Lew Johnson (–1910) was an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

owner and

business manager The Oxford English Dictionary defines a business manager as "a person who manages the business affairs of an individual, institution, organization, or company". Compare manager. Business managers drive the work of others (if any) in order to op ...

blackface Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a glo ...

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...

troupes composed of African-American performers. His career began in the mid-1860s and spanned 25 years. Johnson is the only black minstrel-troupe owner to have enjoyed any consistent success (others, such as Charles Hicks, were constantly fluctuating between success to failure). This was due to his keeping well away from the lucrative markets dominated by white owners. He primarily toured in the

Midwestern The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It ...

and

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

, playing countless one-nighters in rural settlements. The people in these areas could be

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

(perhaps more than in the East), which made the itinerant lifestyle a hard one for Johnson and his minstrels.Toll 212. Johnson made a brief venture into the Eastern market in 1886, but his troupe fared poorly and fled back west. Johnson's troupes had between six and twenty members, with an average of twelve. None became famous (though they were popular where they played). This allowed him to change their names to keep up with trends. Troupes he owned and managed include: * Lew Johnson's Minstrels (1866) *

Lew Johnson's Plantation Minstrels Lew or LEW may refer to: People * Lew (given name) * Lew (surname) Places * Lew, Oxfordshire, England * River Lew, in Devon, England Transport * LEW Hennigsdorf, a rail vehicle factory in Hennigsdorf, Germany * Lew (locomotive), a British narro ...

(1870) * The Plantation Minstrel Slave Troupe (1875) * Bishop's Female Georgia Minstrels (1879, as manager) * Lew Johnson's Original Tennessee Jubilee Singers (1881) * Lew Johnson and William Smallwood's Colored Combination (1881) * The Black Baby Boy Minstrels (1886) * The Refined Colored Minstrels and Electric Brass Band (1890)

Notes

References

*Toll, Robert C. (1974). ''Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America''. New York: Oxford University Press. *Watkins, Mel (1994). ''On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor.'' New York: Simon & Schuster. {{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Lew Blackface minstrel managers and producers 19th-century African-American businesspeople 1840s births 1910 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople 20th-century African-American people