Descriptive Equity and Clarity around Blackface Minstrelsy in HTC Collections

Project Background

This project was born of years of previous interest and research around Blackface minstrelsy as a scholar, and personal experience with the difficulties in discovery and trauma from description of these complex materials in special collections. After the 2018 Society of American Archivists panel “Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description of Marginalized Histories,” where I presented initial findings on describing racially inflammatory material, I was approached by several colleagues who expressed frustration at their own feelings of futility in describing and providing access to Blackface minstrelsy related material. 

The Year-of-Professional-Engagement program provided the perfect opportunity to explore the possibilities in providing more sensitive access, and the Harvard Theatre Collection’s wealth of relevant materials provided the perfect case study. I began with an intention to simply identify materials with problematic description, but as I discovered major issues around collocation and discoverability the project both expanded to include an intellectual overhaul to our descriptive approach, and contracted to focus only on Blackface minstrel material.

My process for discovery was strategic but not computational. As it became clear that there were not common access points across materials, I was encouraged by Vernica Downey, Metadata Librarian, to focus on a keyword search strategy, rather than only a search by subject headings or other access points. I ended up with a combination of keyword and subject searches, with full acknowledgement that that may mean some material remains unidentified by this project.

Data on Current Records

Full data spreadsheets available upon request

  • Number of records identified in Hollis (single item MS, publications, collection-level records)

    • 226 records

  • Item level records identified in ArchivesSpace

    • 3172 item level records across 10 collections

  • 10 Most Frequently Applied Subject Headings

    • Minstrel shows: defined by LSCH as “Here are entered works on the 19th and early 20th century entertainments in which comedians portrayed racial stereotypes.”

      • 51 occurrences

    • Minstrel music

      • 31 occurrences

    • Songsters

      • 28 occurrences

    • Popular music

      • 26 occurrences

    • African Americans -- Songs and Music: defined by LSCH as “This heading is assigned to musical works about African Americans collectively”

      • 18 occurrences

    • Songs, English -- Texts.

      • 15 occurrences

    • Songs with piano

      • 13 occurrences

    • Songs -- Texts

      • 11 occurrences

    • African Americans -- Music: defined by LSCH as “This heading is assigned to music of African Americans.”

      • 11 occurrences

    • Popular music -- 19th century

      • 9 occurrences 

Major Identified Issues

  • Lack of common “historical note.” 

    • “Minstrelsy was a type of popular entertainment in the United States, principally of the 19th-century, which consisted of the theatrical presentation of elements of African-American life in song, dance, and speech.” (5 occurrences, neutralizing language)

  • Copying of inaccurate/inappropriate dealer description

    • Ex: “The Elks' performance of the cakewalk was the subject of one of the Lumière Brothers' early films in 1903 ("Les Elks champions de cake-walk"), in which the couple presumably dance to Debussy's Golliwogg's Cakewalk. The couple was widely credited as having created the dance which they performed in various Paris halls and casinos at the turn of the century.” (MS Thr 1788 - Debussy’s piece was not yet published, the cakewalk was already popularized before Les Elks performed in Paris)

    • Ex: "A rare survival of a fragile piece. Gorman's Troubadours were billed as 'A Real Exposition of Life in the Cotton Fields (!), a Band of Afro-American Celebrities. The Comedy Kings of the South.' Illustrations include a depiction of the famous Cake Walk, a 'Plantation Festival of Merriment' and a wonderful centerfold piece showing more images of how much fun it was to live on the old plantation."--Auction gallery description (viewed 04/07/2017).” (HTCE 31 - flippant, marketing language)

  • Neutralizing language outside of history note

    • Ex:  “Minstrel songs, old and new : a collection of world-wide, famous minstrel and plantation songs, including the most popular of the celebrated Foster melodies, arranged with piano-forte accompaniment” (Lowerre 222) - uses both “African Americans -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Pictorial works.” as subject heading and “Original printed cover illustrated with scenes from African American life in America during this time” in description

  • Unclear/Inaccurate Use of “African American entertainers” subject heading

    • Ex: "Tambo and bones : a history of the American minstrel stage" (Thr 1227.10*)

    • Ex: “J. W. Gorman's Alabama Troubadours : America's greatest Colored show ; for date here see last page” (HTCE 31) with dealer description only versus HTCE 12 that provides context

  • Lack of identification for actual African American entertainers

    • Ex: "Sam Lucas' Careful man songster" (M1628.L82 S3 1881) - no description letting the researcher know Sam Lucas’ relevant identity

Minstrel Description Recommendations

Focus on User Experience and Ease of Discovery over Librarian-Specific Domain Knowledge

  • Recommended: A shared subject heading across all identified materials

    • Minstrel shows: Captures the performance genre as a whole, includes non-musical examples

  • Recommended: A shared historic note to all minstrelsy-related finding aids and single item manuscripts that includes context about both the genre and HTCs collecting

    • “Blackface minstrelsy is a popular entertainment form, originating in the United States in the mid-19th century and remaining in American life through the 20th century. The form is based around stereotypical and racist portrayals of African Americans, including mocking dialect, parodic lyrics, and the application of Black face paint; all designed to portray African Americans as othered subjects of humor and disrespect. Blackface was a dominant form for theatrical and musical performances for decades, both on stage and in private homes. The Harvard Theatre Collection includes Blackface minstrelsy materials for the benefit of scholars seeking to better understand the role racial performance has had in shaping Western culture.”

  • Recommended: Evaluating and removing complex sub-divided subjects

    • If a user clicks a subject heading, it takes them to “Subject -- exact phrase -- XXX.” Currently, this means that while there are 280 revelant bib records, there are only 78 results for “subject -- contains -- minstrel shows”

Focus on Thematic collocation over Format

  • Recommended: Assembled collections can be arranged artificially to increase patron discoverability. Consider collapsing multiple assembled collections into “Harvard Theatre Collection on Blackface Minstrelsy” for thematic collocation, with format based series:

    • MS Thr 556 - American minstrel show collection

    • MS Thr 1848 - Harvard Theatre Collection minstrel cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, and postcards

    • MS Thr 951 - American minstrel show additional collection

    • MS Thr 730 - Minstrel show songs sheet music

  • Recommended: Stop cataloging single item minstrel purchases as publications, and instead process them as accruals to the assembled HTC minstrel collection. This will increase discoverability and patron sensitivity, as the finding aid is capable of containing complex subject and socio-historical description that rare-book cataloging does not allow for. This is in keeping with the MS Sections implements of DACS Principle 2.

Focus on Description and Surfacing African Americans over “Timely” Processing

  • Recommended: Stop inclusion of dealer descriptions for minstrel material, as the language used is often insensitive and non-scholarly, instead focusing on scholarly reference guides

  • Recommended: Include “related documents” notes whenever possible to increase discoverability

  • Recommended: Consult with curator on new purchases to ensure that materials purchased because of the involvement of African American performers can be accurately described. This may include making new SNAC records for identified performers

Implementation

After sharing an initial announcement of these internal recommendations, I was contacted by  Heather Cole and Karen Eberhart at Brown University in relation to their “African American Sheet Music” collection. This collection contains a mixture of Blackface minstrel music by White creators, African American creators, as well as later African American musical theater pieces. Recently, Brown received concerns from faculty about the description and arrangement for this collection. I shared the initial recommendation document, and met with Cole and Eberhart to discuss implementation, collaboratively leading to the following recommended steps:

  • Adding the historical note to the collection level guide

  • Separating the larger collection into two smaller collections: one titled “African American Sheet Music [date range]” and one titled “Blackface Minstrel Music [date range]”

    • Graduate students may be hired to do the research to identify and describe unlisted African American creators

Acknowledgements 

This has been a research and emotionally intensive project that I could not have completed without the assistance of kind colleagues.

I would like to acknowledge Houghton colleagues, first. Vernica Downey assisted with planning out search strategy. Betts Coup reviewed the draft report for integration with DACS principles and other descriptive standards. Adrien Hilton provided local counsel on potential implementation issues.

I would like to strongly thank leading Blackface Minstrelsy scholar Dr. Rhea Lynn Barnes, who reviewed the recommendations and added comments improving the timeline and bibliography. Barnes Harvard dissertation on Blackface minstrelsy gave her personal experience with our collections and I greatly value her volunteering time.

I’d finally like to thank Heather Cole and Karen Eberhart at Brown University. They reached out to me about my recommendations and their “African American Sheet Music” collection, providing me with my first opportunity to assist in implementing this research.


Selected Annotated Bibliography for Description Reference

Request at the following link for full Zotero library access: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2660648/blackfaceforspecialcollections

Brown, T. Allston, and Charles Day. "Black Musicians and Early Ethiopian Minstrelsy." The Black Perspective in Music 3, no. 1 (1975): 77-99. Accessed December 15, 2020. doi:10.2307/1214382.

Useful text for identifying Black archival subjects who may appear in special collections related to minstrelsy.

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh ed. Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930. United States: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. 

This source explores Blackface in a variety of specific facets, with a particularly relevant chapter on the iconography of Blackface minstrel sheet music.

Johnson, Stephen ed. Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy. United States: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.

Useful general text on the history and practices of Blackface minstrelsy.

Lott, Eric. Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Key text in minstrel studies, contextualizing minstrelsy around class and immigration.

Mahar, William John. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. United States: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Behind the Burnt Cork Mask is a resource on the earlier years of Blackface minstrelsy, and may be useful for identifying earlier performers and works.


Orton, Richard. "Black Folk Entertainments and the Evolution of American Minstrelsy." Negro History Bulletin 41, no. 5 (1978): 885-87. Accessed December 15, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44213862.

Orton provides useful context around the “authenticity” arguments of Blackface minstrelsy, tracing African American vernacular performance and the development of Blackface minstrelsy.

Peterson, Bernard L.. A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage Works By, About, Or Involving African Americans. United Kingdom: ABC-CLIO, 1993.

Peterson’s reference encyclopedia is useful for identifying minstrel shows that may have starred or been written by African Americans.

Pickering, M. (2008). Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315096247

Source for contextualizing and identifying Blackface performance in the United Kingdom, relevant to programs and playbills as well as U.K. based troupes.

Springhall J. (2008) Blackface Minstrelsy: The First All-American Show. In: The Genesis of Mass Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612129_4

Commercial and cultural contextualization of Blackface as a popular art form, relevant to publishers and production company records.

Toll, Robert C. Blacking up: The minstrel show in nineteenth century America. Oxford University Press, 1974.

Foundational text of Blackface minstrel studies.

Glossary

  • Minstrelsy - Popular theatrical form, originating in the United States in the 1830s. Presented, originally, to White audiences as authentic performances of vernacular African American music and culture through the use of stereotypical vernacular English and songs referencing stereotypical African American experiences. Minstrelsy’s popularity manifested in published song sheets, joke books, scripts, and a variety of performance types from well-funded stage shows, to amateur school productions, to at-home singalongs. 

  • Blackface (specifically as it relates to minstrel performance) - The use of burnt cork or Black face paint to characterize stereotypical African/African American identity, popularized in the United States in the 1820s

  • Interlocutor (classic minstrel stage show, 19th-20th century) - The straight man (still generally in Blackface) in a traditional minstrel show, sat center stage as master of ceremonies. Flanked by endmen and other stereotype characters

  • End-man/Corner Man (classic minstrel stage show, 19th-20th century) - Comic figures, portrayed by actors in Blackface. Often playing the stock characters “Tambo” and “Bones.” Portraying Enslaved African Americans, designed to elicit laughs through uneducated misunderstandings

  • Coon Song (early 20th century) - Musical genre composed by Black and Non-Black musicians utilizing racial stereotypes of urban Black masculinity

  • Jim Crow - (mid to late 19th century) Minstrel character representing enslaved/rural Black manhood as foolish, lazy, interested in shirking labor 

  • Zip Coon -(mid to late 19th century)  Minstrel character representing free Black manhood as ostentatiously dressed with pretensions towards erudition and urbanity

  • Wench/Prima Donna/Mulatto - (mid 19th through 20th century) Minstrel character representing mixed-race womanhood as hyper-sexual and alluring. Primarily portrayed by men in drag in stage performances.

  • Mammy - (mid 19th through 20th century) Minstrel character representing Black womanhood as overweight, maternal to White families. Primarily portrayed by men in drag in stage performances, also popular figure in sentimental minstrel/coon songs.

  • Coon Shouter (early 20th century) - Non-Black female Blackface performers who sang coon songs in a loud, declamatory fashion

  • Coon (late 19th century/early 20th century) - Racial epithet, also used for stock character representing city dwelling Black men as stylish, violent, knife-wielding and sexually dominant

Simplified Timeline - Early through Late 19th Century

Late 18th-early 19th Century - Parodic “Sambo” figure portrayed by White actors appears in popular American Theater

1820s-1840s - Blackface is performed primarily as solo or intercercery acts

1823-1824 - Performer Charles Matthews develops a character based on impersonating African Americans, and performs a dialect song, potentially in Blackface, in his play, A Trip to America

1828 -  Thomas Dartmouth (T. D.) "Daddy" Rice premiers his Blackface performance of the song “Jump Jim Crow,” introducing the “Jim Crow” character1829 - George Washington Dixon premiers his Blackface performance with the song “Coal Black Rose.” Dixon introduces the “Zip Coon” character

1843 - Dan Emmett and company stage what is considered the first full minstrel concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre. This is also considered the birth of minstrel troupes, which would become one of the most popular forms of traveling entertainment in the West.

1843 - Christy's Minstrels founded

1844 - Ethiopian Serenaders perform their first concert

1850s - Pro-slavery and sentimental pastoral songs/acts become more popular

1857 - Bryant's Minstrels formed, featuring Thomas Dilward, one of two known African American performers to act with White minstrel troupes pre-Civil War

1860s - Full, professional minstrel concerts decline in popularity, while minstrel songs remain popular as do amateur minstrel concerts

1865 - Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels, one of the first successful African American Blackface minstrel troupes formed

1870s - Minstrel troupes attempt to integrate “spirituals” and “Jubilee” songs, moving away from perceived “low-culture.” African American Blackface performers become more prominent. This era also marks the birth of “jumbo” or “mammoth” shows, featuring up to 100 performers in a spectacle, up from the traditional small troupes of 4-8

1872 - Callender's Original Georgia Minstrels, an African American troupe, formed

1875 - James A. Bland, an African American composer and performer, premiers with the Original Black Diamonds of Boston

1878 - Haverly's Colored Minstrels, an African American troupe, formed





 

Preferred Citation: Berry, Dorothy. “Descriptive Equity and Clarity around Blackface Minstrelsy in HTC Collections.” August 6, 2021. www.dorothy-berry.com/description