The Runaway Slave’s Lament

[bemildred]

Perhaps one of the most remarkable elements of the United States’ two-hundred year participation in legalized slavery and its continual tango with racism is the minstrel show.

The minstrel show, a highly ritualized and formatted performance of songs, dance, acting, and doggerel delivered first by white actors in blackface, then black actors…in blackface…and white actors in blackface in separate troupes, was the most popular entertainment in urban America from the 1840s to the 1880s.

In other words, it bridged the antebellum period, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. It only surrendered its leading role in the 1880s, when industrialization and European immigration pushed the minstrel show’s fantasies of southern rural life to the sidelines.

Even so, blackface persisted into the vaudeville, movie, and radio and TV eras. The last US professional practitioner of blackface, a white performer, Cotton Watts, apparently packed in his act only in 1959.*

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-runaway-slaves-lament.html?hootPostID=63d3268b71e17c462b0972d450cc4fdd

Do read it all.

[malthaussen]

1. Well, you know, there could be something to the runaway slave's lament.

Since conditions in US industrial work were so bad, a black runaway who settled in the North might well have moments when he wished he was in the land of cotton. Although I think that ultimately the mass immigration north of so many ex-slaves after the war tells us something... there was not, after all, a corresponding migration in the other direction.

Interstingly, "Dixie" was not immediately recognized as a Confederate song, and was often played by Union bands in the first year of the war. Mr Emmett may well have a case to be disgruntled.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

2. I'm an old white guy who grew up in Los Angeles in the 50s.

And I am most definitely the beneficiary of all sorts of privilege.

LA was at the time a stirring mix of Southern, Northern, and Western sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry, as I like to say we had names for everybody. Dixie was quite popular when I was young. Camptown Races, Joel Chandler Harris, all that.

So I don't run my mouth about such things, or complain, I listen.

However I do know what you mean. Few realize today that abolition was very much a religious movement, the Battle Hymn of the Republic ...

And I did find that sanctimonious Northern attitude jarring reading about it in Mr. Lee's piece.

I do like Mr. Lee a lot, he writes well and has diverse interests.

[malthaussen]

3. I won't rant too much about abolition and the Civil War...

... suffice it that few abolitionists really saw "The Negro" as being equal to white men. Some exceptions apply, of course. Abolition was more about economics, relative political power in the sections, and, as you imply, an honest abhorrence of human bondage, although it was more the bondage that was despised, rather than any sense of justice for the bound.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

4. Yes. nt

[KoKo]

5. a bit of bringing "Feedom & Democracy" (in our current time).....but I thank them for what they did

whether they had their own awakening that might not be as pure as we might think in retrospect. Yet, they did manage to bring "Freedom" to many whether their intentions were "pure" or compromised by their own Time and Experience and Beliefs. We owe so much to those who lived in "compromised times" who still took a step that moved others forward on their way to a better life and more opportunity.

We move forward....with all the warts.

I'm a fan of Joe Bageant.......because he gets much correct about the legacy of the South. And, just as in the ME these days....those times were people caught up in what was good for "THEIR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL." What would they fight for? All so complicated. But, the Abolitionists and the Females in that movement did some really good stuff as compromised as they might seem in their motives these days.

I understand what you say....was just fleshing it out a bit having grown up in the South of the USA and that complicated history which I left at age 20 moving to NYC. The TRUTH is what one lives through and the attitudes and convictions of the times one lives in and the level of education and enlightenment one could express and still be part of the given society to make the change that one hoped for.

[KoKo]

6. The History of the North using the South's dependency on Agriculture and the Plantation System

still needs to factor in. The "Evil South" is complicated and without bringing in the Complicity of the Economics of the Amerca of the time should still be open to examination. New England "Slave Traders" for example.

As with all Economic Structures....the devil is in "WHO PROFITS." Or, Who Profited....which really drives it all. As we can see in our "Oil/Resource Wars" that are used to dominate and remake Countries and Civilizations to conform.

We always should look back on the History of America to see what comes up there that doesn't go with what is taught in our History Books.

But, you know all that....and I'm only offering a comment because the article seemed to be a bit focused on "Black Faced Minstrals" and the "Songs of the South."

Just was pointing out....as with everything, things are more complicated and since I grew up there was mentioning that.