The West Schuylkill Press and Pine Grove Herald of several dates in late 1917, printed the following advertisement about a black-face play that was to be presented by Mrs. U. G. Batdorf‘s class of the Reformed Sunday School, Tremont, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
Following the text of the ad, a description of this racist play is provided.
Home Talent Play
Mrs. U. G. Batdorf‘s Class of the Reformed Sunday School will render a play entitled “A Southern Cinderella” in Hack’s Opera House, December 12th, 1917.
Admission 20 cents. The Class cordially invites the public to attend.
Cast of Characters.
Madame Chareteis, An Old Aristocrat, Mildred Fisher.
Enid Bellamy, A Southern Cinderella, Esther Dixon.
Miss Rosie Winterberry, A Settlement Worker, Alice Schaeffer.
Miss Johnny Bell Randolf, A Little Coquette, Maria Heiser.
Miss Katherine Hawke, An English Nurse, Eva Tobias.
Caroline Hawke, Her Sister, An Adventuress, Florence Wentz.
Mammy Judy Johnson, A Black Blue Grass Widow, Louisa Eisenacher.
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A Brief Description of A Southern Cinderella:
A Southern Cinderella, a racist, three-act comedy-drama by Walter Ben Hare written and published in 1913, was performed many times in the Lykens Valley area. An all-woman cast includes a character, “Mammy Judy Johnson,” who the playwright describes as follows:
MAMMY JUDY – Aged forty. Black-face and hands and negro wig. May be very fat. Red calico skirt. Blue calico sack. Large gingham apron. White dusting cap coquettishly trimmed with pink paper muslin.
The overall description or synopsis of the play provided by the playwright is as follows:
Twenty years before the opening of the play, Madame Charteris, an old southern aristocrat, banishes her only child from her house because of an unsuited marriage. She remains broken-hearted all the years, but blindly held in check by the Charteris pride. Her daughter dies in poverty leaving her only child, Enid Bellamy, to eke out her living in the cotton mills. An old friend of her mother’s and a settlement worker, Miss Rosie Winterberry, finds her fainting from hunger at the loom. She takes her away and appeals to Madame Charteris in behalf of her grandchild. Madame has become an invalid and is completely under the influence of her nurse, and unprincipled English woman. Madame makes a will leaving her entire fortune to the nurse and her sister. Madame refuses to allow Enid to come to her house, but the sight of her grandchild’s suffering softens her heart and the little white room is opened for the first time in twenty years and Enid comes home.
Mammy Judy Johnston, the old black servant, decides to get married and Miss Winterberry and Enid attend the wedding, much to the disgust of Caroline Hawke. Madame determines to make a new will in favor of her grandchild and summons Mr. Deems to draw up the document. The will is made and the nurse and her sister are the witnesses. Katherine Hawke, the nurse, secures the new will and determines to burn it. Mammy Judy returns from the church in a towering rage, having been deserted at the altar by the prospective groom. She has the wedding license and by mistake the nurse gets this and burns it thinking that it is the new will. Madame dies and as the new will cannot be found the nurse and her sister are declared the heirs. They vainly try to enter society and treat Enid, the real heiress, like a common servant. On the night of the inaugural ball, two years after the death of Madame, Mammy Judy finds the will and the Southern Cinderella comes into her own.
Throughout the play, Mammy Judy, always played by a white woman in black-face, delivers all her lines in stereotypical dialect, some of which is included below:
- “I’se addrssin’ you.”
- “Yas’m.”
- “I’m gwine to leave…”
- “My lawsy lands!”
The man who left Mammy Judy at the altar was named Amos Peters, who was not a character in the play, but was described by Mammy as “de cream colored pick ob de unplucked colored aristocracy, so light complected that he belongs to de fair sex.” The man she eventually decides to marry is named Sassafras Rigger.
The villain, Katherine Hawke, a nurse, is provided a “magnificent ecru gown of silk chiffon with overdress of ecru lace, heavily spangled.” Likewise, her sister, Caroline Hawke, was dressed in “a trailing ball gown of green satin with an overdress of silvered lace and spangles.” In the program synopsis for Act II, it is stated that “Caroline disapproves of negro weddings.“
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News articles were obtained from Newspapers.com. The script cover is from an Amazon.com ad for a reproduction copy of the script available from Forgotten Books. The script is also available as a free download from Google.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.