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Transcription: [00:42:11]
[[Clapping]]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
That was a rare treat. That was the first time at the festival that we've heard some of the carnival front talk here.
[00:42:17]

A word needs to be said about Minstrel shows. Willie was talking about Minstrel shows on a carnival.
[00:42:24]

Now, when most people think of Minstrel shows, at least when most who have never seen a Minstrel Show, think about the minstrelsy,
[00:42:33]

they think of a tradition that was developed by whites in the 1800s,
[00:42:38]

Where whites would don cork; would put burnt cork on their faces and perform what were really caricatures of African-American music, and dance and humor.
[00:42:49]

When people talk about minstrelsy, more often than not they think about these whites in blackface,
[00:42:56]

doing the mockery and the mimicry of African-American culture. What folks tend to forget is that about, again, in the 1880s, the 1890s,
[00:43:07]

African-Americans themselves began to take Black minstrel shows out of the road.
[00:43:13]

They borrowed the same format, the same performance format in terms of starting off in a certain way,
[00:43:19]

dividing the performance into three sections; some of the same comedies, some of the same styles of dance, that were being done on the white-owned and -operated minstrel shows.
[00:43:30]

Except now the Black-owned shows were employing only Black performers, and showing almost entirely to Black audience.
[00:43:39]

{SILENCE}
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
so you had the development in the Black Minstrel shows of an entirely new form of minstrelsy.
[00:43:45]

It was this form of minstrelsy that was ultimately borrowed by the carnival shows, the plantation shows that Willie was talking about.
[00:43:53]

Those shows took the large Minstrel shows, which featured a band, a blues singer, some dancers, some comedians,
[00:44:02]

and took parts of that show compressed it did small routines, short bits, a little bit of music - you didn't had as full of a band - and you put it on with the carnival.
[00:44:12]

So, when we talk about minstrelsy, we aren't talking about white face minstrelsy at all, or black face minstrelsy done by whites, but rather we're talking about minstrelsy performed by blacks,
[00:44:23]

largely to black audiences. Now, in the carnivals, clearly unlike the Minstrel shows, you are showing to mixed audiences.
[00:44:33]

You weren't always working with the black audiences because the carnival would move into a town,
[00:44:38]

and you'd deal with both black and white audiences. Willie-

{SPEAKER name="Willie"}
Yes
[00:44:42]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
What was done about that? Was there any uh--

{SILENCE}

First of all, how did the carnival treat the entry of blacks and whites? Were they -- Did they bring them into the same show? Was there a way of keeping them divided while in the show?
[00:44:56]

{SPEAKER name="Willie"}
Aw yeah, they probably went to the same show, but on the thing they would divide them by putting a line right straight down the middle.
[00:45:04]

The white on one side, the colored on the other, and I'll tell you what, if then white side got filled up and the colored side was half open, they would be right over there.
[00:45:16]

If the colored side got filled up, and the white side be open, they'd be right over there. And everybody would sit together; no kind of argument.
[00:45:24]