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LIFE BEYOND THE BIG TOP: AFRICAN AMERICAN AND FEMALE CIRCUSFOLK, 1860–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

Micah Childress
Micah Childress*
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University
*
email: childrem@gvsu.edu.
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Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, most Americans celebrated the arrival of a circus. Circus Day had become a local holiday that brought together ethnicities, races, and classes (of both genders) that did not usually assemble at the same place and time. Within the circus itself, however, race and gender provided boundaries and fostered acrimony. The racism and segregation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could be found aboard any circus train and throughout every show lot. African Americans were relegated to certain jobs, segregated within those jobs, and usually paid less than their white counterparts. The show's scheduled route often took them into areas in which they experienced the racial volatility typical of the era. Although the public perception of circus employment often produced thoughts of travel and fun adventures, African American circusfolk endured harsh treatment, low pay, and vile racism.

For African Americans, the work environment at a circus reflected the national social atmosphere, but female circus employees encountered conditions that most other women were not afforded. Indeed, female employees were confined to one or two train cars and lived under specific rules about when (or even if) they could entertain guests. Yet circus employment provided women with the ability to leave the restraints of the home during the height of Victorian domesticity, as well as the even rarer opportunity to outearn their male counterparts. Moreover, employment under the big top gave circuswomen a public platform to advocate for suffrage.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 176 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2015 

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References

NOTES

1 “Home Circus Wrecked,” Peru (Indiana) Republican [hereafter TPR], July 15, 1892, Circus Collection, Miami County Museum [hereafter MCM], Peru, Indiana.

2 Chudacoff, Howard P., Smith, Judith E., and Baldwin, Peter C., The Evolution of American Urban Society (2010; Prentice Hall: New York, 1994), 110–13Google Scholar. For a look at race and performance, see Baldwin, Brooke, “The Cakewalk: A Study in Stereotype and Reality,” Journal of Social History 15 (Winter 1981): 205–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cockrell, Dale, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Lott, Eric, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Toll, Robert, “Show Biz in Blackface: The Evolution of the Minstrel Show as a Theatrical Form” in American Popular Entertainment: Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on the History of American Popular Entertainment, ed. Matlaw, Myron (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 21–32Google Scholar.

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5 Mizeno, a Japanese acrobat in Ben Wallace's show, was struck by a train while on a leisurely stroll in Berkeley, California, in 1895. His colleagues responded “at once” by collecting a subscription large enough to “provide him with every comfort [at the hospital] until he recovers, which will not be very soon”; Goetze, William F. and Cory, Chas. E., A Route Book of the Great Wallace Show (Columbus, OH: Nitschke Bros., 1895)Google Scholar, 67, RLPLRC. In 1895, Wallace's Japanese acrobats and “the other boys” bought a large amount of fireworks (“loaded up to the muzzle”) and celebrated the Glorious Fourth in a manner that caused the route book authors to express surprise that “none of them had arms or legs torn off”; Goetze and Cory, A Route Book of the Great Wallace Show (1895), 51, RLPLRC. The following year, after the Wallace show's evening exhibition concluded, a few troupers “amused themselves” by chasing Sid Ali, a Turkish performer, around the show grounds, “shooting roman candles and sky rockets at him”; Cole, George S., Route Book of Frank A. Robbins' New Shows: Museum, 2-Ring Circus and Menagerie (New York: Samuel Booth & Co., 1886), 22Google Scholar, RLPLRC. For more on “What Is It?,” see Cook, James W., The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 119–62Google Scholar.

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14 Stanley, Amy Dru, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Circus Chat with W. W. Cole,” Sedalia (Missouri) Bazoo, Sept. 20, 1883, Chindahl Collection, RLPLRC; “It Was Circus Day,” Galveston (Texas) Daily News [hereafter GDN], Oct. 29, 1895, 19CUSN.

15 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1977), 12Google Scholar; “A Circus Chat with W. W. Cole,” Sedalia (Missouri) Bazoo, Sept. 20, 1883, Chindahl Collection, RLPLRC.

16 The average Gilded Age laborer earned between one and two dollars a day, so the earnings roustabouts garnered (when room and board are taken into consideration) provided some parity with their non-circus counterparts—at least during the six to nine months a year in which the circus operated. John A. Dingess, Dingess Manuscript, (n.p., n.d.), 289, RLPLRC; Apps, Jerry, Ringlingville USA: The Stupendous Story of Seven Siblings and Their Stunning Circus Successes (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2005), 51Google Scholar; “Here's the Circus,” New York Times [hereafter NYT], Mar. 15, 1908, New York Times Historical [hereafter NYTH], Purdue University Libraries, West Lafayette, Indiana; Schlereth, Thomas J., Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876–1915 (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 17Google Scholar.

17 Silbon, Route Book of the Great Forepaugh Show (1883), 20, RLPLRC; Harrington, Frank, Sells Brothers United Railroad Shows Combined, Season of 1883 (Macon: Georgia Publishing Company, 1883)Google Scholar, 17, RLPLRC.

18 “Horses Better Than Negroes,” Chicago Inter Ocean, July 9, 1892, 19CUSN; “Home Circus Wrecked,” TPR, July 15, 1892, MCM.

19 Miller, Official Route Book of the Adam Forepaugh and Sells Brothers (1898), 89, 28, RLPLRC; Cory, Chas. E., Route Book of The Great Wallace Shows (Columbus, OH: Nitschke Bros., 1896), 100Google Scholar, RLPLRC; Gollmar, Robert, My Father Owned a Circus (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1965), 128Google Scholar.

20 John Robinson's 10 Big Shows (1899), 13, RLPLRC; Alvaro Betancourt, Route Book of P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth and the Great London Circus Since the Seasons of Consolidation (n.p., 1885), 26, RLPLRC; Warner, Morris H., The Barnum Budget, or Tent Topics: An Original Route Book (Elmira, NY: Gazette Company Print, 1886)Google Scholar, RLPLRC.

21 Jensen, Dean, The Biggest, the Smallest, the Longest, the Shortest: A Chronicle of the American Circus from Its Heartland (Madison: Wisconsin House Publishers, 1975), 105Google Scholar; “William & Co.'s Great Northern Railroad Shows,” Wisconsin Weekly Advocate (Milwaukee), Apr. 25, 1901; Readex, Archive of Americana, http://newsbank.com (accessed June 30, 2014); Hoh, Lavahn G. and Rough, William H., “Ephraim Williams” in Step Right Up: The Adventures of Circus in America (1990; Charlottesville, VA: Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, 2003)Google Scholar, http://www.circusinamerica.org/ (accessed June 30, 2014); Slout, William L., Olympians of the Sawdust Circle: A Biographical Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century American Circus, CD-ROM (San Bernardino, CA: Emeritus Enterprise Books, 2002), 682Google Scholar. In 1994, Cal Dupree and Cedric Walker opened UniverSoul Big Top Circus, an all-African American show, which billed itself as “Your Circus of Dreams,” sometimes referred to as Cirque du Soul by patrons; Kevin Chappell, “Circus With Soul,” Ebony (Dec. 1996): 68–72.

22 Robinson, Gil, Old Wagon Show Days (Cincinnati: Blockwell Company, 1925), 91–92Google Scholar; Kurtz, O. H., Official Route Book of Ringling Brothers' World's Greatest Railroad Shows (Buffalo, NY: The Courier Company, 1892), 96Google Scholar, RLPLRC; Chas. E. Griffin, Robt. Hunting's New Enormous Railroad Shows Route Book (n.p., 1895), 84, RLPLRC.

23 “Circus People Seeking Jobs,” NYT, Oct. 11, 1903, NYTH; Harrington, Sells Brothers (1883), 18, RLPLRC.

24 Perloff, Richard M., “The Press and Lynchings of African Americans,” Journal of Black Studies 30 (Jan. 2000): 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Official Route Book of the Adam Forepaugh and Sells Brothers (1898), 87, RLPLRC.

25 Forepaugh & Sells Brothers United, 1896, Courier Collection, RLPLRC; Edwards, Rebecca, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University, 1997), 5–8Google Scholar.

26 Renoff, Gregory J., The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia, 1820–1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 22Google Scholar; Davis, Circus Age, 87; Bucyrus (Ohio) Journal, May 28, 1858, quoted in Thayer, Stuart, Traveling Showmen: The American Circus Before the Civil War (Detroit: Astley & Ricketts, 1997), 94Google Scholar. Antebellum private resorts featured co-gender amusements due to the “more relaxed codes of conduct,” but a circus's public nature prohibited said relaxation; Aron, Cindy S., Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 25Google Scholar. In order to skirt these legal or societal boundaries, as well as to compensate for the dearth of female kinkers, shows sometimes starred an equestrian of questionable gender. In the late 1840s, Spencer Stokes sought to supply the lack of equestriennes by substituting “comely boys”; Dingess, Dingess Manuscript, 127; Carlyon, David, Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard of (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 280Google Scholar. Audiences were amazed with child and female performers because witnessing a non-adult male perform feats of skill and danger provided novelty and variation to acts that had grown stale. Female was one of the many roles played by versatile minstrels (blackface, singer, dancer, comedian, writer), and female impersonation allowed the minstrel actor to convey thoughts and feelings that most Americans may have deemed “unmanly.” In the case of the circus, it helped fill the female talent gap and continued another element in a long history of circus-related trickery; Toll 25. For an examination of women performing as men on the antebellum theatrical stage, see Mullenix, Elizabeth Reitz, Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

27 The Circus,” Ohio Observer (Hudson), July 20, 1837, 19CUSN; Kenosha (Wisconsin) Times, June 24, 1858, Dan Rice, Small Collections, RLPLRC.

28 Ashby, LeRoy, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 42Google Scholar; Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls), Oct. 6, 1836, 19CUSN.

29 Davis, Circus Age, 9; Ashby, 173; Slout, Olympians, 713; “Mrs. Warner's Circus,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), Mar. 25, 1864, 19CUSN; Yankton (South Dakota) Press [hereafter YP], May 24, 1871, 19CUSN. In another tragic stroke of bad luck, Agnes married Wild Bill Hickock in 1876, but he also died after being shot at no fault of his own.

30 YP, May 24, 1871, 19CUSN; Daily Central City (Colorado) Register, June 9, 1871, 19CUSN.

31 “Grace Greenwood at a California Circus,” Lowell (Massachusetts) Daily Citizen and News, Jan. 26, 1872, 19CUSN.

32 “Another Triumph,” Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Sentinel, Aug. 16, 1872, 19CUSN; Eleonora Kinnicutt, “The American Woman in Politics,” Harper's Weekly, Nov. 24, 1894, HarpWeek.

33 Adam Forepaugh Shows, 1888, Courier Collection, RLPLRC; Barnum & Bailey, 1891, Courier Collection, RLPLRC.

34 Davis, Circus Age, 90–91; Barnum & Bailey, 1896, Courier Collection, RLPLRC; Harvey L. Watkins, The Campaign of 1896: A Daily Record of the Triumphs of the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth (n.p., 1896), 55, 57, RLPLRC; “The Truth about the Circus,” Emporia (Kansas) Daily Gazette, June 11, 1896, 19CUSN; “Two Circus Clowns,” Boston (Massachusetts) Daily Advertiser, June 25, 1897, 19CUSN.

35 “The New Woman Leads in the Circus as Well as in Other Fields,” RMN, Oct. 13 1897, 19CUSN.

36 Pontin also added: “Anna Dickenson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lily Devereux Blake and the rest of the strong-minded women are always publicly admiring pluck in their sex. I think the circus women have it above all others.”; “Requires Pluck,” Leavenworth (Kansas) Herald, May 26, 1894, 19CUSN. “Pay of Circus Performers,” Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco) [hereafter DEB], Feb. 17, 1881, 19CUSN; “The Old Dime Museum Is Dying Out,” New York Sun, Dec. 22, 1928, Chindahl Collection, RLPLRC; Pember, 216; Davis, Circus Age, 26, 68.

37 “Enlist Suffragists for a Circus Holiday,” NYT, Apr. 1, 1912, NYTH; “Suffragists at Tea with Circus Women,” NYT, Apr. 8, 1912, NYTH.

38 Daily Atlas (Boston), Dec. 11, 1841, 19CUSN; “National Circus,” Ohio Statesman (Columbus), June 1, 1842, 19CUSN; “Spalding and Rogers' Circus,” Daily Cleveland (Ohio) Herald [hereafter DCH], Aug. 13, 1857, 19CUSN; Renoff, The Big Tent, 21.

39 “A Circus Green Room,” Chicago Herald, quoted in Atchison (Kansas) Daily Champion, June 9, 1887, 19CUSN; Silbon, Route Book of the Great Forepaugh Show (1883), 26; Hutchinson, Official Route Book of the Adam Forepaugh Shows (1894), 55.

40 “Rules and Suggestions […?] Employees Ringling Brothers,” 1915[?], Ringling Brothers, Small Collections, RLPLRC.

41 See Dublin, Thomas, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

42 “Story of a Circus Rider,” New York Sun, quoted in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dec. 16, 1877, 19CUSN. As the era's most famous female performers, newspapers continued to interview her. From the late 1870s through 1881, Dockrill managed to bear two children and keep performing; “Madam Dockrill,” CIO, Sept. 1, 1881, 19CUSN. Barnum publicized Dockrill's good nature as well as her good deeds (as he had done so successfully with Jenny Lind in the 1850s): “In the private walks of life, Madame Elise Dockrill is a lady of many accomplishments and the loveliest character. Her smile is like the sunshine of spring, and radiates with peace and content the circle which it illuminates … She is dearest to those who know her best, and aside from her professional excellence, she is a remarkable lady whose many deeds of sweet charity have endeared her to the poor.”; Barnum & London, 1881, Courier Collection, RLPLRC. Ringling, Alfred T., “What the Public Does Not See at a Circus,” National Magazine 12 (1900): 189–92Google Scholar, in Lewis, Robert M., ed., From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 140Google Scholar.

43 “The Circus,” DEB, Feb. 13, 1872, 19CUSN; Alvaro Betancourt, My Diary or Route Book of P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth and the Great London Circus for the Season of 1883 (n.p., 1883), 6, RLPLRC; Bragg, Chas. H., Official Route Book of Walter L. Main's All New Monster Railroad Shows (Buffalo: The Courier Company, 1892), 8–9Google Scholar, RLPLRC.

44 Petit, Jeanne, “Breeders, Workers, and Mothers: Gender and the Congressional Literacy Test Debate, 1896–1897,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (Jan. 2004): 35–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 “Circus Girls Go to War on Foreign Invasion,” NYT, 12 Jan. 1914, NYTH.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Talburt, Lane, “Racism Was Ever Present for Pioneer Black Circus Performer,” Bandwagon 51 (March–April 2007): 26–31Google Scholar; Kevin Chappell, “Circus With Soul,” Ebony (Dec. 1996): 68–72; Glenn Collins, “From Boys Choir to Big Top; Ringmaster Breaks New Ground in the Circus World,” NYT, Dec. 18, 1998, NYTH.