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A Murder among Minstrels: Show Business, Blackface, and Violence in Post-Civil War New York
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2025
Abstract
This article focuses on a December 1867 altercation between three blackface minstrel managers – Sam Sharpley, Edwin Kelly, and Francis Leon. The conflict, which escalated from a fistfight to a shooting match, resulted in the death of Sharpley’s brother. The incident was a murder among blackface minstrels, but, more than this, it was a murder about minstrelsy. The blackface minstrel show – a deeply racist but wildly popular form of entertainment – was big business in post-Civil War New York City. Throughout 1867, Sharpley’s troupe was locked in a heated rivalry with Kelly and Leon’s company. When Kelly and Leon signed three of Sharpley’s performers and allegedly began spreading rumors about his financial well-being, Sharpley responded violently. As it examines the December confrontation, the events that preceded it, and the first-degree murder trial that followed, this article situates the incident in the larger history of blackface minstrelsy. It also suggests that popular performance culture must be understood with reference to contemporary shifts in post-Civil War American capitalism.
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- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 2025 , pp. 119 - 136
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)
References
Notes
1 This narrative is largely drawn from witness testimony included in Edwin Kelly’s indictment record. The People vs Edwin Kelly, Indictment Record, New York District Attorney — Indictment Records, Dec. 11, 1867 to Dec. 20, 1867, microfilm, roll 173, MN 5473, New York Municipal Archives, New York, New York (hereafter called Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA).
2 Lott, Eric, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Other significant works published in this era include Cockrell, Dale, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Mahar, William J., Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and American Popular Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, rev. ed. (1991; London: Verso, 1999), 115–132 Google Scholar; Saxton, Alexander, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990), 165–182 Google Scholar.
3 Smith, Christopher J., The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, Brian, Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Jones, Douglas A. Jr. The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), esp. 50–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrison, Matthew D., Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024), 1–128 Google Scholar. For recent studies that focus on the transnational history of early minstrelsy, see Thelwell, Chinua, Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), 16–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoxworth, Kellen, Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2024).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Exceptions include Roberts’s Blackface Nation, which has a single chapter on postbellum minstrelsy, as well as Robert Toll’s 1974 book Blacking Up, which covers the entirety of the nineteenth century but is now out of print. Roberts, Blackface Nation, 246–276; Toll, Robert, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Although the late nineteenth century remains understudied, there is a rich and well-developed literature that explores the twentieth century afterlives of blackface minstrelsy, including in animation, film, and in amateur minstrel shows. See, for example, Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy, ed. Stephen Johnson (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); Sammond, Nicolas, Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Choude-Sokei, Louis, The Last ‘Darky’: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks, Daphne A., Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), esp. 207–280 Google Scholar; Brooks, Tim, The Blackface Minstrel Show in Mass Media: 20 th Century Performances on Radio, Records, Film and Television (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020)Google Scholar; Rhae Lynn Barnes, “Darkology: The Hidden History of Amateur Blackface Minstrelsy and the Making of Modern America, 1860–1970” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016).
5 See Monod, David, The Soul of Pleasure: Sentiment and Sensation in Nineteenth-Century American Mass Entertainment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Kibler, M. Alison, Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation, 1890–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)Google Scholar. Though Gillian Rodger and Robert Allen focus on other forms of amusement – variety and burlesque, respectively – both offer important insights into the postwar evolution of blackface. Rodger, Gillian M., Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Allen, Robert C., Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)Google Scholar. On vaudeville and the legacies of minstrelsy, see Monod, David, Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890–1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kibler, M. Alison, Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudeville (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Snyder, Robert W., The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (1989; Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000)Google Scholar; Oberdeck, Kathryn J., The Evangelist and the Impresario: Religion, Entertainment, and Cultural Politics in America, 1884–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
6 According to Levy, the “age of capital” was defined by “a linear rise in productivity unleashed by the multiplying effects of greater industrial investment, and a repeating, speculative boom-and-bust credit cycle.” Of particular importance was widespread investment in “illiquid ‘capital goods’ or intermediate means of greater production – the structures, machines, and equipment of factories.” See Levy, Jonathan, Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States (New York: Random House, 2021), 190.Google Scholar
7 There is very little scholarship on the business of nineteenth-century blackface minstrelsy. For an overview, see Toll, Blacking Up, 134–160; for a study of one pioneering promoter, see Steiner, Madeline, “The ‘Amusement Economist’: J. H. Haverly and the Modernization of the American Minstrel Show,” The Journal of American Culture 41 (Sept. 2018): 297–309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On a slightly earlier era, see Rinear, David L., Stage, Page, Scandals, and Vandals: William E. Burton and Nineteenth-Century American Theater (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. Rachel Lockwood Miller offers an exceptionally thoughtful study of labor and nineteenth-century performance culture. See Rachel Lockwood Miller, “Capital Entertainment: Stage Work and the Origins of the Creative Economy, 1843–1912” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2018). On business and nineteenth-century theater more generally, see Grange, William, The Business of American Theatre (London: Routledge, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernheim, Alfred, The Business of the Theatre: An Economic History of the American Theatre, 1750–1932 (1932; New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964)Google Scholar; Poggi, Jack, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968).Google Scholar
8 Cockrell, Demons of Disorder, 13–29; Hornback, Robert, Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions: From the Old World to the New (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Toll, Blacking Up, 30.
10 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Aug. 24, 1867, 154.
11 Robert Toll offers the most complete survey of this “grand transformation.” See Toll, Blacking Up, 134–159. See also Monod, Soul of Pleasure, 206–236; Miller “Capital Entertainment,” 289–349; Ashby, Leroy, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 73–106.Google Scholar
12 Clipping, series VI, box 5, Harvard Theatre Collection on Blackface Minstrelsy, circa 1833–1906, MS Thr 1848, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (hereafter called HTC-BM).
13 Rice, Edward LeRoy, Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from “Daddy” Rice to Date (New York: Kenny Publishing, 1911), 143.Google Scholar
14 “The Chicago Minstrel Troupe,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 13, 1863, 4; Advertisement, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 20, 1864, 4.
15 Offstage, Leon appears to have identified as a man. For this reason, I have used masculine pronouns throughout this article.
16 As Katrina Thompson Moore notes, white male performers had a long history of impersonating Black women on the minstrel stage. See Moore, Katrina Thompson, “The Wench: Black Women in the Antebellum Minstrel Show and Popular Culture,” Journal of American Culture 44 (Dec. 2021): 218–235 Google Scholar. See also Toll, Blacking Up, 140–145.
17 “Cork Opera,” Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), Mar. 9, 1875, 2.
18 The phrase “The Only Leon” appeared in most of the troupe’s promotional material. For numerous examples, see clippings and playbills, Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels, box 12, folder 11, Minstrel Show Collection, 1831–1959, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas (hereafter called UT-HRC.)
19 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Oct. 6, 1866, 206.
20 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Oct. 13, 1866, 214.
21 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Dec. 15, 1866, 286.
22 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Jan. 12, 1867, 318.
23 On the Black Crook, see Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 108–117; Monod, Soul of Pleasure, 156–165.
24 Quote in “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Jan. 5, 1867, 310. See also “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Jan. 12, 1867, 318.
25 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Jan. 19, 1867, 327.
26 Playbills, Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels, 1865–1867, series III, box 14, HTC-BM.
27 Clippings, Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels, box 12, folder 11, UT-HRC.
28 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Feb. 2, 1867, 342.
29 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, June 15, 1867, 78.
30 “Cork Opera,” Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), Mar. 9, 1875, 2.
31 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Sept. 14, 1867, 182; “City Summary,” New York Clipper, June 1, 1867, 62.
32 Playbills, Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels, 1865–1867, series III, box 14, HTC-BM.
33 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Aug. 17, 1867, 150.
34 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Oct. 19, 1867, 222.
35 Clipping, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, box 19, folder 16, UT-HRC.
36 Advertisement, New York Daily Herald, July 23, 1861, 7.
37 Clipping, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, box 19, folder 16, UT-HRC. On Tony Pastor, see Monod, Soul of Pleasure, 171–180; Snyder, Voice of the City, 13–25.
38 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Sept. 2, 1865, 166. One undated playbill from the Sharpley-Pastor collaboration is included in Playbills, (Tony) Pastor, series III, box 16, HTC-BM.
39 Monod, Soul of Pleasure, 206–236.
40 Clipping, box 28, folder 3, UT-HRC.
41 Playbills, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, series III, box 17, HTC-BM.
42 “Negro Minstrelsy,” New York Clipper, June 15, 1867, 79.
43 Several playbills from Sharpley’s 1867 run at the Howard Atheneum in Boston are available at Harvard University’s Houghton library. See Playbills, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, series III, box 17, HTC-BM. For Ad Ryman, see June 27, 1867, and June 10, 1867 playbills.
44 June 27, 1867, and July 1, 1867 playbills, both in Playbills, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, series III, box 17, HTC-BM; See also “Negro Minstrelsy,” New York Clipper, June 8, 1867, 70.
45 “Negro Minstrelsy,” New York Clipper, June 22, 1867, 86.
46 “Negro Minstrelsy,” New York Clipper, July 6, 1867, 102.
47 Quoted in “Negro Minstrelsy,” New York Clipper, July 13, 1867, 110.
48 Clipping, Sam Sharpl[e]y’s Minstrels, box 19, folder 17, UT-HRC.
49 See Monod, Soul of Pleasure, 179, 182–184.
50 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Aug. 31, 1867, 166. The Minstrel Show Collection at the Harry Ransom Center includes one playbill from the Cotton, White, and Sharpley stand at the Theatre Comique; box 33, folder 14, UT-HRC.
51 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Sept. 21, 1867, 190.
52 “Amusements in the Metropolis,” New York Clipper, Nov. 2, 1867, 234.
53 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Jan. 18, 1868, 326.
54 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, July 27, 1867, 127.
55 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Aug. 3, 1867, 134–135.
56 On vaudeville and the central booking system, see Snyder, Voice of the City, 26-41, 64–81; Monod, Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 149–186.
57 Clipping, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, series VI, box 5, HTC-BM.
58 “Samuel S. Sanford’s Personal Reminiscences,” 99–101, box 32, folder 13, UT-HRC.
59 On personality, trust, and credit in the nineteenth century United States, see Sandage, Scott A., Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Jonathan, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Ages of American Capitalism, 126–149.
60 Gorn, Elliott J., The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America, rev. ed. (1986; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 129–148 Google Scholar; Foote, Lorien, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 67–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stott, Richard B., Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 212–278 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 As Gorn puts it, “an individual had honor only when his kin or fellows said he did.” When lost, “only acts of valor, especially violent retribution, expunged the sense of shame, proved one’s mettle, and reasserted one’s claim to honor.” Gorn, Manly Art, 152.
62 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Dec. 12, 1857, 270.
63 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, July 17, 1858, 103.
64 “City Summary,” New York Clipper, Jan. 22, 1859, 318.
65 “Suit against Barney Williams,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 1863, 2.
66 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Dec. 19, 1857, 278. On violence and theater in the context of the antebellum struggle over slavery, see Mielke, Laura L., Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 “The Sharpley-Kelly Tragedy,” Evening Telegraph (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Dec. 13, 1867, 5; “Shocking Homicide,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 1867, 5.
68 “A Minstrel Troupe Tragedy,” National Police Gazette, Dec. 21, 1867, 6.
69 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Dec. 7, 1867, 279.
70 “Shocking Homicide,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 1867, 5.
71 Testimony of John Allison, in Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
72 Clipping, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, series VI, box 5, HTC-BM.
73 “A Minstrel Troupe Tragedy,” National Police Gazette, Dec. 21, 1867, 6; “THE MINSTRELS’ AFFRAY,” New York Clipper, Dec. 21, 1867, 290. Given Leon’s specialization as a minstrel “prima donna,” this gendered language is striking. Sharpley, however, clearly considered the affair to be a matter of masculine honor and acted accordingly – Leon’s onstage female impersonations notwithstanding.
74 Testimony of John Allison, in Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
75 Testimony of John Hopper Delafield in Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
76 Testimony of George C. Jordan in Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
77 Testimony of John Hopper Delafield, Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
78 Testimony of John Allison, in Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
79 “The Sharpley-Kelly Tragedy,” Evening Telegraph (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Dec. 13, 1867, 5.
80 Court of General Sessions Minutes, Manhattan, part 1, vol. 108, Jan.–Oct. 1868, MN 10031, microfilm reel 31, New York Municipal Archives, New York, New York.
81 Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
82 “Court of General Sessions,” New York Daily Herald, Apr. 29, 1868, 7. See also “The Sharp-Kelly Homicide,” New York Times, Apr. 30, 1868, 2.
83 Kelly Indictment Record, NYMA.
84 “The Sharp-Kelly Homicide,” New York Times, Apr. 30, 1868, 2.
85 “The Kelly-Sharpe Homicide,” New York Daily Herald, Apr. 30, 1868, 4.
86 “Local Intelligence: The Sharp-Kelly Homicide,” New York Times, May 1, 1868, 2.
87 “Local Intelligence: The Sharp-Kelly Homicide,” New York Times, May 1, 1868, 2.
88 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Feb. 8, 1868, 347.
89 Playbill (no date), part of Disbound Scrapbook, 1848–1927, box 13, folder 15, UT-HRC. The playbill is not dated, but the performance (which did not feature Kelly) clearly took place in early 1868.
90 “Amusements,” New York Clipper, Apr. 18, 1868, 15.
91 Advertisement, New York Daily Herald, May 27, 1868, 12.
92 Rice, Monarchs of Minstrelsy, 143–144.
93 Brown, T. Allston, “Brown’s Burnt Cork Activity,” in Burnt Cork and Tambourines: A Sourcebook for Negro Minstrelsy, ed. Slout, William (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 2007), 118–119.Google Scholar
94 Clipping, Sam Sharpley’s Minstrels, box 19, folder 16, UT-HRC.
95 Playbill, Nov. 28, 1872, in Playbills and Programs, A–F (folder 2 of 3), oversize folder 36, UT-HRC.
96 T. Allston Brown, “Brown’s Burnt Cork Biography,” in Burnt Cork and Tambourines, 179.