Making Sense of White Audience Reactions to Blackface Performances on Halifax Stages (1830s–1860s): Diverging and Shifting Notions of Whiteness and Entrenching Anti-Black Racism

Reviews of Blackface performances in Halifax’s nineteenth-century newspapers reveal that they provoked mixed reactions between the mid-1830s and early 1860s. While these shows were clearly popular among a large number of White Haligonians, those who published reviews of these shows in the local press were initially very critical. However, the latter’s impressions gradually evolved, and by the mid-1840s, they were willing to recognize some merit to blackface performances while retaining a critical stance. These shows, consequently, gained from them a degree of acceptance as a form of popular entertainment. This article seeks to make sense of the diverging reactions among White audiences, which reveal a contrasting understanding of Whiteness in this community and the gradual change in perspective among those who reviewed blackface performances. It argues that several factors contributed to these developments, including conflicting aesthetic standards and tastes in stage entertainment shaped largely by differing class and ethnic allegiances among White Haligonians. Shifting critical responses were also influenced by changes within the performances themselves. Moreover, the city’s evolving and strained relations between White and Black residents likely made blackface entertainment more palatable over time even to its initial White critics. As a result, these reviewers indirectly contributed to further entrenching the longstanding anti-Black racism in Halifax.