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• 1 2020-12-02T11:57:15-08:00 Circus Musicians & The Black Press 30 Much of what we know about side show musicians is thanks to the documentation of African American newspapers. plain 2021-04-30T12:36:04-07:00

  Much of what we know about side show musicians is thanks to the documentation of African American newspapers.

  Traveling Black musicians such as circus bandleaders were an integral part of developing regional and national African American community in the Reconstruction Era and Gilded Age by way of their relationship with and distribution of newspapers. African American newspapers are "one of the oldest Black business enterprises in America."⁸ Even before the postbellum period, the Black press was a central aspect of African-American communities, beginning with Freedom’s Journal in 1827, started by Samuel Cornish (1795-1858) “to counter racist propaganda and provide a forum of communication among African Americans.”⁹ With the end of the Civil War, “the number of black publications increased nationally from 12 newspapers in 1866 to nearly 600 by 1890.”¹⁰ As African American newspapers proliferated, circus side show musicians became an indispensable part of a “far-flung distribution network” as they “carried them from town to town.”¹¹ Circus musicians were traveling newspaper salesmen: J.O. McNutt was a local agent for the Indianapolis Freeman, as was Frank Pleasant, Joe W. Pleasant's brother.
  
  The relationship between newspapers and musicians was a symbiotic one, as musicians would promote their ragtimes in the rags - and would thank the Freeman for the opportunity. Perhaps the most notable newspaper in this regard is the Indianapolis Freeman, the first illustrated Black newspaper in the United States, which included a page-long section dedicated to music: “The Stage.”¹² Black showmen referred to the Freeman as "The Colored New York Clipper," which was the contemporaneous entertainment paper.¹³
  
  Regular features of “The Stage” included “The Freeman Post Office,” which served to distribute regards to and from musicians and their families back home, as well as a “Route” section detailing current traveling groups.
  
  
  First published in 1888, the Freeman “included more original material than most black newspapers. Correspondents from across the country sent in social and political news about their communities. Frequent inclusion of letters to the editor from different localities testified to the Freeman’s wide-range distribution.”¹⁴Much of this original content (not to mention the publication’s geographically large audience) was from bandleaders and musicians touring with circuses and other groups and troupes. P. G. Lowery “was a regular contributor to the Indianapolis Freeman’s stage and music pages, providing on-the-spot reports of the troupe’s activities, news and not a little self-promotion. These reports provide masses of information and names, down to details about the waiters and porters on their railroad car.”¹⁵ Researchers are able to trace the routes of black musicians in this time period because of these seemingly minute details.
  
  The relationships between Black musicians and newspapers editors runs deep. Prof. Wolfscale was a childhood friend of Nelson C. Crews, editor of The Kansas City Sun. Like Prof. Solomon P. White, Crews fought in World War I; like many other African Americans returning to the states, Crews began to speak out "for the democratic ideals they had been fighting for overseas."
  
  Though most coverage of Black entertainers was positive, entertainers sometimes still caught to scorn of critics. Herbert T. Meadows, amusement editor of The St. Louis Argus, wrote to The Freeman asking, "What has become of art?"
• 1 2021-02-26T09:41:11-08:00 Portraits of Midwest Musicians 9 plain 2021-03-17T17:37:32-07:00
  A striking number of sideshow musicians hail from the Midwest; not only that, an inordinate number are north-central Missouri (and if not there, then east Kansas). Why is this?
  
  One hypothesis is that they or their parents were Exodusters, the name given to disenfranchised African Americans who participated in the mass emmigration northwards into the Kansas area starting in the 1870s, the first post-war migration of Black people. However, census records of the musicians in question - and their parents - do not support this theory. Many Black sideshow musicians were not only born in the Midwest (usually Missouri, Kansas, Ohio, or Kentucky), but their parents were as well. These musicians and their families were usually local to the area going back into the days of slavery; most parents of these musicians were previously enslaved, with their children escaping the binds of slavery only by a few years. Considering Missouri specifically, this is probably largely in part due to the Missouri Compromise; slavery was legal in Missouri until 1865.
  
  Why then were so many Black sideshow musicians from this area of the Midwest? There are a few other potential reasons. First, the Midwest was big money for traveling circuses. The circus utilized every inch that it could of the railroads rapidly expanding like spiderwebs through the Midwest to get to the pocketbooks of small Midwest towns; before the reign of planes, there was no fly-over. Perhaps this visibility engendered the possibility of circus music as a vocation in the minds of Midwest African Americans, further spurred on by the lack of other opportunities in the Midwest as opposed to the East Coast?
  
  
  
  Regardless, many Black musicians in the circus circuit not only shared the African American experience, but a Midwest experience. Even more granular than that, several musicians were hit by the same 1883 tornado that ripped through north-central Missouri, including Wolfscale, McNutt, Pleasant, Powell, and the Enix brothers.

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  Below are portraits of Black musicians, mostly bandleaders, who performed in sideshows and were integral to the success of the circus.