@article{Emlen2010,
       author = "Emlen, Robert P.",
       title =  {{Black Shaker Minstrels and the Comic Performance of Shaker Worship}},
       howpublished = "\url{https://ir.hamilton.edu/do/fa8d5d33-963b-4668-994b-e62966a0ae94}",
       publisher = {Richard W. Couper Press and Hamilton College Library Special Collections},
       journal = {American Communal Societies Quarterly},
       year = 2010,
       month = oct,
       volumen = {4},
       number = {4},
       pages = {191--217},
}

Creator

Date

October 2010

Available After

2013-10-01

Description

Among the many visual images of Shaker life published in the popular press of nineteenth-century America are several small wood engravings picturing two rows of dancing figures. Used in the 1850s to illustrate a popular ditty called "The Celebrated Black Shaker Song,” this scene in twenty-first-century America has become a curious artifact whose original meaning has been obscured with time. The reason for this incongruity becomes apparent when these "Black Shaker” illustrations are examined in the wider context of the visual culture of popular amusements in nineteenth-century America: the figures pictured in these engravings are now recognized as neither black nor Shakers. They are in fact minstrel show actors in blackface makeup parodying Shaker worship as comic performance.

Type of Work

• Article

Source Title

American Communal Societies Quarterly

ISSN

1939-473X

Volume

4

Issue

4

First Page

191

Last Page

217

Publisher

Richard W. Couper Press

Hamilton College Library Special Collections

Part Of

Rights Statement

The copyright for this work is held by its creators and Hamilton College. More information