Blackface Minstrelsy 163more established troupes of white performers—groups that
generally monopolized the major performance stages and
venues. Th e minstrel show in postbellum America began to
expand to full-scale extravaganzas, sometimes involving as
many as a hundred minstrels, sideshow acts, acrobats, cir-
cus acts, and dancing girls. Th ese shows would by the 1880s
evolve into Vaudeville.
In print music, songs from the minstrel stage contin-
ued to be popular. But in the years aft er the war and par-
ticularly in the post-Reconstruction era, whether songs
about black fi gures originated from minstrelsy or not, they
regularly presented the domestic lives of African Ameri-
cans as woefully inadequate. Indeed, throughout the end of
the 19th century, the sheet music presented and portrayed
a black population incapable of maintaining the respectable
bonds that were otherwise projected as bringing American
families together. Even as the sanctity of family ties was
being most strongly asserted as central to national identity,
and even as those messages were being perpetuated in the
broader-sweep popular sheet music being consumed in the
domestic sphere, blacks were being denied access, excluded
from the fantasy of comfort and care indulged by the rest
of the population. Rather, black identity was presented as
base, absurd, inferior, and uncivilized—all that was anti-
thetical to the idealized aesthetics and aptitudes of the rest
of the nation.
Th at sheet music off ering images of failed black fami-
lies became so common in post-Reconstruction America
refl ects a national atmosphere dubious of African Ameri-
cans. Undeniably, images and messages of antebellum
minstrel sheet music helped to drive into the psyche of
Americans the idea that blacks were foolish, hypersexual,
and (unless carefully monitored) dangerous: these were
the assumptions about black behavior that Americans in
the North were trying to reconcile with the behavior and
attitudes of blacks now living among them in increasing
numbers in urban centers. Th e assumptions that shaped
these attitudes about black behavior were anchored to par-
lor culture’s embrace of minstrel material in mid-century
America. On the covers and in the music of antebellum
sheet music, the blackface tradition had off ered an end-
less stream of images of blacks as buff oons; as careless and
carefree braggarts; as wanton women; as hot-tempered,
ill-tempered, and intemperate lovers; as thieves; and as
fops. Repeatedly presented as unable to maintain even
the most basic standards of decorum and dignity, comicperformed to the most elite of mid-century society in their
own lavish “Ethiopian Opera Houses.” In addition to more
playful (but respectful) tunes, these high-class minstrels of-
fered beautiful love songs and sentimental ballads in four-
part harmony. Master songsmith Stephen Foster composed
some of his most popular (and most enduring) melodies
for the minstrel stage. Even the venerated Uncle Tom’s
Cabin was absorbed into the minstrel tradition. Although
some were beginning to perceive the blackface tradition
as damaging and racially insulting (most notably ex-slave
and abolitionist Frederick Douglass), most audiences failed
to see minstrel shows as anything other than harmless en-
tertainment. Few would have acknowledged that the satis-
faction of laughing at comedic incongruity came from its
power to assure audience members of their superiority over
the focus of the humor—black characters. Regardless of the
artistry of the performers or the cleverness of the rendi-
tions, the central comedic paradigm positioned racial su-
periority as the pivotal theme. But the parodies themselves
were leveraged on what had already become pervasive as-
sumptions of the racial inferiority of blacks. Paradoxically,
even as white audiences indulged their sense of superior-
ity over the representations of blacks in these productions,
they were also deeply invested in the cultural practice of
(un)seeing black identity. Th at white performers and audi-
ences accepted that black peoples’ skin served as a vacant
area for playing out fantasies demonstrates again that the
persistent process of blackface in America depended upon
denying black identity.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the decades be-
tween the Civil War and World War I. African American
performers found more opportunity to occupy the stage,
but restricted by the warped perceptions of white audi-
ences, black performers were pressured to perform the
same kinds of minstrel stereotypes their white predecessors
had invented. Th eir success depended on their own brilliant
self-ridicule and their ability to assure their white audience
of the validity of their own stereotypes. White audiences
did not want to see black culture as it actually was and were
generally not empathetic toward or interested in black is-
sues and identity. What they wanted were songs and rou-
tines that reinforced their nostalgia for absurdly simplistic
images of blacks generated decade aft er decade on the ante-
bellum minstrel stage. In addition to trying to infuse more
humanity into their own representations, African Ameri-
cans in the post–Civil War era had to compete against