Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop by Yuval Taylor, Jake Austen (review)

This entertaining study develops an expansive history of black minstrelsy dating from the nineteenth century. Darkest America sits alongside the forthcoming reissue of Akil Houston’s Beyond Blackface (2012) and a recent collection of the same name edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage (2011) in attempting to develop a more synthetic history of the minstrel tradition and its relationship to broader American popular culture. In contrast to the dominant image of minstrelsy as white performers in blackface, the authors focus on the rich history of black minstrel performers. Two central arguments quickly emerge: firstly, the “two-edged sword of blackface” (49) for black Americans as a performance that was both demeaning and liberating; and secondly, the connection between a long and contested history of black minstrelsy and more recent “practitioners” of the tradition. Taylor and Austen see black minstrelsy as an “umbilical cord that feeds contemporary performers both the genius and the frustrations of their ancestors” (21). While this debate into the continuing resonance of minstrelsy and its uses by contemporary black artists and performers is likely to garner the most attention, in many ways the book’s strengths are in its revisionist analysis of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century black minstrelsy traditions.

After a short introductory chapter, the authors set the foundation for the study by assessing the peak popularity years of minstrelsy in the second half of the nineteenth century. They stress the interconnectivity of black and white musical culture in the development of the distinct black minstrel tradition. The authors acknowledge that while many minstrel songs were explicitly racist, this does not mean that they were penned exclusively by white musicians. As they contend, popular minstrel standards like “Jump Jim Crow” and “Zip Coon” were performed by both black and white minstrel groups, therefore it is “logical to conclude that both races had a hand in their composition” (33). Contrary to popular understandings of black minstrel performances that focus on servility and docility, Taylor and Austen note that black minstrel shows often attempted to present a multifaceted representation of black life, and point to the openly anti-slavery sentiments visible in some versions of “Jump Jim Crow” which prophesy days of violent backlash against racial oppression.

A somewhat shorter third chapter explicitly documents the connection between nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century black minstrelsy and continuing blackface performances by chronicling the fortunes of the New Orleans Zulu Krewe. The authors ably demonstrate how the signification of Zulu blackface has shifted over time, from the image of a buffoonish cannibal, to a happy plantation slave performing for a white audience, to a form of catharsis for successful black professionals. Although this chapter is a compelling case study, it feels somewhat misplaced and disrupts the natural chronology of the text. The argument for minstrelsy as a liberating force is then extended into the twentieth century through a revisionist portrayal of Bert Williams, the biggest black star of the Vaudeville era. Here the authors are keen to praise Williams’s abilities in bringing a sense of dignity to blackface performance and his active decision to adopt blackface in his performances. Rather than subscribe to the established scholarly narrative of Williams as a tragic black artist who felt forced to adopt blackface by racist conventions, the authors’ stress that Williams’s use of blackface was both a conscious and willing decision. In fact, Taylor and Austen contend that instead of limiting his achievements, blackface enabled Williams to generate his own inimitable stage persona.

The authors’ emphasis on the liberating potential of blackface is a refreshing anecdote to an established narrative which often overplays the tragic position of the black entertainer— it is important to remember that Williams was one of the highest paid recording artists of his time and appeared to have few reservations regarding his embrace of the minstrel tradition—although at times they overstate their case. By Williams’s own admission, he attempted to “portray the shiftless darky to...