Li'l' Black [Redacted]

Composer

Edward Morris

Files

Alternate Title

Unredacted title: Li'l' Black Nigger

Preferred Citation

[Physical ID#]: [Title], Charles H. Templeton, Sr. sheet music collection. Special Collections, Mississippi State University Libraries.

Cover Illustration

Illustration of child in bed; Witches, owls, cats, and dogs in silhouette along wall

First Line of Song

Dark clouds passin' a cros' de moon

Subjects

Gardens Songs and music. ; Flowers Songs and music. ; Love Songs and music. ; Popular; Women composers music.

Publication Date

1924

Publisher

New York : E. Morris Music Co.

Performance Medium

Piano; voice

Music Genre

Minstrel

Object Type

text

Format (Original)

1 score (5 p.) ; 31 cm.

Format (Digital)

PDF

Notes

This song includes one or more elements of “blackface.” With theatrical roots in the West as far back as the 15th century, blackface entertainment “[displays] Blackness for the enjoyment and edification" of non-Black audiences, through racially insensitive means (Strausbaugh, Black Like You, 2006). Common features of blackface songs were racist titles and lyrics. Songs borrowed from and reorganized African American vernacular to depict racial difference through lyrics “authentic” to African American dialect (Mahar, “Black English in Earyl Blackface Minstrelsy,” 1985). These lyrics combined with titles that used common epithets like “coon” and “darky,” to correspond with wider social understandings of African Americans as “ignorant and indolent, but also devoid of honesty or personal honor, given to drunkenness and gambling, utterly without ambition, sensuous, libidinous, even lascivious” (Dormon, “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks,” 1988).

Physical ID#

32278009353594

Digital ID#

009353594-1924

Location of Original

Box 8, Folder 1, Piece 7

Repository

Manuscripts Division, Special Collections Department, Mississippi State University Libraries.

Digital Publisher

Mississippi State University Libraries (electronic version)

Rights Management

This material may be protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code), which governs reproduction, distribution, display, and certain other uses of protected works. The user of this material is responsible for compliance with the law.

Contact Information

For more information about the contents of this collection, e-mail sp_coll@library.msstate.edu.