SPOTLIGHT ON HISTORYSPOTLIGHT ON HISTORY
Blackface Minstrelsy and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
T
hrough the minstrel show’s early years, as anti-
slavery sentiment grew in the North, Southern-
ers hardened their allegiance to the institution
of slavery. As the frontier moved west, bitter fi ghts took
place over whether slavery would be allowed in newly
settled territories, which might then become states
of the Union. Against this background, minstrelsy
retreated from controversy that might have reduced
its audience. Black characters were portrayed senti-
mentally, with contented Negroes fondly recalling the
good old days on the plantation. Restless or unhappy
blacks gradually disappeared from minstrel stages. By
the mid-1850s the minstrel show was built around the
notion that the plantation was blacks’ rightful home,
the only place where they could be truly happy and
well cared for.
Politics, the economy, regional pride, and reli-
gion were all involved in the rising tension between
North and South—as was literature, beginning with
the publication in 1852 of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life among the Lowly. Stowe
tried in her work “to awaken sympathy and feeling
for the African race, as they exist among us; to show
their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so neces-
sarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the
good efforts of all that can be attempted for them.”
A huge literary success in the North, Uncle Tom’sCabin was banned as subversive literature in some
parts of the South.
Within weeks of its publication, plays based on
Stowe’s book began to appear on American stages,
bringing to theatrical life characters like Uncle Tom,
the saintly, trustworthy slave, and Simon Legree,
the hard-fi sted, hard-hearted slave driver. In 1854
Christy and Wood’s Minstrels used Stowe’s charac-
ters in a plantation sketch they called “Life among
the Happy,” which featured plenty of dancing, sing-
ing, and high spirits but made little use of Stowe’s
plot, omitting any reference to the cruelty and suf-
fering of slavery, which had moved Stowe to write
her novel in the fi rst place.
To Stowe’s readers, Uncle Tom was a powerful
symbol of humanity. In the novel, Tom’s master
introduces him as “a good, steady, sensible, pious
fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four
years ago, and I believe he really did get it. I’ve
trusted him, since then, with everything I have.” In
contrast, by the time Emancipation was declared
(1863), the character as portrayed on stage was
aging, hard of hearing, and stupid—a feeble old
man who came to dancing life at the sound of
banjo music. A more striking symbol of the the-
atrical landscape in which black characters found
themselves would be hard to fi nd.144
K “Tom shows”—minstrel-style stagings of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin—lasted into the twentieth century,
as evidenced by this photo of a 1901 production
with white actors portraying Simon Legree, Tom,
and Emmeline, the latter two in blackface.172028_06_132-161_r3_ko.indd 144 23/01/13 8:19 PM