Women at Pacific

'Minstrels Coming Wednesday Evening' News Article

An article on an upcoming minstrel show published in "The Index," the Pacific University student newspaper, on November 26, 1912. From approximately the 1890s to the 1940s Pacific University student groups occasionally hosted minstrel shows as entertainment and/or fundraisers. This article reports that in this year, twenty-five men (mostly students, with at least one professor) would be performing as "Big, black darkies," presumably mostly as singers in a chorus. Six of them (the "end men") were featured performers: students Charles McNeil, Earl House, Tub Shaver, Billy Livingston, Professor Jones, and one "mysterious lady." This particular event was sponsored by the Gamma Sigma fraternity and was held at the off-campus Star Theatre. No African American students are known to have attended Pacific University at the time. Minstrel shows such as this one normally included white people wearing blackface, singing and telling jokes denigrating black slang and intelligence. They relied on stereotypical racist depictions that were harmful to African Americans.

Weekly Index of Pacific University (Pacific's newspaper)

Minstrel shows

Student activities

Racism--Oregon--Sources

PUA_WH_103

Copyright Not Evaluated

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