J. H. Haverly - Haverly's Colored Minstrels

Haverly's Colored Minstrels

Meanwhile, Haverly entered the market of black minstrelsy and bought Charles Callender's Original Georgia Minstrels in 1878, renaming them Haverly's Colored Minstrels. Haverly promoted the troupe with the same panache he employed for the Mastodons, and he bought other black troupes to increase their size. He also reinforced the belief that black minstrels were authentic portrayers of African American life by moving to a format of almost all plantation-themed material. In place of Turkish baths, audiences got "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT". In 1880, he even went so far as to create a mock plantation in a Boston field with over a hundred black actors in costume, including "overseers, bloodhounds and darkies at work . . . indulging in songs, dances antics peculiar to their people" The huge troupe was successful, but Haverly found it difficult to manage both them and the Mastodons. He sold the Georgia Minstrels to Charles and Gustave Frohman in 1882.