Lecture 03 Zip Coon and Watermelons

Zip Coon and Watermelons: The Perpetuation of Racial Stereotypes through Visual Imagery from the 19th and Early 20th Centuries : 

Zip Coon and Watermelons: The Perpetuation of Racial Stereotypes through Visual Imagery from the 19th and Early 20th Centuries Dr. Patricia Heisser Metoyer

Important Questions : 

Important Questions What does racism look like? How are racial stereotypes reinforced and perpetuated through visual images? How have images of a particular race been used to communicate underlying messages about status, society and cultural norms?

Methodology : 

Methodology This presentation will compare and contrast visual images from two common, popular and readily available kinds of media – postcards and sheet music from minstrel shows - spanning two centuries. Although discrimination exists in many forms, this presentation will focus on the changing nature of racism as expressed through visual images of African-Americans from 1840-1860 and then from 1900-1920. According to Tarver, “novels, essays and visual media depicted blacks as mentally, socially and physically different from the dominant culture. Minstrel shows pointed to blacks as buffoons; the now-infamous postcards presented lynched blacks or blacks in varied stereotypical scenes.” Therefore, it seems appropriate to compare two types of media to see how racial stereotypes were reinforced and perpetuated through visual images and how images of a particular race have been used to communicate underlying messages about status, society and cultural norms.

Slide 4: 

Sheet music from the heyday of black-face minstrelsy, 1840-1860, provides images for the study of race in the 19th century. Here is Zip Coon. According to Crawford, “the character Zip Coon was as urban and stylish as Jim Crow was rural and rough. Like Jim Crow, Zip Coon was boastful, and he appeared in garishly fancy close.

Minstrel Shows: Sheet Music : 

Minstrel Shows: Sheet Music Notions of race and fascination with the image of the African-American slave were fundamental to the minstrel show, but they also allowed for social commentary and freed the performers from the social restraints of polite white society. As the most popular form of entertainment during this time, minstrelsy would have had a far-reaching impact on a wide variety of audiences. This sheet music cover showing Zip Coon is what prompted the title for my presentation. According to Crawford, “minstrelsy was the first musical genre to reverse the east-to-west transatlantic flow of performers to North America.” As stated by Dunson, “the evolution of sheet music in nineteenth-century America positions the medium at rich intersections of popular culture, national identity, public and private space, and consumerism.”

Sources for American Sheet Music : 

Sources for American Sheet Music

Slide 7: 

For images from the 20th century, the presentation will focus on the picture postcard, which was a revolutionary concept when it was first introduced. 14-card Evolution set: Whiskey bottle to Irishman, Laundry tub to Chinaman, Watermelon into Coon

Slide 8: 

Note: There is another postcard available from a side view – with a watermelon morphing into a man with an enormous forehead and crown.

Evolution Series : 

Evolution Series This set is a good example of how postcards from the Golden Age reflected the social history of that era. Today, this type of artistic humor about ethnic groups would not be tolerated in print. This postcard is what prompted the title of my presentation. According to Vernon, “Such images diffused negative perceptions of Black people to millions of White people, particularly in parts of Europe where contact with the black population was limited or non-existent.” In fact, a great many of these postcards were published by printers located in Great Britain and other European countries. Most expensive and hardest to find of the evolution series is #277.

Postcards : 

Postcards The golden age of postcards, 1900-1920, has provided a rich repository of images of racial and ethnic stereotypes, with the portrayals of African-Americans being the most offensive and troubling. During this time period, millions of postcards were purchased, collected and sent by American citizens, thus ensuring a wide distribution of images containing visual messages about race. Scholarship using postcards as limited – they are a largely untapped resource for primary research and for powerful visual imagery. According to Baldwin, in order to better understand the nature of racial prejudice in that era, historians have begun to examine the thousands of postcard images which characterized and stereotyped blacks. The presenter is a deltiologist and organologist; this presentation uniquely blends material from two areas of her scholarly work.

Sources for Postcards : 

Sources for Postcards

Slide 12: 

According to Nowatzki, “the minstrel show became the most popular form of theater by the late 1840s and virtually all mid-nineteenth-century Americans were familiar with it. While it also became popular in Britain after T.D. Rice brought his “Jim Crow” act there in 1836, many white Americans saw it as a distinctly American form of popular culture.”

Slide 13: 

Nowatzki asserts that while “it may be tempting to avoid the controversial subject of minstrelsy; its reputation for racism is well deserved and should not be ignored. However, focusing exclusively on racism obscures early minstrelsy’s complexity; while it was obviously racist, it was also anti-bourgeois and anti-British.” He finds important parallels between American minstrelsy and American literature from this period.

Slide 14: 

According to Crawford, “three elements – the black mask, the chance for social commentary and the creation of a zone of unbridled pleasure – combined to give blackface minstrelsy its appeal. Minstrelsy’s main subject was not really white’s views of African Americans but whites’ responses to the conditions of their own lives, delivered from behind a mask fashioned out of their notions about African-American culture.”

Slide 15: 

According to Dunson, “nineteenth-century sheet music offers a telling account of the immediate challenges confronting Americans at the time. That music and themes directly from or evocative of the minstrel stage held a dominant position in the content of sheet music of the day suggests that race both implicitly and explicitly informed the full range of assumptions and beliefs that were shaping American culture. “

Slide 16: 

“Surprising also is the fact that although the minstrel tradition offers important insight into nineteenth-century American culture, relatively limited scholarship has been done on the phenomenon before the 1993 publication of Eric Lott’s Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Because it is multi-layered, accessible, and concrete, sheet music has proven to be particularly useful to Lott and the spate of other scholars who have followed in his wake.” (Dunson)

Slide 17: 

According to Anderson, “the earliest forms of the white minstrel show included few musical instruments; while the troupe sat in a semi-circle, two players on either end played the tambourine and ‘bones’, a percussion instrument. Later, other instruments were added, specifically the fiddle and banjo.” Although the white minstrel tradition is identified by its presentation of southern black slaves, minstrel shows were most popular in northern cities where people had little to no contact with slaves.

Slide 18: 

As stated by Hughes, “the willingness of Americans to confront, rather than ignore, the ideas embedded in minstrel music lay at the center of historical efforts at racial justice. In addition to demonstrating this historical change, using this controversial historical material can reinforce a more positive concept: the rich and multicultural nature of American culture.”

Slide 19: 

According to Hughes, “ignoring the role of minstrel music in shaping and reflecting the dominant ideas of race would robe the American past (and present) of its cultural complexity and overlook a provocative opportunity to explore the social construction of race in a seminal period of American history.”

Slide 20: 

“Using sheet music covers and lyrics to demonstrate and reinforce their interpretations, Lott and others have enriched our understanding of the social and societal issues reflected in the blackface tradition. Blackface performance and minstrel sheet music operated in dramatically different ways, existed in drastically different worlds, served significantly different audiences.” (Dunson)

Slide 21: 

“However, by the mid-1840s and throughout the 1850s, a notable shift in the representation of minstrel performers occurred in the design of sheet music cover art. Representations of upstanding, well-groomed white performers began to appear along with the grotesque black characters they portrayed.” (Dunson)

Slide 22: 

“It seems unlikely that a mere shift in cover design would have won over patrons of the parlor. And yet throughout the nineteenth century, sheet music from the blackface tradition continued to import minstrel themes and melodies into the home. Minstrel music allowed the generally stiff atmosphere of the parlor to become more congenial, more enjoyable.” (Dunson)

Slide 23: 

As stated by Dunson, “to ignore the parallel but distinct development of sheet music as a blackface medium in the home limits our understanding of the tradition’s impact in shaping both public and private national identity. Focus on minstrel sheet music in the American home extends our consideration of the tradition to include societal and domestic issues, male and females perspective, stages and parlors.”

Slide 24: 

According to Curry, “Minstrelsy’s overt racism is painful to consider today, but it was the caperings of ‘Ethiopian’ troupes that introduced African-American music to white audiences for the first time – and created a new American music style in the process. Minstrelsy is one of the things that made American culture distinctly American.”

Slide 25: 

Used 1907, New York. According to Vernon, in humorous postcards, “black men and boys were portrayed as foolish, stupid or lazy, perhaps eating food like watermelon. Thousands of these images are still in circulation today, sometimes classified as ethnic or coon cards and Black postcard ephemera has a higher than average market value.”

Slide 26: 

His eyes can shift back and forth. Used 1906, Utica, New York. According to Baldwin, “during the height of the postcard collecting craze in the United States, between 1905 and 1915, nearly one billion picture postcards were sold annually. Among the most popular and profuse were those portraying blacks.”

Slide 27: 

Copyrighted by Livermore & Night Co., Used 1901, Providence. According to Lewis, “through a steady diet of racist cartoons, postcards, lyrics, movies, television shows and artifacts, several generations of Americans have met Mammy, Uncle, Coon, Pickaninny and Sambo. All ethnic groups have been stereotyped, and those stereotypes have deeply penetrated the collective consciousness of the nation.”

Slide 28: 

From a later period (1930s) note stereotyping. Baldwin notes that “for all the invaluable information the images on the front of postcards can yield, they do not tell the whole story. Postcards are two-sided artifacts and the most unique information they have to offer is on the verso.”

Slide 29: 

Used 1914. According to Baldwin, “when early 20th Century postal patrons wrote messages on their postcards, they probably didn’t give a thought to the historical testimony they were leaving behind; nonetheless, their legacy is rich and unique. Rarely is such detailed information supplied about the audiences for other popular cultural artifacts.”

Slide 30: 

Published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, Used 1906. Baldwin notes other evidence from postcards, such as message, comments about the images on postcards, cities and towns where postcards were sold, signatures, names and addresses of recipients and postmarks.

Slide 31: 

Used in Stewarton, PA, 1909. Baldwin notes that “postmarks of postcards senders and addresses of recipients reveal the nationwide grasp that racial stereotypes held on the popular imagination.”

Slide 32: 

Copyright 1906, The Ullman Mfg. Co., New York. “Laughter and ridicule prevailed in the post-Civil War period and the first half of the twentieth century. And these emotions became embedded in the media artifacts of the time. In the early part of the twentieth century, the desire to make insulting fun of black people was expressed by the so-called “coon card” craze.”

Slide 33: 

The Ullman Mfg. Co., Copyright 1906, Used 1906. These cards, which were typically sent home to friends and relatives by people on vacation or were collected and placed in albums to show to visiting friends, depicted blacks stereotypically with exaggerated and animal-like features…invariably loving fried chicken, watermelon and possum.” The golden era of racist postcards lasted until the 1950s.

Slide 34: 

Copyright 1904, Kaufmann & Strauss Co. According to Baldwin, ‘black caricatures and racial stereotypes were considered appropriate illustrations for holiday greetings, exchanges of neighborhood gossip, expressions of concern for bed-ridden loved ones, and declarations of both familial and romantic love. The cards thrived in the mainstream of society because racism, rather than being stigmatized, was socially legitimized.”

Conclusions : 

Conclusions Any questions? Thank you!

Bibliography : 

Bibliography A brief history of postcards. Shiloh Postcards http://www.shilohpostcards.com/webdoc2.htm, accessed 10/15/07. Anderson, L.M. From blackface to “genuine negroes”: nineteenth-century minstrelsy and the icon of the “negro”. Theatre Research International 21(1):17-23, Spring 1996. Baldwin, B. On the verso: postcard messages as a key to popular prejudices. Journal of Popular Culture 22(3):15-28, Winter 1988. Blair, J. Blackface minstrels in cross-cultural perspective. American Studies International 28(2):52-65, October 1990. Brokaw, J.W. The minstrel show in the Hoblitzelle Theatre Arts Library. University of Texas Library Chronicle 4: 23-30, 1972. “Coon cards”: racist postcards have become collectors’ items. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 25:72-3, Autumn 1999. Crawford, R. An Introduction to America’s Music. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Curry, A. Men in blackface. U.S. News & World Report 133(2):24-5, July 8, 2002. Dunson, S. The minstrel in the parlor: nineteenth-century sheet music and the domestication of blackface minstrelsy. ATQ 16(4):241-256, 2002.

Bibliography : 

Bibliography Hughes, R.L. Minstrel music: the sounds and images of race in antebellum America. History Teacher 40(1):27-43, November 2006. Lewis, E. Review of Ethnic Notions [film] by Marlon Riggs. Oral History Review 16(2):128-130, Autumn 1988. Lott, E. “The seemingly counterfeit”: racial politics and early blackface minstrelsy. American Quarterly 43(2):223-254, June 1991. Lubrano, J. American popular music 1795-1920. A.B. Bookman’s Weekly, 24: 4267, 4272-90, December 9, 1985. Mellinger, W. M. Postcards from the edge of the color line: images of African Americans in popular culture, 1893-1917. Symbolic Interpretation 15(4): 413-433, Winter 1992. Nicholson, S.B. The Encyclopedia of Antique Postcards. Radnor, PA: Wallace-Homestead, 1994. Nowatzki, R.C. “Our only true national poets”: blackface minstrelsy and cultural nationalism. ATQ 20(1):361-378, 2006. Tarver, A. Reading race and intertextuality from the Abolitionist era to the Harlem Renaissance. College Literature 33(3):198-203, Summer 2006. Vernon, P. Black Victorians. History Today 55(10):3-4, Oct. 2005.