CHAPTER 10 | THE RISE OF RAGTIME 237
land owned by absentee landlords, trapped many former slaves in a life of poverty
scarcely better than their earlier condition. When Reconstruction ended in 1876,
Federal troops were no longer present to ensure the voting rights of black men in
the South. With the growth of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux
Klan came a corresponding increase in mob violence against blacks. Lynchings
increased in number throughout Reconstruction and afterwards, reaching a peak
in the 1890s, when each year more than eighty persons, mostly blacks accused but
not convicted of serious crimes, were lynched. And the Supreme Court’s decision
in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 institutionalized the segregation of blacks and whites
in public spaces—the “separate but equal” policy that soon came to be nicknamed
Jim Crow, after the minstrel-show stereotype. As the black author and lyricist
James Weldon Johnson saw it, “the status of the Negro as a citizen had been steadily
declining for twenty-fi ve years; and at the opening of the twentieth century his
civil state was, in some respects, worse than at the close of the Civil War.”
Despite these obstacles, new professional opportunities for black musicians
opened up in the late 1800s, providing the musicians were willing to with-
stand varying degrees of indignity. At one end of the spectrum was the musical
savant and piano prodigy “Blind Tom” (Thomas Bethune, 1849–1908), who
from childhood was exhibited as a curiosity by his owner-guardian: an unedu-
cated slave, sightless from birth, with a large repertory of classical and popular
pieces, all learned by ear, to which he added his own compositions and improvi-
sations. As late as 1904 Blind Tom was still touring for the fi nancial benefi t of his
former owners, who made a fortune exploiting his phenomenal musical abilities.
At the other end of the spectrum was Matilda Sissieretta Jones (1868–1933),
an operatic soprano, trained at the New England Conservatory, who performed
at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison. She was nicknamed the
“Black Patti,” after the Italian diva Adelina Patti. Jones was barred from singing
with any U.S. opera company because of the color of her skin; instead, she traveled
extensively with her own troupe of African American performers, Black Patti’s
Troubadours, presenting a mixed program of operatic numbers and lighter fare.
Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum was the black minstrel show.
Apart from a few isolated antebellum examples, only after the Civil War was
minstrelsy opened to A frican A merican performers, who were expected to wear
the customary blackface and conform to all the demeaning stereotypes of the
minstrel stage. Minstrel troupes were almost always either all white or all black,
and even the exceptional mixed-race troupes tended to segregate their shows,
with white performers on the fi rst half and black performers after intermission.
By the turn of the century, a few black minstrel troupes had grown into large
operations, performing mostly in the South. W. A. Mahara’s Colored Minstrels
announced their arrival at a town with a parade featuring a thirty-piece band
led by bandmaster W. C. Handy, who would later become known as the “Father of
the Blues” (see chapter 11). Minstrel bands, demanding high levels of musical skill
and literacy, acted as proving grounds for black professional instrumentalists,
composers, and arrangers. Moreover, the minstrel format encouraged musi-
cians to fi nd new ways to blend currently popular genres, such as the march,
with music rooted in traditional African American idioms, which had been the
basis of minstrelsy’s appeal from the very beginning.
Once minstrelsy had opened the door for them, black performers gained
admittance into other forms of stage entertainment, such as vaudeville and musi-
cal comedy. One composer of musical comedies who successfully drew on bothJim Crow laws“Blind Tom” BethuneSissieretta Jonesblack minstrelsy172028_10_231-253_r2_mr.indd 237 23/01/13 10:26 AM