Race and the Legacy of the World’s Columbian Exposition in American Popular Theater from the Gilded Age to Show Boat (1927)

The second act of the musical Show Boat begins on the bustling Midway Plaisance, storied entertainment district for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (figure 1). In the original production, which premiered at the National Theatre in Washington, DC, on November 25, 1927, and made its Broadway debut on December 27 of that same year, the exposition visitors were played by members of an all-white chorus. A second chorus, constituted of Black singers, did not appear onstage until near the end of the scene. Dressed as Dahomians, they sallied forth from the entrance to their “village,” stage right on Joseph Urban’s set (figure 2). Jerome Kern, the musical’s composer, heralded their arrival with primitivist fare: a rhythmic ostinato played in unison by the orchestra, joined by an ominous melody in the lower brass. The men in the Black chorus sing first, laying into an aggressive motive. Eight measures after their entry the whole complex shifts up a half step, and the intervallic content is amplified, the prominent perfect fourth replaced by a minor sixth. At this juncture the women enter and engage in antiphonal exchanges with the men. The section culminates with the Black chorus—men and women—singing together, emphatically landing on an F-sharp dominant seventh chord. The lyrics, penned by Oscar Hammerstein II, are the chanted nonsense syllables of a stereotypical

Figure 1.

The Midway Plaisance, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. In Picturesque World’s Fair: An Elaborate Collection of Colored Views (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1894).

Figure 2.

The Midway Plaisance entertainers on Joseph Urban’s 1927 set, act 2, scene 1, Show Boat.

Photo by White Studio © Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

“primitive” language (music example 1). The white chorus responds in horror, spilling a cascade of couplets:

Don’t let us stay here,for though they may play here,they are acting vicious,they might get malicious.

Music example 1.

“Dahomey,” mm. 1–8, 21–32, 37–44, 53–54, from Show Boat, music by Jerome Kern, lyric by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Copyright © 1928 UNIVERSAL—POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. Copyright Renewed. This arrangement Copyright © 2021 UNIVERSAL—POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

And though I’m not fearful,I’ll not be a spearful,so you’d better show me,the way from Dahomey!

They quit the stage, and the Black chorus announces, “We’re glad to see those white folks go,” continuing on for a moment in primitivist mode. But abruptly the music shifts to a full-blown rag, and the masks come down as the “Dahomians” reveal themselves to be New Yorkers pining after multiethnic Avenue A and its culinary delights (music example 2).

What to make of this moment? It seems little more than an echo of the message of the celebrated first act. There the travesty of southern miscegenation laws is exposed by the impact they have on Julie La Verne, an octoroon passing as white whose discovery marks the beginning of her decline. But whereas the stakes are personal in the case of Julie, this is not so for the “Dahomians,” with whom the audience never becomes acquainted. Although their lives are as constrained by racist stereotypes as Julie’s is, the humor and spectacle of the scene outweigh social criticism. And over the decades since the debut of Show Boat it has become clear that when the New Yorkers drop their primitivist blackface, there is another burnt cork mask underneath.

Given our evolving notions about identities and the fraught politics that support them, the scene is probably not fit for inclusion in modern productions. However, in terms of Show Boat’s place in the history of Black representation, there is something to be gained by considering this...