But how did Blacks themselves regard minstrelsy? Were they offended, indifferent, favorable? I recently discussed minstrelsy with a young black man who found it horribly demeaning as pretty much everybody does today. He was similarly offended at many of the songs of the ragtime era because they threw the word “ni-gger” around so casually. He pronounced Arthur Collins “a redneck” which I’m sure Collins would have found baffling. What I found baffling was that this young man is a rap fan and saw nothing wrong with rap’s incessant use of “ni-gger” although rendered as “ni-gga.” He fell back on the old “it’s empowering when Blacks say it” although he couldn’t point to a single instance where any Black person was so empowered. He pointed out that many Blacks decried blackface and the coon songs back then. Sure and many decry rap’s use of the racist (and sexist) rhetoric today but does that mean it was the mood of the times?
My point was, was there any particular reason the average Black person in the age of blackface minstrelsy would have been particularly offended? The truth is, that in the North, when the fiddler played “Jump Jim Crow,” White and Black children would dance to it whether the fiddler was White or Black.
There is a case on record,
Barbadoes v. Bolcolm, from March of 1840, in which a six-year-old “pretty little pickaniny” named Rebecca Barbadoes, had her dress, bonnet and cape splattered with green paint while dancing in a paint store on Southack Street in Boston. The paint store, in order to drum up business, had employed the services of a fiddler (race not given). When the owner, Mr. Bolcolm tried to shoo the children away, he claimed that they got “saucy” with him. Somehow or other, Mr. Bolcolm either accidentally or otherwise splattered Ms. Barbadoes’ clothing with green paint for which her parents demanded reimbursement of $20. A young boy named Thomas Brown (race not given) was called to the stand as a witness to the incident. He was asked what song the fiddler was playing that attracted all the children. He answered, “Jim Crow.”
So, here is a case that demonstrates that Blacks of that period had no innate dislike of blackface minstrelsy and enjoyed the songs as much as whites. In case the reader is wondering, the court decided that Bolcolm was responsible for attracting the children in the first place but that he also had a right to be angry with their disruptive actions and so was ordered that he reimburse the Barbadoes family in the amount of $5.25 plus court costs. He might have fared better had not his lawyer embarrassed himself by claiming that had the family (who were obviously not slaves) taken their place on an auction block, the entire lot of them couldn’t fetch $20 and that green went well with dark skin.
Among the Quakers in America in the 18th century, slavery was not only the peculiar institution but an intolerable one. They refused to stay silent and loudly condemned it. Because they ran the Yankee whale fishery in Nantucket and Massachusetts, they acquired great wealth (no one had learned how to drill for petroleum yet and so whales provided the only oil). Because of their money, the Quakers of New England turned New England into a bastion of antislavery practice. Region by region began to manumit its slaves resulting in a ballooning population of freedmen. New England was the vital link in the chain for the Underground Railroad which the Quakers financed with their whale money.
Some Quakers, still kept slaves and some moved out of New England to escape the stigma. Among these Quaker families were the Plummers who moved to Ohio in 1743. They brought their slaves with them, among them Thomas Snowden. When the head of the family, Samuel Plummer, died, the slaves were still not given their freedom until pressure was brought to bear upon them by the Society of Friends who ordered the Plummers to manumit their slaves or face expulsion from the Society. Thomas Snowden was given his freedom.
Thomas married a house servant named Ellen Cooper in Knox County, Ohio in 1834. He was 32 and she 17. They got a farm in Clinton, Ohio. Tom and Ellen were both illiterate but had seven children they sent to a local white school where they learned the three R’s. Their names were (and in order of age): Sophia, Ben, Phebe, Martha, Lew, Elsie and Annie. In 1856, Thomas died and Ellen was hard put to pay the mortgage. So the family put on musical shows and charged admission. In their handbills, they explained that they were trying to save their farm from repossession (they did but lost two acres of land to the bank).
The Snowden Musical Family, as they advertised themselves, was quite talented. The oldest child, Sophia, and the youngest, Annie, played fiddles. Annie was also billed as the “Infant Violinist” as she was no more than 5 by 1860. The Snowden girls also appear to be the only female fiddlers in America at this time of any renown. Ben also played fiddle, Lew played banjo. Phebe was the band’s dancer and may have played an instrument. The handbills also advertised the playing of guitar, dulcimer, flute, triangle and tambourine although we are not clear on which family members played these.
The Snowdens’ way of starting off a show was to start playing on the way to the venue (they were known to even play in graveyards) to attract attention and followers. Each show netted them about $12 which was decent money back in the 1850s and 60s. The Snowdens performed many covers of tunes popular in that day and were especially fond of Stephen Foster songs. The audience (mostly white) might shout out numbers that the band didn’t know and so they would improvise it showing a tentative connection to jazz.
The Snowdens were careful to keep things light and keep things clean. They advertised themselves as providing good, clean entertainment. They were abolitionists (after all, their father was a freedman) but downplayed their views while performing but they also avoided material that stereotyped Blacks. They garnered quite a reputation and name and so were often invited by whites of high social standing to spend the night in their homes while touring about.
The band had opportunities to hear, meet and play with other minstrel artists both black and white. Among them is Daniel Decatur Emmett. Besides living in the same area as the Snowdens, Emmett was multi-talented playing fiddle, fife & drum and banjo with equal proficiency. Emmett got his start in show business after leaving the army and joining the circus as a blackface minstrel.
In New York in 1843, Emmett performed in a group known as the Virginia Minstrels along with Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham and Frank Bower at the Chatham Theatre in New York. This was a turning point minstrelsy which I will explain in a bit.
The Virginia Minstrels. Emmett is on the banjo.
Emmett is most famous as the author and original performer of “Dixie” which he wrote in New York while a member of Bryant’s Minstrels in 1859. While Emmett also performed “Old Dan Tucker” some don’t believe he wrote it although the song is attributed to him as author.
There is some speculation that the Snowdens either wrote “Dixie” and gave it to Emmett or that they co-wrote it with him. This is not tenable for a number of reasons the main one being that “Dixie” clearly has antecedents among earlier Emmett songs written when the Snowden children were either very young or not even born yet. Secondly, the Snowdens avoided songs that used the slave dialect and so it is highly unlikely they would have written such a number. There is some speculation that Thomas Snowden may have actually co-wrote the song or one of its antecedents with Emmett and the evidence for this is not far-fetched. After all, Emmett lived close by the Snowdens in Knox County at Mt. Vernon and very likely came into contact with them even before their fame.
Dan Emmett in blackface.
Some scholars pronounce “Dixie” as the most pro-slavery song in all of minstrelsy for it depicts a former-slave wistfully reminiscing about his youth on a Southern plantation:
O, I wish I was in de land ob cotton
Old time dere is not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away
Dixieland
The first thing to understand about the song is that it is the origin of the term “Dixie” as a synonym for the American South. No one is sure why although reference to the area below the Mason-Dixon line seems probable (some think it refers to a man named Dix known for his kindness to his slaves while others think it refers to Louisiana $10 bills called “Dix notes”). Regardless, the song became a huge hit in a very short time. Abraham Lincoln claimed it to be one of his favorite songs.
That Emmett would have written a pro-slavery song is hard to explain considering that he was anti-slavery. When the confederacy adopted his song as its anthem, he was infuriated and stated several times that he wished he had never written it. He joined the Union Army and wrote its fife & drum manual.
To understand why “Dixie” became an instant hit, we need to return to the point that 1843 was a turning point in minstrelsy. A new crop of minstrel artists, Emmett among them, rose up about this time and changed minstrelsy from a realist portrayal of blacks to a representational one that I touched on in earlier posts—that the blackface character was no longer meant to depict an actual Black man but rather the whites themselves as children. The white audience of minstrelsy mainly came from the farms—many of them down South—and missed those wonderful, warm, summer days of their youth tending the fields, feeding the animals, fishing in the creek, sleeping under a tree. In the city, they were lucky to even see a tree much less a creek. So, in “Dixie” we are really hearing a working class white man reminiscing of his childhood on the farm and this is why the song resonated so well among urban whites of the North as it did among rural whites in the South.
The Snowdens remained on the minstrel circuit for some time and, by 1900, Lew and Ben were the only surviving members of the band and were still performing. Dan Emmett died in 1903 an old man while Ben and Lew got involved in racehorse ventures but were ultimately still musicians and would put on shows from a gable of their Knox County home until Ben’s death in 1920. Neither left behind any children.
Found in the possession of Lew Snowden after his death in 1923 was a photograph of Dan Emmett along with the hand-written phrase: “Author of ‘Dixie!’” Lew also retained a newspaper clipping about Emmett being the author of the song. I find it strange that Lew Snowden would hang onto these items that he obviously cherished if Emmett were taking credit for writing a Snowden song. What it does indicate is that Emmett and the Snowdens knew each other and quite well.
Of the original songs of the Snowdens, only one is confirmed to have survived called “We Are Goin to Leave Knox County” and is believed to have been written sometime around the Civil War era and definitely based on Stephen Foster’s “Dear Lilly.”
Union soldier with banjo.
When Emmett collected a song he liked that he did not write, he did not take credit for it although perhaps there might be songs attributed to him by others. One such song is one Emmett had published under the title “Genuine Negro Jig.” The title would indicate that Emmett did not write it but had encountered and published it in order to preserve it. In 2010, the Carolina Chocolate Drops recorded “Genuine Negro Jig” under the title “Snowden’s Jig” as it is their belief that Emmett likely heard them perform it and so it may be another song of the Snowdens that is still preserved. I think they are right.
Carolina Cocolate Drops: Snowden's Jig - YouTube
Minstrel band—real Blacks this time.
Dan Emmett late in life.