Billy Kersands was an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 comedian

Comedian

A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

 and dancer. He was the most popular black comedian of his day, best known for his work in blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 minstrelsy

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

. In addition to his skillful acrobatics, dancing, singing, and instrument playing, Kersands was renowned for his comic routines involving his large mouth, which he could contort comically or fill with objects such as billiard balls or saucers. His stage persona

Persona

A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...

 was that of the dim-witted black man of the type that had been popularized in white minstrel shows. Modern commentators such as Mel Watkins cite him as one of the earliest black entertainers to have faced the dilemma of striking a balance between social satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 and the reinforcement of negative stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s.

Career

Kersands began performing with traveling minstrel

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 troupes in the early 1860s. As black minstrelsy gained popularity, Kersands became its biggest star. In 1879, he earned about $15 a week, but by 1882, he was reportedly earning $80, only slightly less than a featured white minstrel. He was a hit with both white and black audiences, particularly in the South. Tom Fletcher wrote that "In the South, a minstrel show without Billy Kersands is like a circus without elephants."

Over his career, Kersands played with many of the major black minstrel troupes. He was a member of Sam Hague's Georgia Minstrels, along with Charles Hicks

Charles Hicks

Charles Barney Hicks was an African American advance man, manager, performer, and owner of blackface minstrel troupes composed of African American performers. Hicks himself was a talented minstrel performer who could sing and play challenging roles such as the minstrel-show interlocutor or endmen....

 and Bob Height

Bob Height

Bob Height was an African American blackface minstrel performer. He was a standout talent in the companies with which he performed, although frustrations eventually drove him to pursue a career in Europe. Later writers have compared him to his contemporary, Bert Williams.Height joined with Charles...

. When the company returned from an English tour in 1872, Charles Callender

Charles Callender

Charles Callender was the owner of blackface minstrel troupes that featured African American performers. Although a tavern owner by trade, he entered show business in 1872 when he purchased Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels. Renaming them Callender's Original Georgia Minstrels, he and...

 purchased the troupe and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. When Kersands and other popular troupe members demanded higher pay and more favorable treatment, Callender dismissed them. They quit to form their own ensemble, a move that Callender characterized as theft. The company did poorly, and Kersands and most of the others returned to Callender. During his years with Callender's Georgia Minstrels, Kersands regularly featured in the military burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

s that regularly ended the first act beginning in 1875 or 1876. These sketches earned him renown for his acrobatic feats of drumming.

In 1885, Kersands began his own minstrel troupe, named Kersands' Minstrels. Charles Hicks was the manager, but he left to form his own group after little more than a year. Kersands' Minstrels was well known for its marching band

Marching band

Marching band is a physical activity in which a group of instrumental musicians generally perform outdoors and incorporate some type of marching with their musical performance. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments...

, and the group led a Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras

The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...

 parade in 1886. Kersands offered $1000 to any rival who could outmarch them. He also continued to play engagements with other companies, including Richard and Pringle's Georgia Minstrels in 1890 as one of "The Vestibule Car Porters and Drum Majors".

In 1904, Kersands performed in an urban, black-produced show in the East. He only stayed for a short time, instead preferring the blackface minstrelsy he knew best. He formed another troupe and took up touring primarily in the South. Kersands answered the inevitable question of why he had not made the move to vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 thus: "All of my money came from the people of the South, the white and the colored, while playing down there. Whether they meant it or not, the way I was treated by them, and still am, I feel at home. I also make a good living with no worries."

Performance

Kersands's comedy act centered on his enormous mouth

Mouth

The mouth is the first portion of the alimentary canal that receives food andsaliva. The oral mucosa is the mucous membrane epithelium lining the inside of the mouth....

, which he exuberantly contorted into countless shapes. He peppered his songs with these movements and their accompanying noises. One observer remarked, "The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience." He could even fit several billiard ball

Billiard ball

A billiard ball is a small, hard ball used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pool, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played...

s or a cup and saucer into his mouth and still perform a dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

 routine or fill the theater with boisterous laughter. Tom Fletcher wrote that while touring in England, Kersands told Queen Victoria that if his mouth was any bigger, his ears would have to be moved.

This physical feature fit well into racist

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 white-created stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s of blacks having large lips and mouths. Kersands further embraced such disparaging caricature

Caricature

A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

s by affecting the stage persona of a slow and ignorant Sambo

Sambo (ethnic slur)

Sambo is a racial term for a person with African heritage and, in some countries, also mixed with Native American heritage .-History:...

. He also sang songs that reinforced these racist views. In his "Mary's Gone with a Coon", he sang of a black man "lamenting" his daughter's impending marriage to a black man: "De chile dat I bore, should tink ob me no more / Den to run away wid a big black coon." His "Old Aunt Jemima

Old Aunt Jemima

Old Aunt Jemima was a popular American song composed by African American comedian, songwriter and minstrel show performer Billy Kersands . The Old Aunt Jemima song was the inspiration for the Aunt Jemima brand of pancakes, as well as several characters in film, television and on radio named "Aunt...

" lent its name to the stereotyped mammy

Mammy archetype

The mammy archetype is perhaps one of the best-known archetypes of African American women. She is often portrayed within a narrative framework or other imagery as a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, very dark skinned, middle aged, and loud...

 Aunt Jemima

Aunt Jemima

Aunt Jemima is a trademark for pancake flour, syrup, and other breakfast foods currently owned by the Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. The trademark dates to 1893, although Aunt Jemima pancake mix debuted in 1889. The Quaker Oats Company first registered the Aunt Jemima trademark in April 1937...

 that later was developed into an iconic trademark for a brand of pancakes.

Despite Kersands's reinforcement of negative black stereotypes, very few African Americans disdained his act. Part of his appeal for them lay in his mixing of elements of African American folklore into his show in a way that would appeal to his black audience but be ignored or derided by whites. "Old Aunt Jemima", one of his signature songs, serves as a good example. The song exists in three texts, two published 1875 and one in 1880, suggesting that Kersands made up verses as he sang. All three versions begin in a church, a locale that white minstrels tended to avoid. The 1875 texts describe charismatic black worship practices, but the 1880 edition begins with a black character fleeing a white church because they "prayed so long". Verses from the song soon entered the African American tradition and appeared in later collections of folklore. Other songs Kersands performed featured African American elements like talking animal

Talking animal

A talking animal or speaking animal refers to any form of non-human animal which can produce sounds resembling those of a human language. Many species or groups of animals have developed forms of Animal Communication Systems which to some appear to be a non-verbal language...

s and weak-versus-strong match-ups. His popularity led many theatre owners to relax rules limiting black patrons to specific sections of the playhouse.

Despite weighing over 200 pounds, Kersands was also a talented dancer and acrobat

Acrobatics

Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, as well as many sports...

. His trademark dance was Essence of Old Virginia or Virginia Essence, which he may have introduced. The dance later developed into the soft shoe. He was also known for the Buck and Wing. His dance routines helped cement such dance acts as fixtures in later vaudeville and Hollywood routines.