Cross-dressing was a common feature of American theater during minstrelsy’s early days. . . . The practice was not restricted to comedians, however, because cross-dressing was not uncommon among both white and black men during the antebellum period.
Peter Sewally, alias Mary Jones, who was wearing female attire while he was arrested in 1836 for grand larceny, said that he “attended parties among the people of [his] own color dressed this way.”
The burnt cork masks, costumes, and wigs of early minstrelsy’s best female impersonators— Maximilian Zorer (famous for his Jenny Lind roles), William Newcomb (noted for his appearances as Mrs. E. Oakwood Smith), and George Christy (renowned for his “wench” characters)— did not represent women any more accurately than did the cross-dressed characters of Mose— the Bowery B’hoy— and his companions portrayed working class women of the Bowery and Broadway in Benjamin Baker’s Glance at New York (Feb 15, 1848), where Mose, who is a man and no mistake— and one of de b’hoys at dat”— makes a pass at Mrs. Morton to show his manly aggressiveness.
(Behind the Burnt Cork Mask by William Mahar, 312)
Mahar also makes the point that minstrel shows also parodied popular lecture forms such as political rhetoric, and lectures regarding the latest “sciences” of the day, like phrenology and mesmerism. I love the bit about the “bump of lub” that causes swelling problems:
Lecture on Phrenology
Freenology consists in gittin’nolage free, like you am dis evening; it was fust discubered in de free schools, and was always looked ‘pon by de larned as being closely connected wid “E Pluribus Unum.” . . .
De hump in a cullered man’s hed . . . am siterated on de top, and called by de siantifick de cokanut bump; dis bump lays in a triangular form ober be bump of don’t care- a-d-nativeness, which every black man’s hed am vully blessed wid . . . .
De bump dat am moss cultiwated in de cullered man hed, am call’d on Fowler and Wells’ map ob de brane, “Amativeness.” Dis am de bump dat plays de debil wid de fair sex, bekase dat am whar Kupid springs from; dis bump lays in de back ob de neck, near de coat collar; it am call’d de bump of lub . . . .
It am de bump what all de selfishness and wickedness ob mankind lays; and I wod say a word to dem fellers as hab got an ober quantity ob it. Look out how you fool you time ’round de opposite sex, kase wen you fall in lub dis bump swells to such an ‘xtent dat it overwellms de hole brane, common sense am kicked out do be drainum, and lub rain ‘spreme till every ebenue leadin to de soul am oberflowed wid de milk ob human kindness, and it takes an “orfullpoletice,” as we say in French, to traduce de swell’d bump to its proper size.”
From Black Diamonds (1855) cited on 72-73, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask.
Strange but (so far) irrelevant connections:
Yesterday in Sag Harbor I bought a ceramic bust with the zones of phrenology mapped and labelled; driving home with it on the seat behind me, I suddenly and inexplicably remembered a game I played once in Scotland which involved drinking and blacking one’s face with burnt cork while trying to recite ever-lengthening phrases with an ever-drunkening tongue; finally, today’s post of images that speak for themselves.
And now back to an essay on Nancy Sommers and David Bartholomae. Ugh.