John Strausbaugh - Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture

The Drug User: Documents 18401960 (coedited with Donald Blaise)

Alone with the President

E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith

Rock Til You Drop: The Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

a member of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

New York

First, many thanks to Darius James for his smart and funny words, and for his encouragement and advice.

A number of friends, colleagues and experts helped in the research and writing of this book. Two erudite bibliophiles did the heaviest lifting and deserve special mention: Kurt Thometz of Jumel Terrace Books and Lauri Bortz of Abaton Book Company. But I am indebted to all of the following for their help: Brian Berger, William Bryk, Carole Carroll, D. B. Doghouse, Celia Farber, Scott Huffines, Lisa Kearns, Norman Kelley, Jim Knipfel, Kathleen Kotcher, Don McLeod, Philip Jackson Merrill, Diane Ramo, Rasha Refaie, William Repsher, Ken Swezey, James Taylor, Tony Trachta and Christine Walker.

Thanks to my fantastic editor, Ken Siman, to Joel Fotinos, and to everyone else at Tarcher/Penguin.

A big shout-out to Laura Lindgren for the beautiful jacket design, and to Meighan Cavanaugh for designing the interior. Thanks to Anna Jardine for her precise and astute copyediting.

I am not an academic scholar. In these pages I cite historians, musicologists, linguists and other professional scholars whose work inspired and informed this book. I refer you to the bibliography for further reading.

For helping me keep the rent paid and the lights on while I was writing, Im very grateful to Chris Calhoun, Laurie Liss, Sam Sifton and Scott Veale.

If Ive forgotten anyone, let the insults fly.

Shirley Q. Liquor flyer

Doing The Mammy

Africans at the St. Louis Worlds Fair

Darkies Day at the Fair

Jim Crow

Zip Coon

Coon, Coon, Coon sheet music cover

Gortons Original New Orleans Minstrels poster

George Thatchers Greatest Minstrels poster

William H. Wests Big Minstrel Jubilee poster

Lew Dockstader handbill

The Phrenologist Coon sheet music cover

Scene from In Dahomey

Laughland cover

Anonymous minstrel troupe

Uncle Toms Cabin tour poster

Topsy

Ad for The Tar Baby

Al Jolson

Eddie Cantor

Shirley Temple

Judy Garland

Bing Crosby

Pick n Pat

Jack Benny and Rochester

Buckwheat

Shaft

Blacula and Blackenstein

Aunt Jemima ads

Dixie Boy label

The Gold Dust Twins

Coon Chicken Inn fan/menu

Pickaninny postcard

Ax Me About Ebonics

I t was brutally cold on the streets of lower Manhattan the night of February 14, 2004. The city had been frozen for weeks in the mean heart of an uncommonly vicious winter, making everything from the pavement to the air itself feel even harder and more unyielding than usual. But it was the night of Valentines Day, so all over the city people were darting into clubs and restaurants to celebrate.

On the Bowery, outside a gay club called the Marquee, a dozen or so young people, shivering and stamping their feet, had formed two lines facing each other on the sidewalka narrow gauntlet through which patrons had to pass to reach the stairs down to the basement-level entrance.

Shirley Q. Liquor is racist and misogynist, a shivering young female informed me, thrusting a small yellow flyer into my hand.

Shirley Q. Liquor Is Not a Cabaret Act, the flyer declared. It Is A Racist, Classist, Misogynist Attack.

The back of the sheet bore an OPEN LETTER TO LGBTST COMMUNITIES (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit and Transgendered), exhorting them to Help End Shirley Q. Liquors Gay Exploitation of Racism, Sexism & Poverty for Profit. It was signed by several organizations representing gays and lesbians of color.