Blackface Entertainment: A Fan-Created Archive

Small archive, extraordinarily offensive to modern eyes, which reveals the avid consumption of racialised performances in 20th century Britain and America. Created by a committed fan of the blackface minstrel, George Henry Elliott and an American blackface performer from an earlier generation, Eugene Stratton, this collection contains a Bertram Abbott’s handmade booklet with its sewn card binding and 8 photographs of Elliott, an inscription from the performer and a long cutting from the Empire News telling his story, as well as a handwritten letter to Abbott, dated 1928, from John R Acery of the Ardwick Empire, Manchester where Elliott had performed. Additionally there are signed photographs of Elliott, in blackface, with his wife and two fold-out soft cover, hand crafted booklets. The first features images of Eugene Stratton; the second, George Elliott.

George Henry Elliott (1882–1962) was a British music hall singer, dancer and a significant figure in the history of blackface minstrelsy who joined the Primrose and West Minstrels. His career which spanned over 60 years illustrates how deeply blackface and racial stereotypes were embedded in mainstream family entertainment and how for decades white audiences viewed these acts as harmless tradition while systematically ignoring their origin in racial derision.

Eugene Stratton (1861-1918) who spent his performing life playing roles in blackface, came to Britain with an American minstrel troupe in 1880 and worked in the UK for more than a decade.