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{ 102 } \ “You Hip to Buffalo?” The Hidden Heritage of Black Theatre in Western New York —V irginia Anderson We’re makin’ it to Buffalo, man. You hip to Buffalo? Curt in Ed Bullins’s Goin’ a Buffalo Identity: one’s history, one’s memories, one’s sense of self in relation to others . The subtitle of Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror—Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities—suggests that geographical location may function as a carrier of each of these personal elements.1 Buffalo, New York, a city with a reputation for failed dreams,2 bears a cultural heritage that has shaped the thinking and representations of generations of African Ameri­ cans. Four moments in the city’s history demonstrate how the portrayals of and performances by African Ameri­ cans in and around the city reflected changes in both local society and national ideological trends. First, in 1842 the city served as a springboard for the international success of Christy’s Minstrels, one of the first “make-­ believe negro bands of singers and musicians.”3 The second instance is that of the Buffalo Historical Marionettes, formed in 1932. Despite their important contribution to the Federal Theatre, the troupe’s eight African Ameri­ can performers have received little scholarly attention. The third area of focus involves a dramaturgical analysis of Ed Bullins’s Goin’ a Buffalo. The play was written in 1966 within the context of Buffalo’s Second Great Migration, a movement that gives richer meaning to the characters’struggles. Finally, the 1978 formation of Buffalo’s still-­ thriving Ujima Company provided the city with African Ameri­ can theatre that demanded recognition for its predominantly black { 103 } Black Theatre in Western New York artists and black themes. Analysis of the social, economic, and political context in which each of these theatrical events originated engenders a nuanced understanding of not only the events themselves but how the history of western New York represents the evolution of African Ameri­ can history and performance across the nation. Before turning to industry, Buffalo served as a commercial center during the nineteenth century, most significantly demonstrated by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The canal connected the Great Lakes with the eastern seaboard , allowing the shipment of products both east and west of the terminus. As Neil Kraus explains in his study of community power in Buffalo,“the canal made Buffalo the largest inland port in the United States. With the completion of railroad construction a few decades later, Buffalo’s role as a major center of trade was solidified.”4 Prior to the canal’s opening, the first theatrical performance advertised in a Buffalo newspaper took place among military men, none of them black, on March 17, 1815.5 In 1828, fifty-­ eight African Ameri­ cans lived in Buffalo, working as servants, barbers, laborers, and boat stewards.6 Evidence of community cohesion can be found in the 1831 formation of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Buffalo became an official city shortly thereafter, in 1832.7 In the years that followed, Buffalo struggled to define its identity in relation to better-­ established cities like Albany and New York City. Perhaps the insecurity felt by its inhabitants made the city particularly vulnerable to the cultural impact of a performance by T. D. Rice.8 In his historical memoir, Home History, Samuel M. Welch recalls, “In August ’35, at the old Eagle Street Theatre ,9 Mr. Rice, known as the original ‘Jim Crow Rice,’ sang and jumped ‘Jim Crow,’ in negro character; the first negro song of the stage, from which sprang that afterwards popular branch of entertainment,‘negro minstrelsy.’”10 Already wildly successful financially,Rice was in the middle of a national tour that would eventually lead him abroad. With his established reputation, Rice undoubtedly inspired his audience; yet to establish their place within the growing nation, white, middle-­ class Buffalonians sought to elevate their sense of themselves, and thereby their city, by supporting and developing performance that denigrated African Ameri­ cans. Rice’s appearance at the Eagle Street Theatre set a powerful cultural precedent. Within this fertile atmosphere, the group that was to become famous as Christy’s Minstrels...

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