Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
On page 4 of the March/April issue of The Harmonizer, professor Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox (Chairperson, Department of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University) elaborated on the cover article for the Jan./Feb. issue, the African-American Roots of Barbershop Harmony. The professor is also a long-time Barbershopper and assistant director of the Danbury Madhatter Chorus.
As the letter was too long for publication, here is a link to his unedited letter: Letter to the Harmonizer
The text also appears below, followed by David Wright’s response, which also appeared on page 4 of the March/April issue. Comments are welcome.
March 8, 2015
Dear Mr. May:
I applaud David Wright’s article, “The African-American Roots of Barbershop (and Why It Matters),” for presenting an accurate and interesting review, based largely on the work of Lynn Abbott, on the African-American roots of barbershop. I also enjoyed reading the testimonials of African-American barbershoppers and I enthusiastically support Wright’s call to encourage more African-American barbershoppers into our society.
However, as both a professional historian and a proud member of the Danbury, Connecticut chapter, I am disappointed that the article downplays the difficult but unavoidable truths about the history of racism and racial exclusion in barbershop. The piece seems to beg the question: if African-American quartets were so ubiquitous in the early twentieth century, why did they not join the society, and why have they not continued to do so? The implicit answer provided by the main text of this article seems to be that African-Americans did not participate because they did not like that white singers had appropriated their music and attributed it to Europeans. However, the real reasons, which are examined only obliquely in the sidebars to the main article, are that the society continued to sing coon songs, put on minstrel shows, and uphold a formal and explicit policy of segregation until well into the 1960s. I believe the article substantially underplays this troubling past, and that we will have difficulty recruiting minorities unless we address this past in a clear and transparent manner.
While it is true that the comments of the three barbershoppers in the sidebar entitled “Bringing Black Singers into the Fold” address the question of racially tinged music and the systematic exclusion of African-Americans, I do not believe these comments are sufficient to explain the true scope of the historical problem of racism in barbershop music or in the society. First of all, it is telling that these issues are only addressed in a sidebar, but not in the actual article. Second, because the contributors to the sidebar only consider songs still presently sung, they make the problem of the BHS’s legacy of singing potentially racist songs appear to be less significant than it really is. “Alabama Jubilee,” the problematic song cited by two of the barbershoppers in the sidebar, is a song whose context is offensive but whose lyrics, as Charles Carothers notes in his sidebar contribution, seem relatively tame when taken out of context (particularly if the original verse referring to “darkies” is not sung). This contrasts markedly with one of the most popular barbershop tunes in the first half of the twentieth century, “Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield,” whose original lyrics were:
Oh, some folks say that a nigger won’t steal
Way down, way down, way down yonder in de cornfield
But I caught a couple down in my cornfield
Way down, way down, way down yonder in de cornfield
Oh, one had a shovel and one had a hoe
Way down, way down, way down yonder in de cornfield
If dat ain’t stealin, I don’t know
Way down, way down, way down yonder in de cornfield.(1)
In addition to its use of a racial epithet used in the song, the song clearly embraces the racial stereotype that African-Americans are more prone to commit certain crimes. Moreover, while Wright’s article merely mentions that Sigmund Spaeth’s 1925 book on barbershop attributed barbershop style to “European traditions,” it does not mention that Spaeth suggested that an African-American quartet, offended by the racial slur in the original, substituted the word “preacher” for “nigger” to make the song more palatable. In response, Spaeth then patronizingly insisted that barbershoppers should not consider changing the words, as most African-Americans “really prefer the forthright ‘nigger’” to other more polite alternatives.(2)
“Way Down Yonder” is not the only coon song that was traditionally sung by barbershoppers. The problem is not with one song, but with the performance of many songs in a way that hearkened back to the racist presentations of the turn of the twentieth century. The society, for example regularly sponsored minstrel shows in which white performers would perform racially insensitive songs in blackface through the 1950s, and did not ban the practice until the 1970s.(3)
Yet I mention this particular tune because as late as 1986 it was included in many popularly available anthologies, which are still listed on the BHS website. When I became interested in barbershop singing in the early 1990s at the impetus of my choir director, I went to my local music shop in Lafayette, California and bought the only barbershop music book I could find. “Way Down Yonder” was literally the first barbershop song I ever saw. What is more, the anthology printed the original lyrics. It was enough to keep me out of barbershop for several years after that. Thus, while the sidebar does address the persistence of “Mammy songs,” it does not give readers any sense of the scope and the long-lasting nature of the historical problem presented by the society’s singing and performing explicitly racist songs.
However, the fleeting treatment of racist lyrics is a relatively minor omission in comparison with the article’s silence on the actual discrimination involved in excluding African-Americans from the events of the society. Gage Averill and Jim Henry have both explained that the BHS was originally a “separatist” society, which explicitly required that its members be “white men of good character.”(4) They have explained how the all-black Red Cap Quartet was excluded from the 1941 national (now international) competition because of their race, a move that promulgated a feud between O.C. Cash and New York luminaries Robert Moses and Al Smith. And Averill has shown how, even after abandoning a formally segregationist stance, continued to be a de facto segregated organization through much of the 1960s.(5)
Indeed, blacks were barred from chapters by official SPEBSQSA policy until 1959, when the word “white” was deleted from membership qualifications.(6) Yet even at that time, a resolution was passed noting that while the word “white” was being removed, that the society “because of the social and fraternal activities associated with Society membership,” should “continue its restriction on the admittance of those with Negro blood.” (7). This clause seems to have been intentionally calculated to allow the organization to continue discriminating against African-Americans while disavowing their actions to the press, and it was not removed until 1963.(8)
The reality of the segregationist roots of the society is not acknowledged at all in the text of David Wright’s actual article, and it is only alluded to in the sidebar, in which one commentator notes, ambiguously, that the society was “exclusionary in the past” and the other says that it was “discriminatory in the past.” These comments are too vague to give a real accounting of the racial bias that is infused in the history of the organization.
The BHS is not uniquely responsible for America’s legacy of racism, in which many individuals and organizations played a part. The Rotary Club, the Knights of Columbus and Major League Baseball are three of many examples of national organizations that enforced formal or informal policies of segregation as did the BHS. This history of segregation does not and should not mean that the BHS cannot succeed in being a truly inclusive organization today. What is required, though, is more than a story about how barbershop singing has African-American roots, but a more open and honest accounting of the history of exclusion involved. Major League Baseball has at least attempted to do this, not just through celebrating Jackie Robinson but also in admitting many Negro League players to their hall of fame, telling the story of their exclusion from the major leagues in the process. The sidebar from Drew and Jacob Ellis advocating that the BHS recognize leading black groups is a step in this direction; specifically honoring the Red Cap Quartet would be another.
It is ironic that an organization that dedicated in a sense to historical preservation should not be more willing to be more forthright about its troubled past in articles such as these. I understand the impetus of the organization to be positive and to focus on moving forward, rather than dwelling on the past. Yet we do not need to wallow in our mistakes as an organization to be forthright and complete in acknowledging them. Anything less has the appearance of dishonesty. We cannot whitewash the past. Unless and until the Harmonizer and other BHS entities face the problem of racism and segregation in BHS history head-on and with brutal honesty when addressing the question of the lack of diversity in the organization, the efforts of such articles as these will seem disingenuous.
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Professor and Chair
Department of History and Non-Western Cultures
Western Connecticut State University
Assistant Director
Mad Hatter Chorus
Danbury, CT Chapter, SPEBSQSA
1 YMCA of North America, Songs of Southern Colleges and Old Southern Melodies (Nashville, TN: W.D. Weatherford, 1913), 69.
2 Sigmund Spaeth, Barber Shop Ballads and How To Sing Them (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1925),
41; See also Robert B. Waltz, “Some Folks Say that a Preacher Won’t Steal,” Fresno State University
Folklore, accessed March 3, 2015, http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/Br3423.html
3 Gage Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 131-133.
4 Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting, 112; James Earl Henry, “The Origins of Barbershop Harmony,” (Ph.D. Diss., Washington University, 2000), 44-5.
5 Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting, 131.
6 Henry, “Origins,” 295.
7 Ibid., 297.
8 Ibid., 314.
David Wright’s response:
Let me just say I agree with the thrust of what you say. I don’t think the article suggests that African-Americans did not participate because they did not like that white singers had appropriated their music and attributed it to Europeans; only certain intellectuals felt that way. And I really don’t think it was because of song lyrics, although some song choices were certainly not inviting to black people. They did not participate because ours was an all-white Society that excluded blacks.
Please note that the article was a shortened audio transcription of a class I gave at the Midwinter Convention in January. You can view it on YouTube at bit.ly/barbershophistory. At about 20:00, I discuss the exclusion of African Americans by both our Society and Sweet Adelines. This should have been included in the summary published in The Harmonizer, and I will take the blame for that, as I approved the published version.
