The Mardi Gras of the North

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Speaker 2: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Nathan Connoll: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Nathan Connolly.

Brian Balogh: I’m Brian Balogh.

Ed Ayers: I’m Ed Ayers.

Nathan Connoll: If you’re new to the podcast, along with our colleague Joanne Freeman, we’re all historians, and each week we explore the history of one topic that’s been in the news.

Ed Ayers: We’re going to start today’s show in Philadelphia where huge crowds gather on Broad Street to celebrate New Year’s Day. Amid the excitement, onlookers strain to catch a glimpse of the extravagant costumes, lively performances and elaborate floats of one of the city’s most unique traditions, the Mummers Parade.

Brian Balogh: New Year’s Day marks a very special event in Philadelphia, an event that transforms a lot of ordinary people into a famous tradition. On that day, they become Mummers, climaxing months of top-secret planning, practicing and drilling. On New Year’s Day, some 15,000 Philadelphia Mummers will strut their stuff on the streets of the city. Visitors come from far and wide to see this unique spectacle.

Brian Balogh: Founded in 1901, the Mummers Parade has been a beloved Philadelphia tradition for over a century. Participants are organized into clubs that compete in four distinct categories, string bands, fancies, comics, and wench brigades, but according to scholar Rhae Lynn Barnes, the history of the Mummers Parade isn’t all fun and games. She says, “These categories have roots that can be traced back to slavery and blackface minstrelsy.”

Rhae Lynn B.: The first are the string bands, and they basically practice banjo classics, which are the minstrel standards, year-round, and the banjo, of course, is the iconic instrument in pretty much all minstrel shows.

Brian Balogh: Right.

Rhae Lynn B.: They not only have to collectively play the banjo, but also do a pretty elaborate choreography while marching. The second division is called the fancies or the fancy brigade divisions. These were added a little bit more recently and, once again, it’s pretty steeped in American slavery and blackface, so the term now is casually used to suggest that the props, that the costumes are very elaborate and fancy, so I would encourage you to imagine very bright colors, highly structured outfits, but also a lot of headdresses, so things that you would see in Mardi Gras, and they perform in these four-and-a-half minute productions, and they’re evaluated on their showmanship, but what I mean in terms of it has a complex history as an Antebellum America in the inner state and the domestic slave trade.

Rhae Lynn B.: The term fancy was used to designate light-skinned, young, black girls who were traded and sold in a slave trade as … I’m hesitant to use the word “enslaved prostitutes” because they obviously didn’t get the profits from their sex acts, but they were essentially seen as light-skinned sexual prizes.

Rhae Lynn B.: The third is the comic division, and this is basically exactly what it sounds like. It’s blackface comedy routines, or at least from most of the century that meant blackface comedy routines, and there’s an amazing photograph in the Temple University archives of members of the Jack Hine Old Timers Mummers Club in 1929 in the Mummers Parade. City Hall is receding in the background, and there are 11 blackface minstrels performing in the street for thousands of cheering onlookers, and they’re all wearing impeccable tuxedos.

Rhae Lynn B.: It’s hard to tell in the black-and-white photograph, but the tuxedos appear to be golden, complete with the top hat, the oversized bow. These are, once again, the iconic house slave uniforms that are typical of end men in minstrel shows, and they’re wearing golden tap shoes or slippers, and the photograph is taken by someone who’s clearly run into the street in front of them on the parade route, and they’re holding their canes horizontally in front of them mid-torso, and you can tell that they’re about to shift their way and launch into this choreographed step or strut for the cakewalk.

Rhae Lynn B.: Finally, the last group are the wench brigades. The mulatto wench is an iconic character in minstrel shows that’s, once again, always performed in blackface and drag, and, also, there’s a lot of fire brigades in a lot of amateur blackface shows, and so it’s playing on that.

Brian Balogh: From its very inception, the Mummers Parade was intertwined with depictions of blackface, but, in 1963, city officials finally took measure to stamp it out. That’s when parade director Elias Myers issued a statement banning blackface and teamed up with a recreational commissioner to broadcast an announcement on television. This, suffice to say, did not go over well with many of the Mummers faithful.

Rhae Lynn B.: These two men immediately become targets of vigilante violence and picketing, so this usually means that hundreds of people who are pro-blackface surround their homes, in this case, the Myers’ family home, and they taunt and cheer and they throw bottles, and they’re very vocal that, essentially, this would be the first time in its 64-year history that the parade would ban blackface, and they personally interpreted that as encroaching on a family tradition, on ethnic cultural expression and, ultimately, harming what they saw as Philadelphia’s most unique party and artistic celebration.

Brian Balogh: Heritage.

Rhae Lynn B.: Yeah. Exactly. Just as with normal blackface, that it’s seen as a true American contribution, something that’s uniquely ours, and so Myers tries to immediately alleviate some of this tension. He basically points out, “Okay, well, you know, there actually isn’t an anti-blackface city ordinance. There’s not a state law. You can wear whatever makeup you want in America, but if anyone gets out of line, I’ll act,” but as the vigilante violence increases, he basically says like, “Listen, I don’t have the power. The city has no law against minstrels. I can’t have you arrested.”

Brian Balogh: In response to Myers’ capitulation, the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality worked together to undermine the upcoming 1964 Mummers Parade. Adopting a strategy of nonviolent protest, both organizations threatened to form a human chain on the parade route and staged a sit-in at a local television station.

Rhae Lynn B.: While this is happening, Charles W. Bowser, who’s the attorney for the local NAACP, quietly goes to court where … while both of this, the court, human chain threat is happening and also this actual television sit-in, goes to court and tries to get this injunction against blackface. He basically argues like, “Listen, we’re taxpayers, too, and we don’t believe in our money going to depict African-Americans in sort of an unfavorable light, a way that’s taunting and humiliating.”

Rhae Lynn B.: This basically sets off a 72-hour delay of the parade, so it’s pushed back until Saturday, and the court basically asked for the Mummers and the Civil Rights workers to come together and do the difficult work of trying to find a resolution here. Ultimately, in the end, two judges decide in 1964 that they will not ban the blackface, basically saying that there’s no legal cause, there’s no law on the book. Despite the fact that the NAACP is pretty successful in showing how this violates city equality laws, especially issues with the tax prices, the judge rules that the Mummers are “a fine tradition in Philadelphia.”

Rhae Lynn B.: Immediately, over 800,000 nationwide NAACP members pledge that they will not watch the parade, they will not buy any products from anyone who’s sponsoring the parade, but 1965 is really the year that we have a resolution.

Brian Balogh: As Philadelphia grappled with blackface, the US was reeling from widespread racial turmoil. Police brutality escalated hostilities as incidents like the Watts riot and the New York race riot sent shock waves throughout the country. Philadelphia was a time bomb of racial tension, and the 1965 Mummers Parade was poised to set it off.

Rhae Lynn B.: In this incredible moment of racial unrest, in 1965, the NAACP corps and the Mummers are all brought to court by what was known as the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, and they file an injunction against both the parade and the Civil Rights demonstrators, and they basically say, “This has now reached the point where Philadelphia is so unsafe,” and that there is going to be a race riot, that they need a court granted injunction to prevent this impending riot, and so, as of 1965, the Mummers officially announced that they will discontinue the use of blackface, and the NAACP corps really interpret this as a victory against blackface for civil rights because it is no longer officially sanctioned.

Rhae Lynn B.: As you can guess, it doesn’t actually officially kill it. There’s examples in the 1980s and the 1990s where it continues, but, in terms of being sanctioned by the city, it officially ends in 1965.

Brian Balogh: What do you say to those who would argue, “Well, this is done in fun,” or, “This is kind of a timeless folk tradition?” What is your answer to that?

Rhae Lynn B.: I think the most complicated thing to separate out is, yes, of course, this is an American tradition. These songs are handed down intergenerationally, and that makes people have an intense emotional attachment to it, and I do think the other complicated thing is the fact that the Mummers performers are incredible performers. These costumes are astounding. The choreography is incredibly complex, but I do think that we can completely enjoy parades and New Year celebrations and also artistry both in the forms of costumes and musical entertainment without evoking these negative caricatures and also this really dark and complex history that, quite honestly, hurts a lot of people.