, there was a Southern tour established and these Northern minstrel companies were introduced in the South. By the 1860s, there was a Midwestern tour and some companies went as far as the West Coast. The railroads were making this western circuit possible just as the rivers had assisted the North/South routes.

The people along the circuit eagerly awaited the minstrel's arrival and entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to make money by building new theaters just for such minstrels. However, the minstrels’ needs were no different from most other staged performances, so the minstrels' popularity aided the development of the general performing arts in many otherwise isolated towns.

The minstrel show was American entertainment and was performed by white people in black makeup or, after the Civil War, by black people in black makeup. The first musical comedy produced and performed by African Americans was on Broadway in New York City in 1898. It consisted of the general minstrel routines and was called "A Trip to Coontown." (Name provided for music history reference only.)

The black minstrels of the 1850s continued and these all-black troupes claimed to represent the true black condition. This claim was used extensively in their advertisements. They were depicted as being "true ex-slaves trying to earn their freedom in the North." Such advertisements worked because if you could make it in New York, you could make it...well, you know.

Some of the all-black minstrel troupes became so popular they evolved into a commodity and there was a lot of selling and buying and then combining different troupes until they lost the original identities. Eventually, the best were in one troupe and they monopolized the business. (There was no free-agency at the time.)  Some of these individual performers became as famous as any of the white blackface performers.

The early all-black minstrels differed very little from the white equivalents and they lent credence to some of the ideas of black Americana – accurate or not. And these all-black minstrels with almost the same material were drawing large numbers of black audiences. One may wonder, and much has been written about how such material could have appealed to a black audience when it was becoming unpopular with white audiences. Still, black minstrels permitted blacks to appear on stage where before they had not.

Tambo and Bone's simple-mindedness and their generous honesty offset the pomp of Mr. Interlocutor. Mr. Interlocutor represented the educated class and politicians – as we would say today, "the establishment." Tambo and Mr. Bones represented the common person; therefore, when they got the better of Mr. Interlocutor, whether he was aware of it or not, the audience understood, and for this reason Tambo and Bones were the audience’s favorites. Tambo’s and Mr. Bones’ musical and dancing ability was part of their appeal, as well. So those characters who have been held up as the examples of the worst of the minstrelsy were, in fact, the audience’s favorite – white or black audiences. They were the simple, little guy, as the audience considers itself, outsmarting the complicated system.

But in actual application, it was Mr. Interlocutor who regulated the pace of the whole show and he had to be able to interpret the audience's response and move on when necessary. Because of this, and his constant presence before the audience, he was paid more than the other members of the cast.

The blacks continued with the tradition of using blackface. This was before grease paint, so burnt cork was used. This soot is a very flat-black which helped eliminate high-lights. But whether on black or white skin, it was a mess to clean up. Black knit long sleeves became the norm and white gloves helped the performer have his gestures understood when viewed from the back of the theater -- just as the white mouths and eyes exaggerated the facial expressions and made them more readily seen and understood.

As more blacks were in blackface, more "traditional" black music was being used. Though the audience thought they were hearing authentic black music – and advertisements assured them that they were – they were not. They were experiencing some commercialized version of it; however, later in black blackface, the jubilee was introduced as a finale. And this was black music.

The jubilee was a rousing spiritual and a pure adoption of black music. They were antiphonial and repetitive of the "call and response" type work song. These were slave songs but there was no differences in them and similar work songs of Western Europe. Any place men were expected to work as teams and struggle in unison there were the work songs or "field hollers." Whether rigging sailing ships or loading or off-loading ships at a dock, or moving canal boats on one of the many, busy, canal/lock systems, this work in unison needed the call and response song to synchronize and maximize the effort. And this musical pace was used in chopping cotton and moving dirt on a levee. Such "measured" work was used with slaves rowing galleys in the Aegean Sea or the coxswain at the stern of a rowing skiff from some posh school on the Thames. This was the optimized and combined work of many to attain a common goal.

The meter of the song would be to take a deep breath, hold it while straining at the task, then rest and exhale, then inhale and strain again. The central caller would sing out while the work was being done and during the pause, the workers would respond with the repetitive response.

There are many sea chanteys of this sort and they were arranged for different tasks aboard sailing ships. The ethnic chanteys and slave field hollers have been recorded.

Where the blacks had the jubilee, the whites had a scene around a home on the old plantation. The stage location of the jubilee eventually became the plantation act.

The growth of the abolitionist movement caused the politicizing of the minstrel and this dichotomy of public opinion encouraged a successful troupe to adapt to the different entertainment desires of the audience. Art mimicked life in this case.

The minstrels would cater to the interests of the geo-political area where they were appearing. In some places, the minstrels became as mean-spirited as many people now think they all were. In others, it retained the earlier, more sophisticated performances. But in these cases it was the representation of fantasy and naivete, as much theater is. In later years, Walt Disney's "Song of the South" and the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II "Show Boat"; 1927 (Edna Ferber, 1926) would manage to present that minstrel idea and form.

As could be expected, there was still controversy. Integrationists claimed the minstrels showed happy slaves – which they thought an impossibility – and the minstrels made fun of the slaves. Segregationists said that the minstrels upset social norms by showing runaway slaves in a sympathetic light.

The publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" developed along popular local lines and it was readily incorporated into minstrelsy. However, it was manipulated to reflect the local audience's opinions and preferences in some cases. In one case, it was presented as "Happy Uncle Tom."

A minstrel company that did not take the audience's preference into consideration was thought not to be  entertaining and the performance was identified as a political statement – though this was before such a term was being used.  It is important to remember that blackface minstrelsy started in the Northern cities for Northern audiences and the Southern cities later banned it because it was thought to be a Northern tool to alter Southern traditions. Minstrelsy became so identified with the Northern interests that the minstrel players were attacked for their Northern views.

During the Civil War, minstrelsy was a Northern entertainment that featured sad songs of dying soldiers, and in one, a mother's song for a dead son, "Weeping, Sad, and Lonely" sold over a million copies of the sheet music. Additionally, there were patriotic acts in the minstrels that would honor Northern heroes.

Minstrelsy had left its general entertainment roots to become a platform for political issues, and in the end, its criticism of the South became vicious.  And all this was in an entertainment medium thought to be Southern by tradition. But to state again, the minstrels had to reflect the interests of the audience. They were a business with expenses to be paid.

Minstrelsy was starting to wane having lost nearly half its audience. The old formula was getting a little tiresome and there is always something to take its place. Entertainment is that way. In this case, just straight variety shows and musical comedies gave the audience something new. These shows were the direct product of the minstrels and the performers moved right from the minstrel format into the new shows.

By 1900, the minstrel had run its entertainment course and was being replaced. There were small minstrel companies still touring in 1910 but by 1919 there were only three professional, traveling companies.

Vaudeville would be the next big, nationally universal entertainment.

One of the all-time best performers of vaudeville, Bert Williams, got his start in minstrels. A fellow performing star said that Bert Williams was the funniest man he had ever seen and he said that he was also the saddest man he had ever seen.

Williams was a great pantomime artist and the blackface makeup made it possible for those set well back from the stage to read his various facial expressions. One of his routines was about playing poker and it was one of the funniest acts of the day. He was the only one at an imagined table and nonexistent cards would be dealt and picked up. William's talent managed to present all objects and the other three virtual people as quite real to the mesmerized audience.

Williams claimed that no one wanted to see Bert Williams perform but that they were interested in the characters he portrayed, and until he donned "cork" (the burnt cork soot), his blackface mask, he could not be in character. He could not assume his character as himself. He always performed in black face. Yet, being from Nassau in the Bahamas, he had very black skin. But blackface was his mask and behind it hid the real Bert Williams.

And now we have come back around to ancient Athens when the audience believed that the person in the mask was really that character...and it is likely that the performer believed it, too. "Getting in character" is an old theatrical expression, but when it comes to masks, makeup, and costume, this general concept can be understood by the nonperforming public.

The humor in minstrels was readily moved into vaudeville – at least the wordplay and jokes. The use of ethnic groups for humor in the form of the dialect joke and song would continue for many years.  All cultures – all colors -- white, black, red, brown, yellow, were exaggerated for the audiences' benefit.

The characterizations had to have some truth about them. Many Chinese who came to the US to work on the railroads, did wear pigtails. Many Irish did drink a lot, etc. The Yiddish circuits made fun of themselves; the same performers would do the same in vaudeville. The number of Italian songs and acts could (and did) fill books. Singing an Italian song in an Italian dialect was not much of a stretch of the imagination. To do otherwise could hurt the song's appeal to the Italian audience – an audience that rejoiced in their ethnicity.

This was a period of heavy immigration and the ethnic groups helped support others of their group and each had its unique traits and talents.

And when the Irish joined the theater and became performers themselves, it is no surprise that their step-dancing and general good cheer was appreciated. Their passion, loyalty, and dedication were not overlooked, either.

Exaggeration is what theater is about. It is an aid for the audience. The least observant and inexperienced theater goer must be led to the proper understanding of the character and this requires exaggeration whether it be by costume, masks, makeup, or dialect.

The contribution of ethnic music can be debated but only as some academic exercise. Minstrelsy was not about musical education or cultural propagation. It was about entertainment. The audience wanted to be pleased. If pleased, they would recommend the minstrel group to their friends and more tickets would be bought and wages and expenses could be paid. We do no service to a commercial investment by philosophizing on its social content. It was a business first. Anything that interfered with that was quickly cut out.

Ridiculing politicians is not new, nor is it difficult. Will Rogers did this in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies and he made a fortune doing it -- only he was not in blackface. His exaggerated character was white but very close to the temperament of the Tambo and Bones of an earlier time.  He would twirl a rope, chew gum, scratch his head, stare at the floor, hem and haw, and pretend to be a country bumpkin while leaving the establishment with deep scars, all to the amusement of the audience.

The minstrel stump speech was heard many nights on the radio...but it was coming from The Kingfish, a character on the very popular radio program from 1928 to 1955, "Amos and Andy." The Kingfish misused big words that he did not understand (or worse, made up), yet he would make valid points in humorous ways. He was an invited guest and happy addition to the living rooms and kitchens of homes all across America. "Amos and Andy" was pure minstrelsy. This contributed to their good, innocent humor and wholesome fun. The Kingfish was not wearing a mask – but maybe he was – metaphorically.

Blackface performers, both white and black, moved into vaudeville and took their blackface act along with them. Al Jolson was in blackface for the first talking movie, when in 1927 he did "The Jazz Singer." In 1930, he did "Mammy" in a traveling minstrel show setting.

Performers today have a virtual uniform...a costume that is expected of them. But the white spats in a sad song just didn’t create the aura the song needed.  Had Rose been in blackface and rags as Al Jolson was so many times, the listener could have felt sorry for his character and the song would have been more persuasive and appreciated. (The Jolson blackface on YouTube is not consistent with his earlier stage work as is shown on Vitaphone Short #359, 1926, NYC. This is presented with staging and props to contribute context as it would have been in minstrel.)

The blackface was a mask with wide, white mouth and would show better to the audience in the back, the white eyes could be exaggerated for the same reasons. Indeed, I have just defined the Greek masks of 2,500 years ago and the clown’s painted face of the recent Barnum and Bailey circuses. This clown paint is most easily seen today on rodeo clowns. Such makeup is a flexible mask to identify a character. It was part of the costume that built and defined the character.

The Duncan Sisters

Vivian on left as Eva & Rosetta on right as Topsy.