Exporting Jim Crow : Blackface minstrelsy in South Africa and beyond / Chinua Thelwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thelwell, Chinua, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Minstrel shows--South Africa.

Minstrel shows.

Blackface entertainers--South Africa.

Blackface entertainers.

White people--Race identity--South Africa.

White people.

Black people--Race identity--South Africa.

Black people.

Black people--Race identity.

White people--Race identity.

South Africa.

South Africa--Race relations.

Race relations.

South Africa--Social life and customs.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

xii, 283 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Following the pathways of imperial commerce, blackface minstrel troupes began to cross the globe in the mid-nineteenth century, popularizing American racial ideologies as they traveled from Britain to its colonies in the Pacific, Asia, and Oceania, finally landing in South Africa during the 1860s and 1870s. The first popular culture export of the United States, minstrel shows frequently portrayed black characters as noncitizens who were unfit for democratic participation and contributed to the construction of a global color line. Chinua Thelwell brings blackface minstrelsy and performance culture into the discussion of apartheid's nineteenth-century origins and afterlife, employing a broad archive of South African newspapers and magazines, memoirs, minstrel songs and sketches, diaries, and interview transcripts. Exporting Jim Crow highlights blackface minstrelsy's cultural and social impact as it became a dominant form of entertainment, moving from its initial appearances on music hall stages to its troubling twentieth-century resurgence on movie screens and at public events. This carefully researched and highly original study demonstrates that the performance of race in South Africa was inherently political, contributing to racism and shoring up white racial identity"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. Burnt Cork Nationalism and the Five Waves of Minstrel Globalization

Foundations: Blackface Minstrelsy in the United States and Across the British Empire, 1830-1862

An Empire of Burnt Cork: Blackface Minstrelsy in Pre-Industrial South Africa, 1862-1872

Diamonds, Dandies, and Dispossession: Minstrel Shows During the South African Mineral Revolution, 1872-1889

"Slipping the Yoke": McAdoo's Jubilee Singers, McAdoo's Minstrels, and Racial Uplift Politics, 1890-1898

Brown-on-Black Masquerade: Cape Town's Coon Carnival

Afterword. Global Blackface: Toward Transnational Minstrelsy Studies

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--New York University, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781625345165

162534516X

9781625345172

1625345178

OCLC:

1122689191