Meghan Kelly to be fired from MSNBC for saying that blackface

[Rocko]

Who?

But, seriously that’s what she gets for selling out

 

[gtopa1]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

I never saw black folks in white face. Did they act like monkeys and clowns, too?

Sure you have.

​

I dunno, I found both of these hilarious. Never occurred to me to be "offended".

OMG! I never knew Eddie Murphy was Saul the Jewish guy!

You've seen black face, right? You didn't find it insulting to blacks?

Seems to me that "blackface" was a way of bringing black culture to the masses.

Behind The Blackface | AMERICAN HERITAGE

Before the Civil War, American show business virtually excluded black people. But it never ignored black culture. In fact, the minstrel show-the first uniquely American entertainment form-was born when Northern white men blacked their faces, adopted heavy dialects, and performed what they claimed were black songs, dances, and jokes to entertain white Americans. No one took minstrel shows seriously; they were meant to be light, meaningless entertainment. But it was no accident that the blackface minstrel show developed in the decades before the Civil War, when slavery was often the central public issue, no accident that it dominated show business until the 1880’s, when white America made crucial decisions about the status of blacks, and no accident that after the minstrel show died, the basic stereotypes it had nurtured endured-the happy, banjo-strumming plantation “darky,” the loving loyal mammy and old uncle, the lazy, good-for-nothing buffoon, the pretentious city slicker.

For better or worse, the American people made the minstrel show what it was.

America’s cities mushroomed after 1820, and American show business grew along with them. The new city audiences were large, boisterous, and hungry for entertainment; they hollered, hissed, cheered, and booed with the intensity and fervor of today’s football fans, and shrewd impresarios quickly learned to give them what they wanted. Between the acts of every play, whether it was Hamlet or the Original, Aboriginal, Erratic, Operatic, Semi-Civilized and Demi-Savage Extravaganza of Pocahontas , audiences were treated to short variety turns of songs, dances, and comedy. Between-the-act performers drew heavily on American folklore and folk song, so it was no surprise that the unique culture of black Americans became a regular feature of these brief skits. The only surprise might have been that the performers were white men wearing burnt-cork make-up. But before the Civil War, blacks were rarely allowed on the popular stage, just as they were rarely allowed in white hotels, restaurants, courthouses, or cemeteries.

As early as the 1820’s, some white performers specialized in what they called “Ethiopian delineation.” The Ethiopian delineators were entertainers, not anthropologists, of course, and they had no particular interest in the authenticity of their performances. But they had an insatiable appetite for fresh black material that could be shaped into popular stage acts.


Appearing in Louisville, Kentucky, about 1828, Thomas D. “Daddy” Rice, a blackface performer, saw a crippled black stablehand doing a peculiar shuffling, hopping dance. The stablehand’s name was Jim Crow, and as he danced he sang a catchy song with the refrain: Weel about, and turn about/And do jus so;/ Eb’rytime I weel about/I jump Jim Crow . Rice knew a good thing when he saw one; he memorized the stablehand’s song, copied his hobbling dance, wrote some new verses, and tried out the routine on stage. He was an immediate hit in the Ohio River Valley and was soon “Jumping Jim Crow” to a standing-room-only crowd of over thirty-five hundred in New York’s Bowery Theater.


The “Jim Crow” song and dance, observed writer Y. S. Nathanson in 1855, “touched a chord in the American heart which had never before vibrated.” It brought black culture to white Americans, who could no more resist the urge to try the new black dances of the 1830’s than their twentieth-century descendants could resist trying new black dances, from the Charleston to the Hustle and beyond. Nathanson recalled seeing a “young [white] lady in a sort of inspired rapture, throwing her weight alternately upon the tendon Achilles of the one, and the toes of the other foot, her left hand resting upon her hip, her right… extended aloft, gyrating as the exigencies of the song required, and singing Jim Crow at the top of her voice.”

Spurred on by Rice’s phenomenal success, many blackface performers in the 1830’s did primitive fieldwork among black people. Billy Whillock, who toured the South with circuses in the 1830’s, would “steal off to some negro hut to hear the darkies sing and see them dance, taking a jug of whisky to make things merrier.” Ben Cotton, another blackface star, also recalled studying black culture at its source: “I used to sit with them in front of their cabins, and we would start the banjo twanging, and their voices would ring out in the quiet night air in their weird melodies.” Similarly, E. P. Christy, later the leader of the famous Christy Minstrels, was fascinated with the “queer words and simple but expressive melodies” he heard from black dock workers in New Orleans.

In the winter of 1842–43, four Ethiopian delineators—Billy Whitlock, Frank Pelham, Frank Brower, and Dan Emmett—found themselves in New York City “between engagements.” Single bookings were hard to find, so they decided to unite and stage the first entire show of blackface entertainment. Calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels, they were an instant sensation. Soon there were minstrel troupes almost everywhere. In 1844 the Ethiopian Serenaders played before President John Tyler at the White House. Eight years later, Buckley’s Serenaders performed in the new state of California. In New York City, a synagogue was converted into Wood’s Minstrel Hall, one of at least ten major minstrel houses in the city in the 1850’s. And when Commodore Perry’s fleet forced its way into Japan, his crew chose to introduce American culture with a minstrel show.

During the next half century, the minstrel show would be the most popular form of entertainment in America, for it was perfectly suited to the tastes of everyday Americans. As the upbeat overture quieted the noisy crowd and the curtain rose, the eight minstrels would burst into action, strutting, singing, waving their arms, banging their tambourines, and prancing around a semicircle of chairs. Finally the dignified man in the middle, the interlocutor, established order by commanding: “Gentlemen, be seated!” “Mr. Bones,” the interlocutor said, enunciating clearly as he turned toward the “end” man, a comedian with grotesque, pop-eyed, grinning make-up, “I understand you went to the ball game yesterday afternoon. You told me you wanted to go to your mother-in-law’s funeral.” “I did want to,” the end man shot back, “but she ain’t dead yet.” More jokes followed before the interlocutor introduced a handsome tenor, who sang “Mother I’ve Come Home to Die,” or some similar sentimental ballad. “These mournful ditties form the staple of the first part,” wrote one fan in 1879. “But there is occasionally a rattling comic song by Brudder Bones. He dances to the tune, he throws open the lapel of his coat, and in a final spasm of delight, he stands upon his head on the chair seat and for a thrilling and evanescent instant extends his nether extremities in the air.”








At the intermission the patrons had another drink while the minstrels changed out of their formal wear in preparation for the olio, a variety show which included “banjoists; men with performing dogs or monkeys; Hottentot overtures;… song and dance men; the water-melon man; persons who play upon penny whistles, combs, Jew’s-harps, bagpipes, quills, their fingers—individuals, in fact, who do every thing by turns, but nothing long.” For part three, the curtain rose on a plantation scene complete with cotton bales, a white-columned house, a smoking steamboat, and blackface “darkies.” A banjo rang out, signaling the beginning of a raucous party that concluded with the entire troupe singing “the wild bars of some plantation tune,” dancing wildly, and doing “any grotesquerie, so long as it is not indecent.” The audience joined in until the theater shook with foot-stomping, hand-clapping, singing, dancing, laughing people.

Minstrelsy produced some of America’s most beloved and enduring popular songs-“Jim Along Josey,” “De Blue Tail Fly,” “Dance, Boatman, Dance,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Dixie”— and it gave America the melodies of Stephen Foster. Born in Pittsburgh in 1826, Foster was exposed in his youth to all types of music. His family taught him the refined, genteel music heard in respectable parlors; the family’s Negro servant took him to her church, where he heard spirituals; and he blacked up to sing songs like “Jump Jim Crow” in a local theater. His genius as a songwriter was that he combined the qualities of black and white folk music in songs that were easy to sing and play. Beginning in 1848, minstrels made many of his songs into national hits, including “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe,” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Minstrel humor ranged from skits to one-liners, from slapstick to riddles. End men explained that the letter t was like an island, because it was in the middle of “water”; that a man who fell off a boat used a bar of soap to wash himself ashore; that firemen wore red suspenders to hold up their pants; and that chickens crossed the road to get to the other side. In this punchy language play, minstrels were beginning to introduce the rapid-fire humor of the city, the humor later perfected in vaudeville, burlesque, and radio. “My new place does not have a single bug,” end man Charlie Fox boasted in 1859 about his boardinghouse. “All of them are married and have large families.” Minstrels also performed long comic monologues, “stump speeches” which depended on the foolish misuse of language rather than anecdotes or plot for laughs: Transcendentalism is dat spiritual cognoscence ob pyschological irrefragibility, connected wid conscientient ademption ob incolumbient spirituality and etherialized connection … dat became ana-tomi-cati-cally tattalable in de circum ambulatin commotion ob ambiloquous voluminiousness . Besides mocking pretentious blacks for being “better stocked with words than Judgement,” stump speeches also poked fun at pompous politicians and professionals who seemed to talk in such gobbledygook.


Minstrel slapstick could be wonderfully elaborate. In one act, a cast of sleepwalkers-a super-patriotic politician, a passionate lover, a quick-fingered kleptomaniac, and a “canine hydrophobia patient” who thought he had been bitten by a rabid dog—roamed the stage, acting out their obsessions in their sleep while a burglar tried to tiptoe among them without waking them up. Finally, the canine hydrophobiac pounced on the thief, biting, snarling, and barking as the stage exploded with action and real fireworks.

With America’s best songwriters, comics, singers, dancers, and novelty acts, the minstrel show offered more than enough lively variety entertainment to ensure its popularity. But it was not just the nation’s first top-notch variety show. It was a top-notch variety show performed in blackface and black dialect. Race was a central part of its initial and enduring appeal.

I suppose there was a dark side to it if one really looked. The article also mentions that. But at its heart was ENTERTAINMENT.

Greg

 

[Pogo]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

I never saw black folks in white face. Did they act like monkeys and clowns, too?

Sure you have.

​

I dunno, I found both of these hilarious. Never occurred to me to be "offended".

OMG! I never knew Eddie Murphy was Saul the Jewish guy!

You've seen black face, right? You didn't find it insulting to blacks?

Seems to me that "blackface" was a way of bringing black culture to the masses.

Behind The Blackface | AMERICAN HERITAGE

Before the Civil War, American show business virtually excluded black people. But it never ignored black culture. In fact, the minstrel show-the first uniquely American entertainment form-was born when Northern white men blacked their faces, adopted heavy dialects, and performed what they claimed were black songs, dances, and jokes to entertain white Americans. No one took minstrel shows seriously; they were meant to be light, meaningless entertainment. But it was no accident that the blackface minstrel show developed in the decades before the Civil War, when slavery was often the central public issue, no accident that it dominated show business until the 1880’s, when white America made crucial decisions about the status of blacks, and no accident that after the minstrel show died, the basic stereotypes it had nurtured endured-the happy, banjo-strumming plantation “darky,” the loving loyal mammy and old uncle, the lazy, good-for-nothing buffoon, the pretentious city slicker.

For better or worse, the American people made the minstrel show what it was.

America’s cities mushroomed after 1820, and American show business grew along with them. The new city audiences were large, boisterous, and hungry for entertainment; they hollered, hissed, cheered, and booed with the intensity and fervor of today’s football fans, and shrewd impresarios quickly learned to give them what they wanted. Between the acts of every play, whether it was Hamlet or the Original, Aboriginal, Erratic, Operatic, Semi-Civilized and Demi-Savage Extravaganza of Pocahontas , audiences were treated to short variety turns of songs, dances, and comedy. Between-the-act performers drew heavily on American folklore and folk song, so it was no surprise that the unique culture of black Americans became a regular feature of these brief skits. The only surprise might have been that the performers were white men wearing burnt-cork make-up. But before the Civil War, blacks were rarely allowed on the popular stage, just as they were rarely allowed in white hotels, restaurants, courthouses, or cemeteries.

As early as the 1820’s, some white performers specialized in what they called “Ethiopian delineation.” The Ethiopian delineators were entertainers, not anthropologists, of course, and they had no particular interest in the authenticity of their performances. But they had an insatiable appetite for fresh black material that could be shaped into popular stage acts.


Appearing in Louisville, Kentucky, about 1828, Thomas D. “Daddy” Rice, a blackface performer, saw a crippled black stablehand doing a peculiar shuffling, hopping dance. The stablehand’s name was Jim Crow, and as he danced he sang a catchy song with the refrain: Weel about, and turn about/And do jus so;/ Eb’rytime I weel about/I jump Jim Crow . Rice knew a good thing when he saw one; he memorized the stablehand’s song, copied his hobbling dance, wrote some new verses, and tried out the routine on stage. He was an immediate hit in the Ohio River Valley and was soon “Jumping Jim Crow” to a standing-room-only crowd of over thirty-five hundred in New York’s Bowery Theater.


The “Jim Crow” song and dance, observed writer Y. S. Nathanson in 1855, “touched a chord in the American heart which had never before vibrated.” It brought black culture to white Americans, who could no more resist the urge to try the new black dances of the 1830’s than their twentieth-century descendants could resist trying new black dances, from the Charleston to the Hustle and beyond. Nathanson recalled seeing a “young [white] lady in a sort of inspired rapture, throwing her weight alternately upon the tendon Achilles of the one, and the toes of the other foot, her left hand resting upon her hip, her right… extended aloft, gyrating as the exigencies of the song required, and singing Jim Crow at the top of her voice.”

Spurred on by Rice’s phenomenal success, many blackface performers in the 1830’s did primitive fieldwork among black people. Billy Whillock, who toured the South with circuses in the 1830’s, would “steal off to some negro hut to hear the darkies sing and see them dance, taking a jug of whisky to make things merrier.” Ben Cotton, another blackface star, also recalled studying black culture at its source: “I used to sit with them in front of their cabins, and we would start the banjo twanging, and their voices would ring out in the quiet night air in their weird melodies.” Similarly, E. P. Christy, later the leader of the famous Christy Minstrels, was fascinated with the “queer words and simple but expressive melodies” he heard from black dock workers in New Orleans.

In the winter of 1842–43, four Ethiopian delineators—Billy Whitlock, Frank Pelham, Frank Brower, and Dan Emmett—found themselves in New York City “between engagements.” Single bookings were hard to find, so they decided to unite and stage the first entire show of blackface entertainment. Calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels, they were an instant sensation. Soon there were minstrel troupes almost everywhere. In 1844 the Ethiopian Serenaders played before President John Tyler at the White House. Eight years later, Buckley’s Serenaders performed in the new state of California. In New York City, a synagogue was converted into Wood’s Minstrel Hall, one of at least ten major minstrel houses in the city in the 1850’s. And when Commodore Perry’s fleet forced its way into Japan, his crew chose to introduce American culture with a minstrel show.

During the next half century, the minstrel show would be the most popular form of entertainment in America, for it was perfectly suited to the tastes of everyday Americans. As the upbeat overture quieted the noisy crowd and the curtain rose, the eight minstrels would burst into action, strutting, singing, waving their arms, banging their tambourines, and prancing around a semicircle of chairs. Finally the dignified man in the middle, the interlocutor, established order by commanding: “Gentlemen, be seated!” “Mr. Bones,” the interlocutor said, enunciating clearly as he turned toward the “end” man, a comedian with grotesque, pop-eyed, grinning make-up, “I understand you went to the ball game yesterday afternoon. You told me you wanted to go to your mother-in-law’s funeral.” “I did want to,” the end man shot back, “but she ain’t dead yet.” More jokes followed before the interlocutor introduced a handsome tenor, who sang “Mother I’ve Come Home to Die,” or some similar sentimental ballad. “These mournful ditties form the staple of the first part,” wrote one fan in 1879. “But there is occasionally a rattling comic song by Brudder Bones. He dances to the tune, he throws open the lapel of his coat, and in a final spasm of delight, he stands upon his head on the chair seat and for a thrilling and evanescent instant extends his nether extremities in the air.”








At the intermission the patrons had another drink while the minstrels changed out of their formal wear in preparation for the olio, a variety show which included “banjoists; men with performing dogs or monkeys; Hottentot overtures;… song and dance men; the water-melon man; persons who play upon penny whistles, combs, Jew’s-harps, bagpipes, quills, their fingers—individuals, in fact, who do every thing by turns, but nothing long.” For part three, the curtain rose on a plantation scene complete with cotton bales, a white-columned house, a smoking steamboat, and blackface “darkies.” A banjo rang out, signaling the beginning of a raucous party that concluded with the entire troupe singing “the wild bars of some plantation tune,” dancing wildly, and doing “any grotesquerie, so long as it is not indecent.” The audience joined in until the theater shook with foot-stomping, hand-clapping, singing, dancing, laughing people.

Minstrelsy produced some of America’s most beloved and enduring popular songs-“Jim Along Josey,” “De Blue Tail Fly,” “Dance, Boatman, Dance,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Dixie”— and it gave America the melodies of Stephen Foster. Born in Pittsburgh in 1826, Foster was exposed in his youth to all types of music. His family taught him the refined, genteel music heard in respectable parlors; the family’s Negro servant took him to her church, where he heard spirituals; and he blacked up to sing songs like “Jump Jim Crow” in a local theater. His genius as a songwriter was that he combined the qualities of black and white folk music in songs that were easy to sing and play. Beginning in 1848, minstrels made many of his songs into national hits, including “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe,” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Minstrel humor ranged from skits to one-liners, from slapstick to riddles. End men explained that the letter t was like an island, because it was in the middle of “water”; that a man who fell off a boat used a bar of soap to wash himself ashore; that firemen wore red suspenders to hold up their pants; and that chickens crossed the road to get to the other side. In this punchy language play, minstrels were beginning to introduce the rapid-fire humor of the city, the humor later perfected in vaudeville, burlesque, and radio. “My new place does not have a single bug,” end man Charlie Fox boasted in 1859 about his boardinghouse. “All of them are married and have large families.” Minstrels also performed long comic monologues, “stump speeches” which depended on the foolish misuse of language rather than anecdotes or plot for laughs: Transcendentalism is dat spiritual cognoscence ob pyschological irrefragibility, connected wid conscientient ademption ob incolumbient spirituality and etherialized connection … dat became ana-tomi-cati-cally tattalable in de circum ambulatin commotion ob ambiloquous voluminiousness . Besides mocking pretentious blacks for being “better stocked with words than Judgement,” stump speeches also poked fun at pompous politicians and professionals who seemed to talk in such gobbledygook.


Minstrel slapstick could be wonderfully elaborate. In one act, a cast of sleepwalkers-a super-patriotic politician, a passionate lover, a quick-fingered kleptomaniac, and a “canine hydrophobia patient” who thought he had been bitten by a rabid dog—roamed the stage, acting out their obsessions in their sleep while a burglar tried to tiptoe among them without waking them up. Finally, the canine hydrophobiac pounced on the thief, biting, snarling, and barking as the stage exploded with action and real fireworks.

With America’s best songwriters, comics, singers, dancers, and novelty acts, the minstrel show offered more than enough lively variety entertainment to ensure its popularity. But it was not just the nation’s first top-notch variety show. It was a top-notch variety show performed in blackface and black dialect. Race was a central part of its initial and enduring appeal.

I suppose there was a dark side to it if one really looked. The article also mentions that. But at its heart was ENTERTAINMENT.

Greg

The elephant in the room that you left out is that it was "entertainment" using as a vehicle demeaning mythical stereotypes, the function of which was to reinforce those stereotypes and make the audience watching it feel better about holding those same prejudices themselves.

That's kind of a YUGE factor to intentionally omit. A "way of bringing black culture to the masses" my ass. This was all mocking satire and as such could not have worked unless those very stereotypes were already established and therefore widely known. You can't 'reinforce' stereotypes that you're just putting out for the first time so come the fuck off it.

The phrase "Ethiopian delineators" is an eloquent reflection of the ignorance that fueled it. For some bizzaro reason these racist caraciturizations loved to hang up on "Ethiopia", a land that had nothing to do with the slave trade or the black population.

 

[Lakhota]

Meghan Kelly doesn't work for MSNBC.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

Several USMB posters don black face Asclepias, IM2, etc

 

[Rosy]

Meghan Kelly doesn't work for MSNBC.

True she is currently unemployed

 

[IM2]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

I never saw black folks in white face. Did they act like monkeys and clowns, too?

Sure you have.

​

I dunno, I found both of these hilarious. Never occurred to me to be "offended".

OMG! I never knew Eddie Murphy was Saul the Jewish guy!

You've seen black face, right? You didn't find it insulting to blacks?

Seems to me that "blackface" was a way of bringing black culture to the masses.

Behind The Blackface | AMERICAN HERITAGE

Before the Civil War, American show business virtually excluded black people. But it never ignored black culture. In fact, the minstrel show-the first uniquely American entertainment form-was born when Northern white men blacked their faces, adopted heavy dialects, and performed what they claimed were black songs, dances, and jokes to entertain white Americans. No one took minstrel shows seriously; they were meant to be light, meaningless entertainment. But it was no accident that the blackface minstrel show developed in the decades before the Civil War, when slavery was often the central public issue, no accident that it dominated show business until the 1880’s, when white America made crucial decisions about the status of blacks, and no accident that after the minstrel show died, the basic stereotypes it had nurtured endured-the happy, banjo-strumming plantation “darky,” the loving loyal mammy and old uncle, the lazy, good-for-nothing buffoon, the pretentious city slicker.

For better or worse, the American people made the minstrel show what it was.

America’s cities mushroomed after 1820, and American show business grew along with them. The new city audiences were large, boisterous, and hungry for entertainment; they hollered, hissed, cheered, and booed with the intensity and fervor of today’s football fans, and shrewd impresarios quickly learned to give them what they wanted. Between the acts of every play, whether it was Hamlet or the Original, Aboriginal, Erratic, Operatic, Semi-Civilized and Demi-Savage Extravaganza of Pocahontas , audiences were treated to short variety turns of songs, dances, and comedy. Between-the-act performers drew heavily on American folklore and folk song, so it was no surprise that the unique culture of black Americans became a regular feature of these brief skits. The only surprise might have been that the performers were white men wearing burnt-cork make-up. But before the Civil War, blacks were rarely allowed on the popular stage, just as they were rarely allowed in white hotels, restaurants, courthouses, or cemeteries.

As early as the 1820’s, some white performers specialized in what they called “Ethiopian delineation.” The Ethiopian delineators were entertainers, not anthropologists, of course, and they had no particular interest in the authenticity of their performances. But they had an insatiable appetite for fresh black material that could be shaped into popular stage acts.


Appearing in Louisville, Kentucky, about 1828, Thomas D. “Daddy” Rice, a blackface performer, saw a crippled black stablehand doing a peculiar shuffling, hopping dance. The stablehand’s name was Jim Crow, and as he danced he sang a catchy song with the refrain: Weel about, and turn about/And do jus so;/ Eb’rytime I weel about/I jump Jim Crow . Rice knew a good thing when he saw one; he memorized the stablehand’s song, copied his hobbling dance, wrote some new verses, and tried out the routine on stage. He was an immediate hit in the Ohio River Valley and was soon “Jumping Jim Crow” to a standing-room-only crowd of over thirty-five hundred in New York’s Bowery Theater.


The “Jim Crow” song and dance, observed writer Y. S. Nathanson in 1855, “touched a chord in the American heart which had never before vibrated.” It brought black culture to white Americans, who could no more resist the urge to try the new black dances of the 1830’s than their twentieth-century descendants could resist trying new black dances, from the Charleston to the Hustle and beyond. Nathanson recalled seeing a “young [white] lady in a sort of inspired rapture, throwing her weight alternately upon the tendon Achilles of the one, and the toes of the other foot, her left hand resting upon her hip, her right… extended aloft, gyrating as the exigencies of the song required, and singing Jim Crow at the top of her voice.”

Spurred on by Rice’s phenomenal success, many blackface performers in the 1830’s did primitive fieldwork among black people. Billy Whillock, who toured the South with circuses in the 1830’s, would “steal off to some negro hut to hear the darkies sing and see them dance, taking a jug of whisky to make things merrier.” Ben Cotton, another blackface star, also recalled studying black culture at its source: “I used to sit with them in front of their cabins, and we would start the banjo twanging, and their voices would ring out in the quiet night air in their weird melodies.” Similarly, E. P. Christy, later the leader of the famous Christy Minstrels, was fascinated with the “queer words and simple but expressive melodies” he heard from black dock workers in New Orleans.

In the winter of 1842–43, four Ethiopian delineators—Billy Whitlock, Frank Pelham, Frank Brower, and Dan Emmett—found themselves in New York City “between engagements.” Single bookings were hard to find, so they decided to unite and stage the first entire show of blackface entertainment. Calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels, they were an instant sensation. Soon there were minstrel troupes almost everywhere. In 1844 the Ethiopian Serenaders played before President John Tyler at the White House. Eight years later, Buckley’s Serenaders performed in the new state of California. In New York City, a synagogue was converted into Wood’s Minstrel Hall, one of at least ten major minstrel houses in the city in the 1850’s. And when Commodore Perry’s fleet forced its way into Japan, his crew chose to introduce American culture with a minstrel show.

During the next half century, the minstrel show would be the most popular form of entertainment in America, for it was perfectly suited to the tastes of everyday Americans. As the upbeat overture quieted the noisy crowd and the curtain rose, the eight minstrels would burst into action, strutting, singing, waving their arms, banging their tambourines, and prancing around a semicircle of chairs. Finally the dignified man in the middle, the interlocutor, established order by commanding: “Gentlemen, be seated!” “Mr. Bones,” the interlocutor said, enunciating clearly as he turned toward the “end” man, a comedian with grotesque, pop-eyed, grinning make-up, “I understand you went to the ball game yesterday afternoon. You told me you wanted to go to your mother-in-law’s funeral.” “I did want to,” the end man shot back, “but she ain’t dead yet.” More jokes followed before the interlocutor introduced a handsome tenor, who sang “Mother I’ve Come Home to Die,” or some similar sentimental ballad. “These mournful ditties form the staple of the first part,” wrote one fan in 1879. “But there is occasionally a rattling comic song by Brudder Bones. He dances to the tune, he throws open the lapel of his coat, and in a final spasm of delight, he stands upon his head on the chair seat and for a thrilling and evanescent instant extends his nether extremities in the air.”








At the intermission the patrons had another drink while the minstrels changed out of their formal wear in preparation for the olio, a variety show which included “banjoists; men with performing dogs or monkeys; Hottentot overtures;… song and dance men; the water-melon man; persons who play upon penny whistles, combs, Jew’s-harps, bagpipes, quills, their fingers—individuals, in fact, who do every thing by turns, but nothing long.” For part three, the curtain rose on a plantation scene complete with cotton bales, a white-columned house, a smoking steamboat, and blackface “darkies.” A banjo rang out, signaling the beginning of a raucous party that concluded with the entire troupe singing “the wild bars of some plantation tune,” dancing wildly, and doing “any grotesquerie, so long as it is not indecent.” The audience joined in until the theater shook with foot-stomping, hand-clapping, singing, dancing, laughing people.

Minstrelsy produced some of America’s most beloved and enduring popular songs-“Jim Along Josey,” “De Blue Tail Fly,” “Dance, Boatman, Dance,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Dixie”— and it gave America the melodies of Stephen Foster. Born in Pittsburgh in 1826, Foster was exposed in his youth to all types of music. His family taught him the refined, genteel music heard in respectable parlors; the family’s Negro servant took him to her church, where he heard spirituals; and he blacked up to sing songs like “Jump Jim Crow” in a local theater. His genius as a songwriter was that he combined the qualities of black and white folk music in songs that were easy to sing and play. Beginning in 1848, minstrels made many of his songs into national hits, including “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe,” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Minstrel humor ranged from skits to one-liners, from slapstick to riddles. End men explained that the letter t was like an island, because it was in the middle of “water”; that a man who fell off a boat used a bar of soap to wash himself ashore; that firemen wore red suspenders to hold up their pants; and that chickens crossed the road to get to the other side. In this punchy language play, minstrels were beginning to introduce the rapid-fire humor of the city, the humor later perfected in vaudeville, burlesque, and radio. “My new place does not have a single bug,” end man Charlie Fox boasted in 1859 about his boardinghouse. “All of them are married and have large families.” Minstrels also performed long comic monologues, “stump speeches” which depended on the foolish misuse of language rather than anecdotes or plot for laughs: Transcendentalism is dat spiritual cognoscence ob pyschological irrefragibility, connected wid conscientient ademption ob incolumbient spirituality and etherialized connection … dat became ana-tomi-cati-cally tattalable in de circum ambulatin commotion ob ambiloquous voluminiousness . Besides mocking pretentious blacks for being “better stocked with words than Judgement,” stump speeches also poked fun at pompous politicians and professionals who seemed to talk in such gobbledygook.


Minstrel slapstick could be wonderfully elaborate. In one act, a cast of sleepwalkers-a super-patriotic politician, a passionate lover, a quick-fingered kleptomaniac, and a “canine hydrophobia patient” who thought he had been bitten by a rabid dog—roamed the stage, acting out their obsessions in their sleep while a burglar tried to tiptoe among them without waking them up. Finally, the canine hydrophobiac pounced on the thief, biting, snarling, and barking as the stage exploded with action and real fireworks.

With America’s best songwriters, comics, singers, dancers, and novelty acts, the minstrel show offered more than enough lively variety entertainment to ensure its popularity. But it was not just the nation’s first top-notch variety show. It was a top-notch variety show performed in blackface and black dialect. Race was a central part of its initial and enduring appeal.

I suppose there was a dark side to it if one really looked. The article also mentions that. But at its heart was ENTERTAINMENT.

Greg

Are you crazy?

 

[Thinker101]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

Several USMB posters don black face Asclepias, IM2, etc

Can't forget one of the first.

 

[blastoff]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

 

[Rosy]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

And that more people watch the jetsons reruns then watch her show

 

[Pogo]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

That's not even funny, even for the maybe three of us who know what the Nairobi Trio was.

They were hilarious though.

 

[Pogo]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

And that more people watch the jetsons reruns then watch her show

Who gives a flying fuck "how many people watch her show"? Are you in advertising?

 

[Rosy]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

And that more people watch the jetsons reruns then watch her show

Who gives a flying fuck "how many people watch her show"? Are you in advertising?

I care. You should try caring

 

[Pogo]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

It’s not just the blackface thing. The suits are also mad at her for bringing in the Nairobi Trio as the show’s musical accompaniment.

And that more people watch the jetsons reruns then watch her show

Who gives a flying fuck "how many people watch her show"? Are you in advertising?

I care. You should try caring

I don't buy or sell media advertising. Thus there's no reason in the world TO care.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

Several USMB posters don black face Asclepias, IM2, etc

Can't forget one of the first.

Hillary & Bill?

 

[Pogo]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

Several USMB posters don black face Asclepias, IM2, etc

Can't forget one of the first.

Hillary & Bill?

Nope. If that were him she'd be too tall and have the wrong color eyes. Matter of fact he does too.

Besides which, compare with what they actually looked like at the time:

What Stinker has there is a photoshop that some klown made up in 2015. And he doesn't have the balls to admit it.

 

[blastoff]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

Several USMB posters don black face Asclepias, IM2, etc

Can't forget one of the first.

Hillary & Bill?

Nope. If that were him she'd be too tall and have the wrong color eyes. Matter of fact he does too.

Besides which, compare with what they actually looked like at the time:

What Stinker has there is a photoshop that some klown made up in 2015. And he doesn't have the balls to admit it.

The black face squeeze is a lot better looking than the ‘beast, then or now.

 

[Lakhota]

Megyn Kelly has a racist history. It finally caught up to her. She should be ashamed...

Megyn Kelly's Long History Of Racial Insensitivity

 

[Flash]

It is good to see that filthy bitch get her due after her despicable attack on Donald Trump in the first debate of 2016.

By the way, it was her attacking The Donald that really fired up his campaign.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

Is acceptable. What a moron

Megyn Kelly’s NBC future in doubt as Peacock Network airs rerun of troubled morning show

This is stupidity in hyper-drive. What Megyn Kelly said was absolutely true and there was nothing "insensitive" about it.

Of course telling the truth gets you into trouble nowadays since the sheeple don't want to hear it and prefer to run around with their hair on fire being "offended".

If Megyn Kelly had ANY guts at all she would have told those who were offended to go fuck themselves instead of apologizing.

""the costume police are cracking down” on Halloween outfits. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Ms. Kelly said. “Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.” -- Megyn Kelly telling the truth (for a change)

I never saw black folks in white face. Did they act like monkeys and clowns, too?