The Chicago Defender‘s “A Note or Two” column was a regular feature of its Movie and Stage Department section, listing contact information for musicians, singers, and dancers traveling chitlin’ circuits around the country. The 18 May 1929 edition contained these two mentions:
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The black-owned tent show “Silas Green from New Orleans” toured for fifty years with singers, dancers, comedians, and musicians playing one-night stands across the South. Lead actress Ada Lockhart Booker, who began her theatrical career with Sissieretta Jones, The Black Patti, wrote “letters” to the Chicago Defender from the road, sharing tour news, touting acts, and gassing up the show’s owner Charles Collier.
In May 1924, Ada Booker wrote from Wilson. After briefly mentioning her hospital stay in Cordele, Georgia, Booker introduces readers to the show’s personnel. “We are in the strawberry section now,” she noted in closing, though this was not, strictly speaking, true. North Carolina’s historic strawberry-growing region was further southeast.
Chicago Defender, 31 May 1924.
A week later, Silas Green was 75 miles down the road in New Bern. Booker noted that “the boys on parade [had] paid a very fitting tribute” to the memory of Warren “Stiffy” Thorne, a Wilson native who had passed the previous November and “was quite well thought of in his home town.” “Dear Old Pal of Mine” was a popular World War I tune and, sung on circle with Bill Jones surrounded by choristers, must have been a moving experience.
Chicago Defender, 7 June 1924.
Four years later, Silas Green show advertised for new troupe members, including clarinetists, a novelty act, and “neat, attractive chorus girls of good character.” Wilson was listed among the show’s eastern North Carolina stops over the next few weeks.
Chicago Defender, 19 May 1928.
The era of black minstrel shows is fascinating, but poorly remembered and little-studied. If you want to know more, start with Alex Albright’s essay — chock-full of oral interviews and photographs — “Noon Parade and Midnight Ramble: Black Traveling Tent Shows in North Carolina,” in Good Country People: An Irregular Journal of The Cultures of Eastern North Carolina (1995). You can buy it for ten bucks at rafountain.com.
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In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Hattie Grissom, 25; son Herman, 8; sister Anie, 23, and brother Warren [Thorne], 15, day laborer.
In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Vick Street, Herman Grisson, 30, barber at Tate & Hines; wife Lydia, 26; children Dorothy, 5, Vivian, 3, and Ruth, 7 months; mother Hattie, 46; and uncle Warren Thorn, 35, musician.
Warren Thorne died 6 November 1923 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 15 October 1886 in Wilson County to Preston Thorne of Edgecombe County, N.C., and Edna Adams of Greene County, N.C.; lived at 203 Vick Street; worked as a musician; and was buried in Wilson [probably, Vick Cemetery.] Hattie Grissom [his sister] was informant.
[Sidenote: Warren Thorne was not the only musician in his family. His brother Isaiah Prophet Thorne joined Sherwood Orphans’ School brass band, traveled to London, and spent decades touring Europe before washing up in Istanbul in 1942 and writing the Daily Times for help reconnecting with family.]
Wilson Daily Times, 18 April 1946.
“E.S. ‘Fat’ Winstead’s shows were based in Fayetteville, where he owned houses and operated an extensive bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling network. Winstead’s Mighty Minstrels had been barnstorming the South since 1931, gathering many outstanding performers whose shows had not survived into the Depression. By 1937 Winstead was challenged in the South only by Silas Green from New Orleans. …” D. Alex Albright, “Mose McQuitty’s Unknown Career: A Personal History of Black Music in America,” Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1989).
Some of the fine entertainment on offer at Wilson Theatre in 1924.
Wilson Mirror, 19 October 1924.
Lee “Lasses” White was an American entertainer who gained fame in the early 1900s doing minstrel shows and wrote one of the first copyrighted twelve-bar blues, “N*gger Blues.”
Wilson Mirror, 23 December 1924.
“The Mouth-Piece of Mirth and Melody.”
Clippings courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 2 January 1928.
Per Tim Brooks’ The Blackface Minstrel Show in Mass Media: 20th Century, John R. Van Arnam’s minstrel show was one of the last major troupe’s touring in the United States. Though not shown here, Van Arnam’s posters commonly carried the tag “All New-All White.”
In 1940, 29 year-old Langstard Miller registered for the Word War II draft in Wilson County. A native of Saint Louis, Missouri, Miller listed his address as 700 Stantonsburg Street, Wilson, the home of his friend Betsy Freeman. [Was this actually his permanent address or just a mailing address?] Miller listed his employer as Dr. C.S. Robinson Minstrel Show, based on Wilmington, North Carolina.
I have found very little on Miller and nothing else to link him to Wilson. However, on 11 July 1932, Gurnie Langstard Miller, 25, son of Joe Miller and Mattie Langstard, married Annie Amelia Evans, 21, daughter of John Evans and Ida Ash, on 11 July 1932 in Northampton County, Virginia.
Betsy Freeman was not living at 700 Stantonsburg Street when the census enumerator arrived in 1940. Rather, the censustaker found City of Wilson laborer George Freeman, 56; wife Effie, 45, tobacco factory laborer; son James, 26, tobacco factory laborer; and grandchildren Edward, 13, and Doris Evans, 11. The latter were the children of Bessie [sic] Freeman and James Evans, whom she had married in Wilson on 23 June 1925. [Was Betsy/Bessie Freeman also a minstrel show employee?]
Robinson’s Silver Minstrels were a white-owned tent show that featured African-American performers. The “Repertoire-Tent Shows” section of the 21 November 1942 issue of The Billboard magazine featured this short piece:
A few months later, in the 27 February 1943 Billboard, Robinson’s Silver Minstrels advertised for “colored performers and musicians, girl musicians OK; trumpets, saxophones, piano player, chorus girls, novelty acts.” The company promised the “highest salaries on road today” and a “long, sure season.” “All performers who have worked for me in past, write” to the show’s Clinton, N.C., address.
Year-end entertainment in Wilson in 1897 featured a nationally popular minstrel show, Gorton’s — “strictly refined” and “entirely fit from start to finish for a lady audience.” Most importantly, Gorton’s was a white minstrel outfit, not one of the Black companies offering weak knock-offs off Gorton’s reputation. (That boast is so rich it needs to be read slowly. And repeatedly. Yes, Gorton’s did Black music better than Black people did.)
Wilson Advance, 30 December 1897.
Gorton’s Original New Orleans Minstrels, Minstrel Poster Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Posters Division, Washington, D.C.
Who knew that “negro wedding” was a whole subgenre of blackface?
… Me either.
But it was, and quite popular in Wilson County as late as the 1940s.
In 1927, Mrs. R.H. Llewellyn, clever and entertaining, entertained the Rotary Club with a negro wedding and a negro sermon.
Wilson Daily Times, 14 December 1927.
In 1938, Stantonsburg High School’s senior class’ evening of “good clean fun and amusement” included a negro wedding.
Wilson Daily Times, 11 March 1938.
In 1941, Saratoga High School’s Beta Club presented a negro wedding whose finale was a stirring “Dark Town Strutter’s Ball.”
Wilson Daily Times, 26 February 1941.
Participants did not need to make up their own mockeries. Titles of negro wedding plays include “Henpeck at the Hitching Post,” “My Wild Days are Over,” and “The Coontown Wedding.” Characters in Mary Bonham’s “The Kink in Kizzie’s Wedding: A Mock Negro Wedding,” published in 1921, include Lizzie Straight, Pinky Black, Sunshine Franklin, Necessary Dolittle, George Washington Goot, and Uncle Remus. The opening lines: “CAPT. COTTON — ‘Bein’ as Ise de Knight ob de Hoss-shoe, an’ while we’s waitin’ fo’ de bridal paih, we will practice de riding’ gaits.’ ALL GROOMSMEN — ‘Thank-u-doo, obleeged-to-you!’ (They salute the Captain.)” Charming.