Blackface minstrelsy

Blackface minstrelsy was the first and most popular form of mass culture in the US for much of the nineteenth century, emerging in the antebellum period as a distinctive product of a self-consciously national culture. The first complete show appeared in 1843 and featured white men with blackened faces masquerading as black slaves, performing for white audiences what they presented as black music, dialect, jokes and dance. The shows denigrated black people and assisted the larger society in assigning them a subordinate place. However, although the shows’ overarching representations re-inscribed a clear binary racial logic of black and white, the performance styles involved a ‘confused and confusing’ history of cultural intermixing (Lott Reference Lott1993, p. 94). Musically based around bones, tambourine, banjo and fiddle, a night's performance would feature men wearing black masks and ridiculing black people while performing black banjo techniques melded with rhythms derived from folk-dance music of the British Isles.

During most of the nineteenth century, minstrelsy became the most broadly circulated and most recognisably American creation of popular culture in both the US and abroad. As William Mahar notes, it was ‘a commercial enterprise created for a mass market at a time when the US lacked a definable national culture’ (Mahar Reference Mahar1999, p. 9). Minstrelsy was a ‘common man's culture’ that ‘glorified American democracy and the average white man in contrast to European aristocracy and effete “gentlemen”’ (Toll Reference Toll1974, pp. 3–4). This strange and artificial form that kept black people observable only by surrogate became the preeminent performance mode of American national style.Footnote ⁵

After the Civil War, with the growth of urban areas, the potential audience for popular entertainment grew, and by the last decades of the nineteenth century, minstrels were declining in popularity. Competition emerged among a variety of entertainment forms, including musicals, popular plays, extravaganzas, circuses, burlesque, drama, Wild West shows and vaudeville. In the context of the expanding market for entertainments, the minstrel show transformed.

In the 1880s, minstrel troupe leader J.H. Haverly went about renovating the minstrel show to meet the expectations of a more demanding public. According to comedy historian Mel Watkins, Haverly ‘so thoroughly glamorized and revamped the minstrel show that by the mid-eighties, except for blackface performers, it bore almost no resemblance to the work pioneered by Dan Emmett and E.P. Christy’ (Watkins Reference Watkins1994, p. 98). Haverly merged four minstrel troupes into one, ran enormous advertisements, dressed his performers in fancy clothing, and created pre-show parade routes for his brass band and drum corps. The expansionism of blackface minstrelsy was a particularly American form of grandiosity. That is, Haverly sought to remedy a situation in which minstrelsy had ‘not grown with the nation and was not appealing to the country's expansive spirit of large, indeed unbounded growth, development and improvement’ (Haverly in Watkins Reference Watkins1994, p. 98). Troupes either grew in size and extravagance along with Haverly or they were forced out of business.

Additionally, black troupes were formed, which created competition for white performers. These black performers highlighted their authenticity as black people and frequently claimed to be former slaves. Although they performed stereotypes created by whites, they frequently achieved acclaim as experts in their portrayal of plantation life. Doug Abbott and Lynn Seroff note that ‘by the turn of the century, black minstrel performers had seriously undermined their white counterparts, especially in the South’ (Abbott and Seroff Reference Abbott and Seroff2007, p. 209). However, their access to mainstream theatres was impeded in response. White theatre magnates such as Klaw & Erlanger stopped booking black performers on the circuit because they perceived black troupes as negatively impacting the success of white troupes.

Another aspect of minstrel modernisation was the appearance of new instruments. In addition to the appearance of brass bands in the late nineteenth century, orchestral instruments began appearing. Fiddlers began holding their instruments like violinists and performing gimmicks adapted from concert hall virtuosos. Banjoists added frets and steel strings while the bones and tambourines were pushed to the margins of the music, acting only as secondary decoration. Novelty instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, harmonica, ukulele and cello began to make appearances (Wondrich Reference Wondrich2003, p. 37). In spite of the changes, minstrelsy was pushed to the margins by vaudeville and cinema (Linn Reference Linn1991, p. 50).

In Blackface, White Noise, Michael Rogin focuses on Jewish people in vaudeville, songwriting and motion pictures who brought blackface into modern mediums. He claims that ‘by the early twentieth century Jews had pretty well replaced the Irish on the blackface stage’ (Rogin Reference Rogin1996, p. 57). This paper complicates Rogin's argument by pointing to the minstrel shows performed by Neil O'Brien for the Knights of Columbus, the general public and the armed forces.

Neil O'Brien and the Knights of Columbus

In the 1890s, the first decade of his career, Neil O'Brien worked with Haverly's Minstrels, Al G. Field Minstrels and Primrose and Dockstader's Minstrel Men. All of these troupes were quite large and advertised both their size and the lavishness of their productions. In 1903, O'Brien joined Lew Dockstader's minstrels and remained until the spring of 1910. O'Brien was second in the spotlight only to Dockstader, performing as the ‘end man’ and frequently achieving higher acclaim than Dockstader himself. O'Brien was acclaimed for turning mimicry into an art and was celebrated for the ‘realness’ of his imitations.Footnote ⁶ After a brief stint in vaudeville, he founded Neil O'Brien's Minstrels in August 1912, following the grand format of the companies of which he had been a part. This group toured extensively for the next decade and a half, although they had to take some seasons off because they were unable to secure a profitable routing.

In the late 1920s, O'Brien left minstrelsy to perform alongside ‘Gentleman Jim’ Corbett in a vaudeville act. O'Brien retired as a professional entertainer in 1929. Over the course of his minstrel career, O'Brien asserts that he had ‘been in every halfway important town in the country and it was not at all unlikely that in one season we'd tour from Maine to California and from Montreal to New Orleans’ (O'Brien in Blackwood Reference Blackwood1935, p. 9). At the height of his career, he enjoyed a national reputation and achieved the distinction of being among the highest salaried minstrel performers (Rice Reference Rice1911, p. 330).

Throughout his professional career, O'Brien rose to the marketing necessity of applying modern flair, and he achieved success. As a composer, he wrote several ‘coon songs’ early in his career and scored a minor hit with ‘If I Only Had a Dollah of My Own’. These tunes, which were featured in minstrel shows, included syncopated rhythms and conformed to the coon-song craze that swept Tin Pan Alley. O'Brien marketed his troupe as ‘progressive minstrelsy’, and he was acclaimed as ‘the greatest of the moderns’ (Wittke Reference Wittke1930, p. 242). In his autobiographical writings, O'Brien notes how minstrelsy appropriated aspects of vaudeville to stay current for many years when vaudeville was pricing minstrelsy out (O'Brien 1930, unpublished memoir, p. 303). He points to years in which minstrel producers incorporated acrobats, jugglers, wire walkers, hoop rollers, trick bicycle riders, dog acts, contortionists and magicians into minstrel shows (O'Brien 1930, unpublished memoir, p. 303). He also asserts that professional minstrel shows became elaborate and added costly electrical effects. His minstrel troupe performed a show with the central theme of competition between the old and the new. The new was represented by ragtime and the turkey trot, while the old was represented by grand opera and the minuet. Additionally, he presented minstrel shows that were up to date with the latest hits and ‘touched every round of the ladder of popular sentiment in music’ (Wilmington, Delaware News 1919). Although the formal aspects of minstrelsy shifted in response to competition from modern innovations, minstrelsy's twentieth-century life was constructed in strict continuity with its American origins. Continuity, not rupture, was emphasised by Neil O'Brien and the Knights of Columbus. This continuity with the past played a role in consolidating a Catholic American identity.

Neil O'Brien's performances worked on many levels to foster the emergent Catholic identity of the Knights of Columbus and to secure the benefits of whiteness. The Knights of Columbus appealed to Catholic immigrants by emphasising religious solidarity over ethnic solidarity, even as they excluded black Catholics. According to Dolores Liptak, they ‘produced a strategy and a ceremonial that attracted Catholic men regardless of ethnicity’ (Liptak Reference Liptak1989, p. 71). This effort at transcending ethnic boundaries was nevertheless a process of constructing a different boundary. For Frederik Barth, the vital focus of investigation is ‘the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses’ (Barth Reference Barth and Sollors1969, p. 15; Barth's emphasis). The boundary was not simply part of the setting, but was part of gaining a footing in the context of the US, a place in which Catholics were looked upon with suspicion. Their identity was created against a backdrop of interacting cultural groups manoeuvring for position. It was not constituted on the basis of some pre-American essence, but on how Catholics from different national backgrounds could work together in the face of multiple different groups in the US. On one hand, they faced anti-Catholicism, and on the other, they practised racism against black people. Although the members of the Knights of Columbus were largely working class, they exercised important social agency in aligning with and differentiating themselves from dominant groups. Their version of Catholic identity, then, was not inherent to a religious or cultural essence, but was constructed in dialogue with different social groups in order to deal with the historical realities of a particular moment.Footnote ⁷ The Knights of Columbus's Americanising version of Catholic identity emerged in response to intolerance against Catholics and within a process of Othering black people.

Founding of the Knights of Columbus

The Knights of Columbus was founded in 1882 by the Irish American priest Michael J. McGivney. The group explicitly sought to appeal to Catholic men without concern for ethnicity, and implicitly sought to exclude black members.Footnote ⁸ According to Dolores Liptak, because the Knights ‘wanted their organizational ideas to appeal to Catholic immigrants in general, they chose not to emphasize the Irish roots of the association’ (Liptak Reference Liptak1989, p. 71). The emergence of the Knights in 1882 marked an important transition in Catholic fraternal organisations from local and ethnic to inclusive and national. The organisation was dominated by Irish Americans, but theoretically open to all Catholic men in good standing with the church. In practice, however, the organisation accepted only white Catholics. Less than 10 years after it was founded, the Knights of Columbus had grown immensely with the help of community assistance as well as institutional backing. In the 1880s, the Knights were based mainly in Connecticut. By 1890, there was a national organiser based in Boston who promoted new council development. In a relatively brief period of time, councils appeared throughout New England and beyond. By 1905, there was a council in every state (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, pp. 106–7). As the organisation spread, it increasingly emphasised the creation of a ‘citizen culture’ that worked to reconcile spiritual and patriotic feeling (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1982, 92).

As in the minstrel shows of the nineteenth century, the blackface performances by Neil O'Brien and the Knights of Columbus filled a need for performers and audiences. During the nineteenth century, industrialisation generated labour conditions and a regimen of self-discipline that created serious aggravations for workers (Rawick Reference Rawick1972; Gutman Reference Gutman1976). Performing in blackface served as an outlet for white workers to express the suffering of being subordinated by class and disciplined by labour, while shielding them from the vulnerability of doing so. As Nathan Huggins argues, for an American culture that required people to ‘work hard, to restrain, to deny pleasures for future success’ and to know ‘how and when to spend’, the minstrel show caricatures served emotional needs as ‘the antithesis of the Protestant Ethic’ (Huggins Reference Huggins1971, p. 251). Masquerading in blackface allowed actors and audiences to engage in feared and prohibited behaviours by projecting those behaviours onto black people. George Lipsitz writes that minstrel shows ‘allowed actors and audiences to identify with transgression while at the same time distancing themselves from it by connecting the violation of cultural norms with the ostensibly “natural” and biologically-driven urges of a despised minority group’ (Lipsitz Reference Lipsitz1994, p. 54).

A similar method of distancing allowed Neil O'Brien to become both a blackfaced ‘mirth-maker’ and one of the most upstanding members of his fraternal society. Like minstrel shows, the rituals of fraternal organisations ‘offered solace from real life – from the limited range of personal expression allowed by Victorian gender conventions and by the rigid structures and discipline of work in a capitalist society’ (Carnes Reference Carnes, Carnes and Griffen1990, p. 52). The confluence of minstrelsy and fraternal ritual cohered fluently as they both departed from social norms for the duration of the performance without risking their normative identities. As such, fraternal societies and minstrel shows assisted men in adjusting to the social order of industrial capitalism. This basic structure of minstrelsy and fraternal ritual continued into the twentieth century in the case of Neil O'Brien and the Knights of Columbus.Footnote ⁹

Catholicism meets Americanism

The ideal of Catholic manhood espoused by the Knights of Columbus was based around Victorian gender norms and appeared at the confluence of Catholicism and Americanism. Within a context of Americanisation,Footnote ¹⁰ Catholic manhood provided men with an identity that, according to religious studies scholar Amy Koehlinger, ‘harmonized Catholicism with American citizenship and patriotism, simultaneously supporting Catholic desires for assimilation into American culture and providing Knights with a symbolic identity that contrasted standard anti-Catholic characterizations of them as an alien presence in the U.S.’ (Koehlinger Reference Koehlinger2004, p. 466). Knighthood provided an avenue for Catholic sociality outside of the injunctions of Protestantism, Republican citizenship and successful economic competition.

The organisation placed a high value on individual self-sacrifice for the greater social good and emphasised the unique obligations that bound its members as Catholics and as recent immigrants. The Knights took pride in their Catholic faith and venerated chivalrous character, harmonious marriage, social responsibility and Catholic respectability. The agenda of the Knights of Columbus was sharply distinguishable from what historian Jay Dolan calls the ‘fortress mentality’ of the institutional Catholic Church (Dolan Reference Dolan1992, p. 273). In the words of Justin Nordstrom, a historian of anti-Catholicism, the institutional devotional style ‘emphasized an insular and separatist mentality, distinguishing Catholics from broader American culture during the bulk of the twentieth century’ (Nordstrom Reference Nordstrom2006, p. 172). The Knights of Columbus broke away from church conservatism to ‘claim the soul of the nation as Catholic and to promote the American Catholic Church as the model for Catholicity's adaptation to modernity’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, p. 109). For the Knights of Columbus, American and Catholic identities were presented as ‘dwelling in a spiritual symbiosis’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, pp. 109–10). They were committed to a linear narrative of American national success that underscored the role that Catholics played in American history. Although black Catholics were never officially banned, de facto segregation kept them out of the organisation. Black Catholics were typically not permitted into assemblies because any five members could refuse to vote in an applicant. In 1909, the Knights of Peter Claver formed in Mobile, Alabama, as an alternative to the Knights of Columbus for black people.Footnote ¹¹ The group persisted in a separate sphere from the white fraternal Catholicism of the Knights.

The benefits of white Catholicism had material consequences. As Mary Ann Clawson notes, fraternal organisations were social resources, and fraternalism ‘bases itself on a principle of exclusion, from which it derives much of its power’ (Clawson Reference Clawson1989, p. 11). The social network and connections provided by the fraternal society allowed members access to employment.Footnote ¹² David Roediger points out that Irish Americans once imposed harsh labour discipline against Italians in the remote work camps for railroad workers, timber workers, quarrymen and miners, but ‘over the long run, a common Catholicism (and sometimes common street gang or political machine affiliations) gave new immigrant groups access to the fragile favour of Irish Americans who were in positions to rearrange the hiring queue that African Americans could not achieve’ (Roediger Reference Roediger2005, p. 124). In the instance of the Kansas City packinghouses, this favour was explicitly organised through the Knights of Columbus. In other areas, the role of the Knights was less obvious, but was felt in other ways. Overall, the creation of a common white Catholicism shaped hiring practices that excluded black people.

At the same time that they were functionally keeping out black members, the Knights of Columbus engaged in a battle over the representations of Catholics in America. Over the course of O'Brien's career, organisations such as the American Protective Association and the Ku Klux Klan sought to exclude Catholics from full citizenship in the US. Faced with nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment, the Knights participated in events that explicitly displayed American loyalty and sponsored ambitious public education campaigns that aspired to eliminate anti-Catholic sentiment. Additionally, they organised lectures and public relations campaigns promoting an understanding of Catholic patriotism among non-Catholics. The Knights of Columbus were a group that organised in reaction to attacks and discrimination (Varacalli Reference Varacalli2006, p. 21). However, their organisation was symbolically organised against a racialised Other. Their efforts to gain the privileges of whiteness free of stigma were articulated in relation to blackness. This was crystallised by the fraternal society's performance of and attendance at minstrel shows.

The fraternal activities of the Knights of Columbus were permeated by a characteristically American symbolism. For historian of ethnicity Daniel Soyer, the Knights of Columbus ‘represented the most prominent attempt to reconcile Catholicism with Americanism through fraternal ritual’ (Soyer Reference Soyer1999, p. 163). For example, in the initiation rite for the fourth degree of the order, new members would state: ‘Proud in the olden days was the boast, “I am a Roman Catholic”; prouder yet today is the boast, “I am an American citizen”; but the proudest boast of all times is ours to make, “I am an American Catholic citizen”’ (Soyer Reference Soyer1999, pp. 162–3). For Catholic historian Christopher Kauffman, the Knights of Columbus nourished intense patriotic feelings around ‘the Catholic component in the American heritage’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, p. 107). Initiation ceremonies were dramatic versions of ‘the heroic faith of Columbus, of the Catholic baptism of the American continent and of the nobility of religious liberty and American democracy’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, p. 107). Kauffman further states that these ‘ceremonials provided the candidates for Knighthood with a rite of passage from old world ties to loyalty to the new republic’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, p. 107).

The Knights of Columbus claimed connection to the American past by publicly championing Christopher Columbus as a cultural symbol of American Catholicism. The symbol of Columbus served an important role in harmonising Catholicism with normative American citizenship. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot notes, Columbus ‘provided them with a public example of Catholic devotion and civic virtue, and thus a powerful rejoinder to the cliché that allegiance to Rome pre-empted the Catholics’ attachment to the United States’ (Trouillot Reference Trouillot1990, p. 11). In 1892, in New Haven, Connecticut, the Knights put on a celebration for Columbus Day that included a thousand-piece band and attracted 40,000 people, 6000 of whom were Knights. The Knights ‘perceived Columbus as a source of identity for Catholics of all ethnic groups; the Catholic discoverer was a cultural symbol infused into their sense of American Catholic peoplehood’ (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, p. 106). The term knights connoted a commitment to the struggle against anti-Catholic sentiment. The Knights of Columbus had marched on Columbus Day in major cities ‘as a visible symbol of Catholic patriotism and contribution to American traditions’ (Dumenil Reference Dumenil1991, p. 34).Footnote ¹³ Minstrel shows can be added to the list of initiation ceremonies in the Knights of Columbus.

Although it was not possible for Catholics to claim significant links to the Founding Fathers, they publicly linked American origins to the church. In 1920, around 85 per cent of the more than 20 million Catholics living in the US were descended from people who had immigrated after 1820. However, one Knight of Columbus stated, ‘If there were such a thing as priority of right in this country it would belong to Catholics. Whether America was discovered by Columbus, or by some other mariner several centuries before, it was discovered by a Catholic’ (Dumenil Reference Dumenil1991, p. 29). The Knights of Columbus built a narrative around American symbolism and the Catholic place in the American past. Neil O'Brien's engagement with minstrelsy fused coherently with this larger fraternal narrative.

In a parallel project that strongly echoes the call to Catholic origins in American history, O'Brien situated himself as part of a revered American tradition of minstrel performers. In his writings from after his retirement in 1930, O'Brien reflected on minstrelsy as ‘a family entertainment, simple, wholesome and innocent amusement. There are records of individuals who blacked their faces to imitate the negro back as far as the sixteenth century, but it was a group of Americans who originated what is known as blackface minstrelsy, therefore it is strictly an American institution, and for this reason the sentimental old timers regret seeing it fade to a possible disappearance’ (O'Brien 1930, unpublished memoir). Although O'Brien's performances were racist, built around vicious stereotypes of black people, he wrote about minstrelsy as a cherished, inoffensive element of the American heritage.

It is significant that O'Brien doesn't make claims about ethnicity or religion when talking about early minstrelsy, but only nation. Positioning minstrelsy as an American creation, he claims a historical place for himself in a white-coded American nation that could include Catholics. Remembering the past through the minstrel show was a means of crystallising and amplifying a certain aspect of Catholic identity. Minstrelsy was congruent with other efforts made by Knights to find ‘glorified, almost mythical, archetypes in national public memory to bolster their claims of authenticity and legitimize their assessment of Catholics’ proper role in American society’ (Nordstrom Reference Nordstrom2006, p. 175). By emphasising minstrelsy's Americanness, O'Brien's selective remembering of the past carved a space for Catholics in the national memory of the present.

The Knights of Columbus were a counterpublic in the sense that they converged ‘cultural and social spaces with political platforms’ (Whaley Reference Whaley2010, p. 8). In the pluralist public sphere of the US, the Knights of Columbus were defined in relation to other groups. As Michael Warner has noted, coalescent identity publics ‘articulate problems of identity and difference’ (Warner Reference Warner2002, pp. 16–7). The Knights served as a separate place of regroupment and as a group oriented toward a wider public. The fraternal society functioned as a social space for forging group unity and as a banner under which they presented a united front of white American Catholicism. Minstrelsy both participated in this politics of withdrawn group identity formation and as a sphere of politics opening onto a larger public. It allowed for a fraternal cultural intimacy based on a shared whiteness and made it possible for Catholics to enter into a national cultural intimacy dependent on whiteness. In short, minstrelsy reflected and helped shape the Catholic American identity of the fraternal society through its ability to build an intimacy of white resemblance.

Private identity: performing for fraternal society events

Neil O'Brien's minstrel career reflected and created a politically advantageous group identity, which subsumed Irish, Italian and German identities into a generic American Catholic identity that could be melted into the racially exclusionary national pot. Minstrel shows presented representations that marked a shared difference from the black caricature being performed onstage. In the antebellum context, David Roediger has argued that minstrelsy ‘made a contribution to a sense of popular whiteness among workers across lines of ethnicity’ (Roediger Reference Roediger1991, p. 127). The minstrel show, in effect, made possible the lowering of ethnic barriers through the presentation of a black stereotype. Within the Knights of Columbus, the minstrel show facilitated a sense of common national white Catholicism by lowering ethnic boundaries. Minstrelsy served as a fitting entertainment for the Knights of Columbus because it presented an Other to unite against in transcending ethnic boundaries and because it could be used by Catholics in public to claim America as their own. At the same time, O'Brien disavowed the form's violent racist investments through celebrating the form with the language of American tradition.

Neil O'Brien's visits provided opportunities for the Knights of Columbus to gather together and act out their collective identity through communally reaffirming spectatorship (Lancefield Reference Lancefield2004, p. 594). O'Brien, as a skilled professional in minstrelsy, gave speeches and acted as the master of ceremonies for Knights of Columbus entertainments. The Knights sent out event notices to members of the fraternal society when O'Brien was in town. For example, on 20 October 1912, the Epiphany Council (No. 743) of Sioux City, Iowa, sent out an announcement that Neil O'Brien would be performing on 22 October with his new company, the American Minstrels. The message noted that sections of the opera house would be reserved for Knights and friends. Directly following the show, a ‘reception will be tendered Mr. O'Brien at the K. of C. club rooms by members and their lady friends’. The last line of the message reads: ‘All members should turn out and render our distinguished brother a cordial reception on this, his first appearance in Sioux City at the head of his own company’. The printed card closes with the words ‘Fraternally yours’ and the names of the Grand Knights, the Lecturer and the Recorder of the Sioux City Council. Likewise, local councils distributed tickets to members so that they could attend the Neil O'Brien show in the section reserved for the Knights.Footnote ¹⁴ Additionally, they held receptions for O'Brien, and local minstrel shows served as opening acts for him, merging participatory minstrel making with professional celebrity in the same evening.

O'Brien often performed for the Knights in blackface and frequently incorporated jokes making reference to well-known Knights. Through shared spectatorship at a minstrel show, the Knights of Columbus could gather together and reaffirm their identity. Part of the collective identity that was being reaffirmed through these minstrel shows was propriety. The Knights of Columbus were a teetotalling fraternal society, and men who drank were banned. As Claude Fischer notes, a major reason for this prohibition was the organisation's orientation toward achieving middle-class respectability (Fischer Reference Fischer1992, p. 131). In spite of the racist representations of black people, minstrelsy as a form denoted respectability during this time. As Lawrence Senelick points out, minstrel shows were frequently performed by people who distrusted theatre because of the unsettling presence of women onstage and in the audience. The all-male troupes of the minstrel show defined it as a decent entertainment.Footnote ¹⁵ Advertisements for Neil O'Brien's minstrel shows as well as reviews in local papers frequently referred to O'Brien as a refined, family-friendly entertainer.

In addition to solidifying an identity through shared spectatorship, many Knights of Columbus minstrel shows had a participatory character. A community-created minstrel show was an annual tradition in many local Knights of Columbus councils across the country. O'Brien took an active interest in sponsoring and directing such amateur minstrel shows put on by local councils of the fraternal society. Performances were also staged to entertain O'Brien when he was in town with his own troupe.

Participatory events such as these play an important role in defining identities. The particular coordinates of these minstrel shows varied to some extent among councils, but one major feature of the events was the confluence of minstrelsy and white Americanness. Performances celebrating local community and fraternal society were nevertheless cruelly racist. These performances included a variety of stereotypical representations that had a long history on the minstrel stage. A local minstrel show put on by the San Antonio Council in December 1912 included a skit entitled The Booster Club of Blacksville and billed as ‘A Colored Comedy Concoction’. Characters included James Much Mouth, who ran a craps game, Alexander Brutus Thicklips, who was tagged the ‘Pork Chops Inspector’, and Horace Wetweather Cutup, who was cast as ‘Razor Inspector’ (Knights of Columbus Minstrels Auspices of San Antonio Council 1912). Minstrelsy offered a means for the Knights of Columbus to affirm resemblance to whiteness under the public guise of an ostensibly neutral, amusing tradition. O'Brien coded minstrelsy as innocuous and moral in his public discourse and autobiography. The violence of racist minstrel Othering is thus most apparent through records of the performances themselves.

Private ritual remembering: The Golden Anniversary Minstrel and the American blackface tradition of exclusion

In late April 1932, the Knights of Columbus Council 410 of Mount Vernon, New York, celebrated the fiftieth year of the Knights of Columbus with The Golden Anniversary Minstrel. The playbill states: ‘It seemed appropriate … that we of Mount Vernon Council No. 410, revert to the old days, and present as our annual entertainment, a real old time minstrel.’ This revival of the ‘old days’ in the present demanded a mix of old and new, but self-consciously signalled nostalgia for the past. It was a programme ‘presenting for your inspection the newest of the oldest’.Footnote ¹⁶

This anniversary show served a ritualistic purpose for the Knights of Columbus; it was a mode of remembering that linked the organisation to a mythic past. In spite of the fact that many of the Knights were recent immigrants, the annual minstrel positioned them as inheritors of an old American tradition. The anniversary minstrel show embodied many of the functions of ritual as defined by Richard Schechner. For Schechner, ritual is a way ‘for people to connect to a collective, to remember or construct a mythic past, to build social solidarity, and to form or maintain a community’ (Schechner Reference Schechner2003, p. 87). The anniversary thus acted as a group history that ritually protected the Knights of Columbus as an organisation and as Americans. The anniversary reaffirmed that the Knights of Columbus were an old American organisation and created an event in which the community could experience themselves as Knights. Celebration can be employed to create a particular vision of the past that is put to the use of fashioning an identity in the present (Schultz Reference Schultz1994).

This evening of blackface minstrelsy was an instance of a community engaged in participatory music and mirth-making. The playbill states that the event came under the direction of ‘that sterling Master of Minstrelsy, Brother Neil O'Brien’. In addition to being a veteran of the professional minstrel stage, O'Brien was a member of the local Mount Vernon Knights of Columbus Council. In the programme, the council expresses its ‘deepest appreciation and heartfelt thanks to him for his advice, his patience and his inspiration’. Not only did O'Brien bring his experience of staging minstrel shows to bear at this community event, he also wrote all of the acts. The performance relied on the expertise and generosity of many community members, including Brother Joe Downing, Messrs Thomas Williams and Edward Macara, who arranged the scenery and the effects, and the priest, Father O'Marra. What's more, the programme notes that the committees and the cast ‘have sacrificed and spent long hours in rehearsal and their various duties; the organizations that purchased tickets; the donors of space in this programme; and last but not least, you, our friends who by your presence make our objective attainable’.

The performance began with the ‘traditional first part circle’ and consisted of an assortment of songs as well as blackface humor.Footnote ¹⁷ The songs at this particular Knights of Columbus performance included old minstrel material such as ‘Swanee River’, a tune written by Stephen Foster and performed by E.P. Christy's minstrels. However, tunes from after the turn of the century were also included, such as the 1901 Tin Pan Alley hit ‘Mighty Lak’ a Rose’ and ‘Moonlight and Roses’ from 1925. Additionally, there was a performance of ‘In Days of Old’, billed as a ‘nature story in songs and dances familiar to early days minstrel patrons’.

The evening closed with a three-part skit penned by O'Brien entitled ‘Americanization’. This skit featured an array of white immigrants who were seeking to become citizens of the US. The script includes an Italian, a Russian, a Hebrew and a Spaniard. Additionally, black characters named Jasbo and Hokum are cast as ‘comics’. While each white character presents an idiosyncrasy or a humorous use of language specific to his national stereotype, and there is good-humoured bashing of American corruption, all of the imperfections are eventually resolved. The judge welcomes all of the white nationals into the mystic chambers and states: ‘You will all be made citizens and before you join your new country – you must be initiated as though you were joining a lodge’. The attention then turns to the black characters and highlights how they are unsuitable for citizenship. In the following passage, Jasbo and Hokum ridicule one another and denigrate Africa:

This skit lampoons black people as unfit for citizenship and distances the Catholics from them. By staging a nostalgic minstrel show, the Knights performed an inheritance of an old American tradition and enacted their distance from those who are excluded from full American belonging. In short, the skit asks: which groups are allowed to belong to the American nation? And it answers: not black people. The immigrants presented in this skit are each different from the others. However, in this setting, only certain differences make a difference.

Public Catholics and conspicuous displays of fraternalism: identity through visibility and respectability

Although the rituals of the Knights were secret, the Catholic public nationalism of the Knights was fundamentally a public relations effort. Neil O'Brien's professional minstrel stage acted as a bridge between the public and the private fraternal activities of the Knights of Columbus. O'Brien was not only a committed Knight, but also a professional success and a celebrity in music halls across the country. He was celebrated in Knights publications for his ‘marked originality of thought’ and was recognised for being the writer of his own acts, songs and jokes. His professional performances and career provided a venue for a positive public to approve of the Knights of Columbus as an organisation.

O'Brien was celebrated by the Knights for being popular outside the organisation while still remaining committed to Catholicism. One Knights of Columbus publication states that he was ‘a special favourite not only with the Knights, but with the general public, to whom he has given many happy moments by his great ability as an entertainer’. However, ‘[w]hile enjoying the glittering excitement of the footlights, he has never forgotten the lessons in Catholicism taught him by his mother’ (Anonymous 1904). Minstrel celebrity served as a public vehicle for expressing moral convictions – a Catholic politics of respectability.

O'Brien was celebrated by a publication put out by the Knights as a ‘man of the highest personal character’, with an ‘unblemished reputation’. W hat's more, he was described as an ‘exponent of clean, wholesome fun’, ever ready to advance any interests of the Knights of Columbus (Anonymous 1913). In addition, he performed minstrel shows for causes that reflected the fraternal society's charitable inclinations. At a performance in St Paul's auditorium in Binghamton, New York during the early 1930s, O'Brien performed children's matinees at which children from the local orphans’ home were his guests. Additionally, O'Brien entertained the Binghamton Boys’ Club on visitors night and visited hospitals to entertain the patients with his talent. A letter from Sister M. Hedwig, Superior, thanked O'Brien for honouring the Sisters of St Francis Hospital with a visit. The hospital where O'Brien entertained the nuns and their ‘poor sick’ was in Omaha, Nebraska. According to Sister Hedwig, the patients ‘cannot get over talking of it, and am sure that the simplicity and surprise of the entertainment during their affliction gave them more pleasure than a royal play at another time’ (Hedwig 1909, unpublished letter).

O'Brien was frequently met with expressions of friendship and goodwill from the Knights of Columbus in his performances across the US and Canada. Knights would honour him at brunches, attend his performances as a group, and present him with gifts. These gifts were often presented to O'Brien in a grandiose manner – while O'Brien was onstage – by a contingent of Knights in the audience. A February 1906 issue of The Columbiad, a publication of the Knights of Columbus, notes that the Knights presented O'Brien with a silver loving cup in Washington, DC, a beautiful alligator suitcase in Baltimore and bouquets of flowers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as well as Kansas City, Missouri and Des Moines, Iowa. These conspicuous displays of fraternal society point to the way in which O'Brien's minstrel stage provided an opportunity for Knights to appear in public and stage Catholic identity in opposition to the blackface minstrel stereotype. O'Brien was valuable to the Knights not only for his offstage respectability, but also because he provided a public arena in which the respectability of the Knights could be presented publicly.

O'Brien's two public roles were related. His public persona was set in sharp contrast to his dishevelled and pathetic black stage character. The black performance role served his public displays of refinement. Before most minstrel shows, he led a dapper band of minstrel men through the streets on the way to the music hall. In these performances, O'Brien maintained the highest standards of military marching spotlessness. This introductory display of white male civility and powerful sound was in sharp contrast to the onstage depiction of scruffy, disoriented characters that followed.

Catholic patriotism

World War I was an important time for American Catholics and the Knights of Columbus. After the war, Supreme Knight James H. Flaherty stated that ‘The war provided us with an opportunity to put ourselves before the public in a most favorable light’ (Dumenil Reference Dumenil1991, pp. 22–3). However, the presence of minstrel shows during this time makes the structure of the entire endeavour resemble the nineteenth-century history of competing representations in popular entertainment. Negative portrayals of groups aside from black people existed in popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. Marginalised groups proliferated images of black people to combat ethnic caricatures produced onstage to denigrate their own group. In the nineteenth-century history of minstrelsy, for example, Irish immigrants presented degrading representations of blackness at the same time that ‘the drunken, belligerent, and foolish Pat and Bridget were stock characters in theatres nearby’ (Ignatiev Reference Ignatiev1995, p. 2). In fact, Irish participation in minstrelsy ‘became a way of combating caricatures of themselves by constructing even more denigrating images of blackness’ (Monks Reference Monks2005, p. 3). This same dynamic was at play in the Knights of Columbus's patriotic fight against anti-Catholicism. Through war huts and the accompanying performance of minstrel shows, Catholic soldiers challenged negative images of Catholicism as unpatriotic at the same time that they performed negative stereotypes of black people.

Being accepted as good Americans was essential for gaining political power, and World War I provided an opportunity for Catholics to prove themselves. Minstrel shows played a role in the intertwined efforts of displaying patriotism and protecting Catholic interests on a national level. The Knights of Columbus campaign fund for establishing recreational facilities both in Europe and the US played an important role in gaining prestige and influence for Catholics in World War I, as local councils of the Knights of Columbus raised money to donate to a War Camp Fund. In some instances, minstrel shows were used as part of the fund-raising efforts (Schrode Reference Schrode1993, p. 40). More important, minstrel shows became an integral part of the war huts that the Knights established to entertain and provide care for soldiers. They were regarded as one of a number of amusements that served as sources for the well being of soldiers.

Soldier huts were seen as an important site for soldier morale during World War I. Edward Frank Allen's text ‘Keeping Our Fighters Fit’ from 1918 includes a section on the vitality of the Knights of Columbus huts. For Allen, the buildings of the Knights of Columbus, like those of the YMCA, ‘furnish true club freedom and recreation. They are more than “places to go”; they combine a definite interest with a distinct personality’ (Allen Reference Allen1918, p. 21). In the Knights of Columbus buildings, there was a stage at one end of the clubroom in which minstrel shows appeared on Saturday evenings before a crowd of soldiers. The next day, mass was celebrated on an altar that was hidden behind sliding doors on the same stage. Minstrel entertainments, like religious services, provided an important source of sustenance.

In Allen's view, minstrel shows provided a respite from the tedium of military life and oriented soldiers towards right living. One unnamed officer quoted by Allen states:

From this officer's perspective, the minstrel shows were not only good for soldiers’ morale but also useful for creating good, moral soldiers: ‘Everything that can be devised by way of wholesome amusement toward breaking up the monotony is a direct help in making better soldiers and in keeping the standards high’ (Allen Reference Allen1918, p. 70). The wholesomeness of the minstrel shows functioned as constructive entertainment for the soldiers to engage in, helping soldiers to give their best and supporting the patriotic cause.Footnote ¹⁸ Cultural violence was understood as restorative leisure. The ridicule and denigration of black people was part of white military pleasure.

Neil O'Brien's performances denied the contributions made by black soldiers in World War I. Although he never travelled overseas, O'Brien performed at a Knights of Columbus hut in the US. A performance at the Syracuse Recruitment Camp had a reported attendance of 10,000 people, including soldiers, both officers as well as Syracuse locals. The east veranda of the Knights of Columbus hut was used for a stage, and the audience was seated on benches on the ground, next to the hut. A high point of the performance was a tenor solo by touring minstrel and Syracuse native Charles R. Wright. The show concluded with a speech from O'Brien and three cheers from the soldiers for the minstrels.

A common theme that emerged in O'Brien's skits after the onset of World War I was the ridicule of black soldiers. For example, in a sketch entitled ‘Following the Flag’, O'Brien's blackface soldier is cowardly and befuddled. When asked by a colonel if he would give his life for his country, the blackfaced O'Brien replies: ‘Give up my life! No sir! I'd die first’. Later in the same exchange, the colonel tells O'Brien's character that there isn't one chance in 50 that he will be shot. O'Brien's character replies: ‘And there isn't one chance in a million that I'll be there’. In another sketch by O'Brien, the black characters Charcoal and Midnight evade work, misuse language and tell convoluted stories about receiving medals in battle. The overarching message is that black Americans lack bravery and are dishonest. O'Brien's skits refused to acknowledge the role played by black people in the army and implied that they were not fit for full citizenship.

Although Neil O'Brien's activity in the huts programme was limited, his role as the most famous minstrel performer of the Knights of Columbus during this time period both crystallised the group's ideology and influenced other members. Likewise, understanding the role of segregation and minstrelsy in the huts programme provides a background for considering how the content of O'Brien's sketches resonates with the concerns of a social group working to gain political leverage. The Knights of Columbus were engaged not only in a world war, but also in a war for rightful ownership to patriotism and a positive Catholic public image.