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Long after most Americans had found blackface minstrelsy demeaning, performances continued in isolated rural areas, with no apparent racist intent. In one declining community in New York's North Country-a place whose residents had virtually no contact with African Americans and no reason to feel uneasy about "the other"-minstrel shows may have served to honor a folk tradition and to express community solidarity in the face of economic hardship. Respect for the show's directors and self-conscious reflection on the town were additional factors. I explore the meaning, structure, and function of blackface minstrel shows in the context of Adirondack community life.
In the back of my grandparents' closet in Colton, New York, where we sought out old prom gowns for dress-up games, was a relic-a wood silhouette in the shape of a banjo. It had strings painted on the front and lines of text on the back. My father told me that it had been my Grandfadier Hurley's stage prop when he played a blackface character called Tambo in Colton minstrel shows in the 1950s, and that the words on the back were entrance cues.
Professional blackface minstrel shows were popular throughout North America from 1850 until the 1920s or so. Amateur groups then performed minstrel shows until the form gradually disappeared in the 1950s, but the Colton community productions survived into the 1990s. Why did the people of Colton perform in blackface and continue this practice so long?
Shows in blackface are undeniably hurtful and demeaning. Recent scholars have argued that racism alone does not explain dieir popularity, however, and foremost among the functions they served their white audiences (Lott 1993; Averill 2003) was enabling actors to comment on their own culture in an uninhibited way. Musicologist Charles Hamm (1995) has taken this analysis further, suggesting that the persistence of blackface minstrel shows in small-town America was a nostalgic idealization of nineteenth-century values and a rejection of twentieth-century multiculturalism. Based on interviews with living participants and a study of scripts, scores, and photographs, I maintain that there were other important reasons why the people of Colton participated.
Hamm studied Tunbridge, Vermont, where the last blackface minstrel show was produced in 1991. Colton and Tunbridge resemble many small communities of the Nordieast: They are sited...