Parody and double consciousness in the language of early Black musical theatre

African American Review, Summer, 1995 by David Krasner

My name's Miss Hannah from Savannah Ah wants all you folks to understand - ah; Ahm some de blue-blood ob de land - ah, I'se Miss Hannah from Savannah!

This song's assertive nature suggests, according to Richard Newman, the singer's "strong sense of identity and self-worth" (478). White audiences may have found the African American dialect amusing, but the paradox and double consciousness lie in the singer's defiant tone. She may be from Savannah (an allusion to black regional inferiority), but she is also an American (blue-blood). In Du Bois's terms, the character draws our attention to "the two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" (215).

Aida Overton Walker recognized her own historical position as an African American woman and responded to it with skill and determination. Her awareness of historical context included sensitivity to conditions of race and gender and to theatrical conventions as these affected the circulation and reception of productions by and among black people. The Souls of Black Folk, for example, appears to have had a considerable impact on Walker's public discourse. Du Bois wrote that the "problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colorline" (221). Three years later Walker voiced similar sentiments: "In this age, we are all fighting the one problem - that is the color problem" (571). Walker wanted to capture the attention of white audiences, but equally, if not more, she wanted to foster an awareness of the conditions which African American performers had to endure. In a 1906 interview, she voiced the following outrage at her life in musical theatre:

You haven't the faintest conception of the difficulties which must be overcome, of the prejudices which must be left slumbering, of the things we must avoid whenever we write or sing a piece of music, put on a play or a sketch, walk out in the street or land in a new town.

No white can understand these things, much less appreciate them. Every little thing we do must be thought out and arranged by negroes, because they alone know how easy it is for a colored show to offend a white audience.

Let me give you an example. In all the ten years that I have appeared [in] and helped produce a great many plays of musical nature, there has never been even the remotest suspicion of a love story in any of them.

During those same ten years I do not think there has ever been a single white company which has produced any kind of a musical play in which a love story was not the central notion.

Now, why is this. It is not an accident or because we do not want to put on plays as beautiful or as artistic in every way as do white actors, but because there is a popular prejudice against love scenes enacted by negroes.(10)

In "That's Why They Call Me Shine,"(11) a tune Walker created for S. H. Dudley's production of His Honor the Barber,(12) double consciousness and parody surface again:

'Cause my hair is curly 'Cause my teeth are pearly Just because I always wear a smile Like to dress up in the latest style 'Cause I'm glad I'm living Take trouble smiling, never whine Just because my color's shady That's why they call me "Shine."