Blackface for Charity: Tacoma's Church Children Stage the 'Pickaninny Minstrels'
At St. Luke's parish house the children of Tacoma's Episcopal set performed a minstrel show to fund the Sheltering Arms, and the correspondent pronounced it wonderful — a measure of how respectable racial caricature once was.
Tuesday evening an entertainment was given at St. Luke's parish house called the "Pickaninny Minstrels." It was given for the benefit of the Sheltering Arms, and quite a sum was realized, as the room was well filled. The parts in these minstrels were all taken by children and it was wonderful how well they did and how they had mastered the idea of the thing. Those who trained them also deserve unbounded credit, as the entertainment was in every way a successful one. Among those who took part, and some of them were of quite tender years, were: Miss Sallie Mayden, Miss Edith Hurley, Miss Edith Applegate, Miss Jordan, Miss Jacquelyn Howell, Miss Florence Holbrook, Miss Josephine Holbrook, Miss Edna Meister, Miss Louise Hale, Miss Helen Eaton, Miss Emily Hall.
“it was wonderful how well they did and how they had mastered the idea of the thing.”
In 1894 the daughters of Tacoma's churchgoing gentry blacked up for a charity benefit, and the paper called the result wonderful — minstrelsy was not disreputable entertainment but fundraising for orphans. That respectability is the story: racial caricature was woven into the leisure of the same people who ran the city's churches and charities. Today's fights over blackface in yearbooks, costume parties and mascots are the long tail of exactly this habit.
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