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Blackface Minstrelsy and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2021

Julia J. Chybowski
Julia J. Chybowski*
Affiliation:
Music Department, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA
*
Email: chybowsj@uwosh.edu
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Abstract

This article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 305 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Music

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References

References

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Chybowski, Julia J. “Becoming the ‘Black Swan’ in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Early Life and Debut Concert Tour.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 67, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 125–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chybowski, Julia J. “The ‘Black Swan’ in England: Abolition and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.” American Music Research Journal 14 (2004): 7–25.Google Scholar
Cockrell, Dale. Demons of Desire: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
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Roberts, Brian. Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812–1925. University of Chicago Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slout, William L., ed. Burnt Cork and Tambourines: A Source Book for Negro Minstrelsy. Borgo Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York: New York University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Baltimore Sun (Maryland)Google Scholar
Boston Daily Courier (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Boston Recorder (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York)Google Scholar
Buffalo Evening Post (New York)Google Scholar
Charleston Courier (South Carolina)Google Scholar
Chicago Daily Tribune (Illinois)Google Scholar
Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio)Google Scholar
Daily Alabama Journal (Montgomery)Google Scholar
Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA)Google Scholar
Daily Picayune (New Orleans)Google Scholar
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Evening Star (Washington, DC)Google Scholar
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Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, NY)Google Scholar
Hillsdale Standard (Michigan)Google Scholar
Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Lowell Daily Citizen (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Macon Weekly Telegraph (Georgia)Google Scholar
Mercury (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Milford Beacon (Delaware)Google Scholar
Milwaukee Daily People Press and News (Wisconsin)Google Scholar
Musical World (New York)Google Scholar
New Hampshire Statesman (Concord)Google Scholar
New Orleans Daily Creole (Louisiana)Google Scholar
New York Clipper (New York)Google Scholar
New York Herald (New York)Google Scholar
New York Musical Review and Gazette (New York)Google Scholar
New York Times (New York)Google Scholar
New York Tribune (New York)Google Scholar
Pennsylvania Freedman (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Perry County Democrat (Pennsylvania)Google Scholar
Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania)Google Scholar
Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics (New Hampshire)Google Scholar
Public Ledger (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Richmond Daily Dispatch (Virginia)Google Scholar
Richmond Examiner (Virginia)Google Scholar
Rutland Weekly Herald and Globe (Vermont)Google Scholar
Savannah Republican (Georgia)Google Scholar
Sumter Banner (Sumterville, South Carolina)Google Scholar
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana)Google Scholar
Trenton State Gazette (New Jersey)Google Scholar
Trinity Times (Weaverville, CA)Google Scholar
Utica Daily Observer (New York)Google Scholar
Vox Populi (Lowell, Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Weekly Raleigh Register (North Carolina)Google Scholar
Wisconsin Daily Patriot (Madison, WI)Google Scholar
Yankee NotionsGoogle Scholar
Lord Chamberlain's Plays 1852–1866. British Library MS 52939 A-EE. From British Theater, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture. Also available in Gale (Firm). Nineteenth century collections online. 2012. <https://gdc.galegroup.com/gdc/ncco?p=NCCO>' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lord+Chamberlain's+Plays+1852–1866.+British+Library+MS+52939+A-EE.+From+British+Theater,+Music,+and+Literature:+High+and+Popular+Culture.+Also+available+in+Gale+(Firm).+Nineteenth+century+collections+online.+2012.+>Google Scholar
Bean, Annemarie. “Transgressing the Gender Divide: The Female Impersonator in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy.” In Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy, edited by Bean, Annemarie, Hatch, James V., and McNamara, Brooks, 245–56. Middletown: Wesleyan, 1996.Google Scholar
Berkin, Nicole. “Antebellum Touring and the Culture of Deception.” Theater History Studies 34, no. 1 (2015): 39–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Alex W. “Abolitionism's Resonant Bodies: The Realization of African American Performance.” American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (September 2011): 619–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Black Swan At Home and Abroad: or, A Biographical Sketch of Miss Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, the American Vocalist. Philadelphia: Wm. S. Young, printer, rear of 50 North Sixth Street, 1855.Google Scholar
Brief Memoir of The “Black Swan,” Miss E. T. Greenfield the American Vocalist. London, 1853.Google Scholar
Brooks, Daphne. Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Chybowski, Julia J. “Becoming the ‘Black Swan’ in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Early Life and Debut Concert Tour.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 67, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 125–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chybowski, Julia J. “The ‘Black Swan’ in England: Abolition and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.” American Music Research Journal 14 (2004): 7–25.Google Scholar
Cockrell, Dale. Demons of Desire: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Cook, James W. The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Delany, Martin Robinson. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. Philadelphia, The author, 1852.Google Scholar
Dickerson, Vanessa D. “Introduction: Crossing the Big Water between White Victorians and Black Americans.” In Dark Victorians, 1–12. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Eidsheim, Nina Sun. “Marian Anderson and ‘Sonic Blackness’ in American Opera.” American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (September 2011): 641–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eidsheim, Nina Sun. The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannibal, Julius Cesar. Black Diamonds; or Humor, Satire and Sentiment Treated Scientifically: A Series of Burlesque Lectures Darkly Colored. New York: Ranney, 1857.Google Scholar
Lampert, Sara. “Black Swan/White Raven: the racial politics of Elizabeth Greenfield's American Concert Career, 1851–1855.” American Nineteenth Century History 17, no. 1 (2016): 75–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemire, Elise. “The Barrier of Good Taste: Avoiding A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation in the Wake of Abolitionism.” Chap. 3 in “Miscegenation”: Making Race in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Lhamon, W. T. Jr. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Meer, Sarah. Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Minstrel Gags and End Men's Hand-book. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald. Reprinted as American Humorists. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Literature House, 1969.Google Scholar
Morrison, Matthew D. “Race Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 73, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 781–823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowatzki, Robert. Representing African Americans in Transatlantic Abolitionism and Blackface Minstrelsy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Ochieng’ Nyongó, Tavia Amolo. Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009.Google Scholar
Pryor, Elizabeth Stordeur. Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship Before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radano, Ronald. Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Rice, Le Roi. Monarchs of Minstrelsy: From “Daddy” Rice to Date. New York: Kenny Publishing Company, 1911.Google Scholar
Roberts, Brian. Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812–1925. University of Chicago Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slout, William L., ed. Burnt Cork and Tambourines: A Source Book for Negro Minstrelsy. Borgo Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York: New York University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Alexandria Gazette (Virginia)Google Scholar
Baltimore Sun (Maryland)Google Scholar
Boston Daily Courier (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Boston Recorder (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York)Google Scholar
Buffalo Evening Post (New York)Google Scholar
Charleston Courier (South Carolina)Google Scholar
Chicago Daily Tribune (Illinois)Google Scholar
Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio)Google Scholar
Daily Alabama Journal (Montgomery)Google Scholar
Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA)Google Scholar
Daily Picayune (New Orleans)Google Scholar
Dwight's Journal of MusicGoogle Scholar
Evening Star (Washington, DC)Google Scholar
Floridian and Journal (Tallahassee)Google Scholar
Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, NY)Google Scholar
Hillsdale Standard (Michigan)Google Scholar
Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Lowell Daily Citizen (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Macon Weekly Telegraph (Georgia)Google Scholar
Mercury (Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Milford Beacon (Delaware)Google Scholar
Milwaukee Daily People Press and News (Wisconsin)Google Scholar
Musical World (New York)Google Scholar
New Hampshire Statesman (Concord)Google Scholar
New Orleans Daily Creole (Louisiana)Google Scholar
New York Clipper (New York)Google Scholar
New York Herald (New York)Google Scholar
New York Musical Review and Gazette (New York)Google Scholar
New York Times (New York)Google Scholar
New York Tribune (New York)Google Scholar
Pennsylvania Freedman (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Perry County Democrat (Pennsylvania)Google Scholar
Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania)Google Scholar
Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics (New Hampshire)Google Scholar
Public Ledger (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Richmond Daily Dispatch (Virginia)Google Scholar
Richmond Examiner (Virginia)Google Scholar
Rutland Weekly Herald and Globe (Vermont)Google Scholar
Savannah Republican (Georgia)Google Scholar
Sumter Banner (Sumterville, South Carolina)Google Scholar
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana)Google Scholar
Trenton State Gazette (New Jersey)Google Scholar
Trinity Times (Weaverville, CA)Google Scholar
Utica Daily Observer (New York)Google Scholar
Vox Populi (Lowell, Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Weekly Raleigh Register (North Carolina)Google Scholar
Wisconsin Daily Patriot (Madison, WI)Google Scholar
Yankee NotionsGoogle Scholar