Minstrel shows had a popular following 100 years in the past

On this Martin Luther King Day at the beginning of the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine how popular minstrel shows once were. People packed the Bangor Opera House to see professional white performers with blackened faces pretend to be “darkies” in the Old South. Meanwhile, a multitude of amateur groups starring prominent white residents raised money for charity in communities across Maine. Occasionally, a professional show, such as Gorman’s Colored Troupe at the Eastern Maine State Fair in 1906, actually featured African-American performers – “cake-walkers, buck and wing dancers and artists generally” – but they were an exception.

By the early 20th century, professional minstrelsy was in decline. Lew Dockstader’s minstrel company, the best-known at that time, appeared in Bangor on several occasions. His shows received as much prominence in the press as those featuring Ethel Barrymore, Maude Adams and other famous stars who appeared in Bangor at that time.

People from all levels of society attended. Dockstader’s was the only professional minstrel show “which plays in the high class theaters,” said the Bangor Daily News before performances on Jan. 23, 1907. Sure enough, some of Bangor’s wealthiest people turned out. After the last curtain fell, the newspaper noted, “a long line of carriages extended from the theater toward West Market Square – something very unusual for a minstrel show.”

Minstrel shows were invented in America before the Civil War. They caricatured slave life with music and jokes written by white men like Stephen Foster. Dockstader’s company included 40 black-faced performers in colorful formal attire singing songs like “I’d Rather Be a Lamp Post in New York Town,” dancing and performing sketches. Exotic stage sets provided an air of romance.

Attendees apparently thought they were getting an accurate portrayal of blacks from these shows. A piece in the Bangor Daily News about an earlier show performed here on May 4, 1905, made Dockstader sound like an anthropologist. It promised he would “present a humorous and popular yet artistic treatment of Negro life, profusely illustrated with whatever can entertain the eye or delight the ear. … For this purpose, Mr. Dockstader has made a life study of the Southern darky in order to display the Dixie man’s characteristics, originality and boldness.”

One of Dockstader’s great appeals to audiences were his monologues in which he made humorous references to local political issues. During the show in 1905, these included the controversies over a public library site, the water supply and enforcement of the state liquor law. “Embellished with brilliant electrical and moving picture effects,” the monologue was delivered from “his airship, Tommyrot II.” But many people were disappointed with the show overall because of the infrequency of Dockstader’s appearance on the stage. Many had come to hear him sing, but he had failed to appear for the two solos listed on the program.

When Dockstader returned in 1907, people remembered. The show was “good enough to please New York for several weeks so it ought at least to have satisfied Bangor,” grumbled the Bangor Daily News critic. While the set was striking, consisting of “huge lights cunningly suggesting emeralds,” and the singing entertaining, some of the sketches were the same as last time and the jokes stale.

Perhaps such quibbling was only one more sign that professional minstrelsy was on the decline. Any number of amateurs, however, were waiting in the wings. Hardly a week went by during this period when the Bangor newspapers did not print news of amateur performances in eastern Maine. Some groups like Bangor’s Ogalala Club took their shows on the road. Founded in 1905, its first production was a minstrel show that it performed several times in Bangor, Brewer and Ellsworth.

Race relations in America were at a low point then. The Bangor papers frequently ran stories about southern lynchings and burnings of black people by white mobs and about race riots that could lead to “race war.” The small number of African-Americans living in Maine were generally ignored, although discriminated against in employment and in other ways. Barring an appearance by such celebrities as Booker T. Washington or Jack Johnson, individual blacks received little coverage in the newspapers unless they committed crimes.

Occasionally, however, a newspaper editorial revealed the depth of ignorance and ill will harbored by the majority of whites. One occasion on July 30, 1906, was the discovery that many blacks were moving from the South to the North. “Thoughtful men are wondering what is going to be the outcome,” said a Bangor Daily News editorial writer. “Forty years ago the colored man was looked upon by New England residents with a tolerant charity that led to easy employment. Today a Negro is viewed with suspicion – at times with alarm. New England conservatism finds the Negro shifty and unreliable. He is fond of pleasure and prefers idleness and poverty to thrift.”

The nation’s attitude toward minority groups has changed dramatically since those days thanks to the civil rights movement. Education has raised the level of our thinking, and the government has stepped in with agencies like the Maine Human Rights Commission. If the ghosts of Lew Dockstader and his minstrels showed up at the Bangor Opera House tonight, you can bet the Attorney General’s Office would be on hand along with a few hundred demonstrators to tell them where to go.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net