Birth of a Notion; Or, The Half Ain't Never Been Told: A Narrative Account with Entertaining Passages of the State of Minstrelsy & of America & the True Relation Thereof

Chapter 11. Jim Crow Crosses Over from Entertainment to Law, the Parallel Rise of Klan-Whiteface in White Face & Black Faced Blackface & Slave Spirituals

142 Chapter 11 Jim Crow Crosses Over from Entertainment to Law, the Parallel Rise of Klan-Whiteface in White Face, & Black Faced Blackface & Slave Spirituals Cross cut: (after a quick glance back to 1868 & the black codes & Jim Crow laws Making a mockery of the 14th Amendment’s protection of property rights for the freed slaves) see 1877. Slow pan down to Dixie. RASTUS: (Voice over) See the last Federal troops, Doodah, marching home. Hurrah, hurrah. See Home Rule, a.k.a. State’s Rights, right? restored, & see The South reinvented. See the Ku Klux Klan, that noxious blossom of the { Birth of a Notion: Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told } 143 bitter fruit nurtured in bloodied soil & reaped from the weedy vineyard of defeat . . . What evil lurks . . .? The shadowy Klansman knows. See defenders of white, Protestant, Christian A-merica rise. Ride. Clippityclopp. See costumed terrorists, their white faces in white face, disguised as the ghosts of the Confederate dead, intending that coons, carpetbaggers & their kind shall be horribly afraid of thee & shall bow themselves down & tremble & be troubled in thy presence & shall quake at thy word & “theatrical flair” & be kept in our place. &, oh yes, there is popular agreement to the end of their means, though some quiet quibbling over their methodology. Pan back a moment, see the bigger picture. See The South, as Northern money sees it (after having seen to it), see it ripening for raw Industrialization. Cheap labor, artisan & otherwise, roving the streets like Bo Peepless sheep. “Give ’em another decade, see how they sort themselves out. Then we’ll make our move,” Big Money says. See the South being redeemed, resurrected in its own Currier & Ives image. See the molten impressions of the disenfranchised, being cast in the South’s new fiery foundries of affliction. See a mess of new golliwogs. A complete line of buffoon coons: mammies, a’nties, uncles, boys & assorted spooks, sambos & pickaninnies, mass produced for the psychic knickknack and notion shelves of the new common Men A-MERICAN consumers . See an industry of degradation lift every voice & twang: “Coons is buffoons.” See { Bill Harris } 144 the South’s old regime bobbing like life buoys on the sea of tranquility. See it rising like whitecaps cresting on a wave of legislative activity. See a confederacy of Black Codes being enacted. Twill by’n’by, Lawd ’a’ mussy, see the New Confederacy turn the tide against the shadowy skies of change. See the return of the Promised Land of Tradition & its conditions & Glamour of the Good Old Days. See the leopard retain his spots. See the wolf regain his voice. See the Good Ol’ Boys, the Southern Democrats, rule. See these postulates of exclusion take physical shape, be nailed to the door, ratatattat , like Martin Luther’s theses. WHITES ONLY. See the capital-less spoils of war, the seventh sons, the buffoon coons, the traditional fodder, fertilizer & fuel of Dixie doings, being nailed in their place. Rat-atatatattatat. See that positioning being de rigueur for the psychic & commercial health of the Dear Old Southland. Rat-atattat. See the dark cloud of equity departing. Rat-atat. See the Confederate flag a-flapping in the bright blue. See the final chapter close, ratatattat, ratatattat, ratatattatratatattat , on that Unspeakable Tragedy. See The South restored, Lawd a mussy. & the land has rest from war, ONE, 2, THREE, 4. & it is the best of times, Glory Halle-lujah. But wait. What, { Birth of a Notion: Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told } 145 you ask, what about the antebellum & post-war troupes of all-colored comiques? The upstaged & unsung companies of “coal black brothers” & “sooty sisters” whose musical, vocal & dancing acts blossom like heliotropic blooms seeking the sun of recognition in the dark night of A-MERICA? What of them? No longer Massa & Missy’s pride & prized hybrids doing double duty—being bearer of the burden of the before the hyphen title would seem enough—but having to be holding plus diversion: footman-fiddler; field-handbanjo picker, seamstress-soprano; pickaninnyplaymate -dancer—meant a double yolk on them, & we’re ever on call; summoned to socials & balls & put through our “art-less” but enthralling stunts & paces. Providing off-hours entertainment for their guest’s pleasure, self-validation & unresponsive pity to their plaintive selections. No longer only that. Or are we? . . . Lo & alas, Gentle Reader, note the prospect of that fool’s goal—entrance into Show Business’s “cultural industry” via descent into the heart of that dark matter in search of the form for a light, blackened blackfaced cash...