"Black America" opened in Brooklyn, New York on May 26, 1895. Both a theatrical production and a living history village, the show transformed Ambrose Park into a model pre-war Southern plantation where African American actors lived in cabins, worked the cotton gin, and – at scheduled times – also put on performances and broke into song. For a 0. 25 entrance fee, "Black America" mixed entertainment, nostalgia, and claims of historical and regional authenticity into a safe and appealing package for its predominately white Northern audience. This thesis explores the complex dynamics of representation and interpretation in racialized performance at the turn of the twentieth century. Funded by and credited to Nate Salsbury, a white proprietor, the creative origin of the "Black America" was also claimed by its music director, African American performer Billy McClain. Boasting a cast of between 300 – 500 Black performers, "Black America" was the largest all-Black performance of its era. It stands out for its sheer size, living history village, northern location, and the significant involvement of a Black professional performer in crafting the script and managing the show. "Black America's" place in the national struggle for sectional reconciliation, the growing codification of racial discrimination laws, tensions of class, wealth, and labor, and its ability to appeal to regular audiences of thousands beg further attention. The dynamics at play in 1895 presage our contemporary struggle to reconcile the legacy of slavery and its enduring afterlives into our national narrative.
Patrick O. Maguire (Mon,) studied this question.