On Feb. 1, 1899, the Geneva Daily Times commented on the Darktown Swells, an African American minstrel show. Typically, these featured people of color wearing blackface and enacting the demeaning stereotypes typical of the minstrel shows played by whites.

The review offered a unique critique: “There is the grotesque mimicry that has characterized the black man since he was freed from bondage. Why cannot black show people learn that to be themselves when upon the stage were to amuse! So long as they ape their white brethren — whose efforts in the same direction have long ago been rendered stale — the colored people will not be distinguished successes on the stage.” The reporter finds the popular entertainment past its prime, stale, trite, unfunny, and racially demeaning. He is enchanted by the singing and musicality of the Darktown Swells, both male and female.

What sets the observation apart from other reviews of minstrel shows is not only the progressive insight but the suggestion that the popularity of white minstrel shows was waning.

In Geneva, as well as across the country, minstrelsy was the single-most popular form of live entertainment. Beginning in 1897, one of Geneva’s fire companies, the Hydrants, performed sold-out minstrel shows each year at the Smith Opera House and in Penn Yan, as they did on Feb. 13 and 14 in 1899. On March 21, the Al Field’s professional minstrel company was so popular that the........

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