Irish & Black Builders of the Big Top: American Circus/Carnival Workforce, 1845-1920
American Labor History · 1845 – 1920
Under the Big Top: The Irish & Black Hands That Built the American Circus
Before the spotlights, the sawdust, and the roar of the crowds — there were workers. Documented, underpaid, essential. This is their record.
Between 1845 and 1920, Irish immigrants and African Americans formed the core workforce that built and operated the American circus industry. Their labor raised the tents, their music shaped American sound, and their innovation built institutions that outlasted every attempt to erase their names from the record.
The Irish Roustabout: Famine Flight to the Sawdust Ring
When the Great Famine drove approximately 1.7 million Irish to American shores between 1845 and 1852, most landed in the industrial northeast — Boston, New York, Philadelphia — desperate for any labor that paid. They entered construction, transportation, and the rapidly expanding entertainment economy. The circus, then growing into a continental industry, absorbed them in large numbers.
Irish workers became the backbone of the canvas crews — the roustabouts and canvasmen responsible for raising and striking the enormous circus tents that could hold thousands of spectators. These were not small jobs. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey operation alone traveled on 92 railcars by the 1910s, with 335 horses and 26 elephants to manage. The muscle that made that machine move was largely Irish.
Photographic records from the State Archives of Florida confirm circus roustabouts as a distinct, documented labor class responsible for "the heavy labor of setting up and taking down the tents as well as moving the equipment" — the invisible workforce behind every sold-out performance.
From Canvas Crews to Ownership
The structural position of Irish workers within American racial classification gave them pathways unavailable to Black workers. Despite facing "No Irish Need Apply" discrimination and significant nativist hostility, Irish immigrants were classified as white — giving them access to performance roles, management positions, and eventually ownership tracks that were systematically barred to African Americans regardless of skill or tenure.
By the late 19th century, Irish-American families had moved into circus ownership. The Ringling Brothers — sons of German-born August Rungeling who simplified the family name — built the largest circus empire in American history, founding in Baraboo, Wisconsin in 1884 and eventually acquiring Barnum & Bailey in 1907. The O'Brien circus family and other Irish-descended operations controlled major touring shows by 1900. Irish workers formed mutual aid societies along the way — organizational structures transplanted from Irish tradition — that pooled resources for medical expenses and financial emergencies.
The circus was a transformative place for reinvention — where young men traveled the world as roustabouts, liberated from the roles assigned by society.
American Experience: The Circus — PBS DocumentaryThe Dual Railroad Economy
Irish circus workers occupied a strategically powerful position in the dual economy that powered the industry. The same workers who built railroad infrastructure — the tracks that circuses required for continental touring — were then recruited by the circus companies themselves. They built the roads and then rode them. By the early 20th century, the Ringling operation traveled on nearly 100 railcars carrying over 1,000 employees. The Irish labor that laid those rails had made that scale possible.
African American Labor: Segregated but Indispensable
Black circus workers occupied a fundamentally different structural position. Documented by historian Micah Childress in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2016), African American workers in the circus were confined to manual labor, sideshow exhibitions, and musician roles — receiving lower wages than white workers performing identical tasks. The National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian Institution) confirms: "During the 19th and early to mid-20th centuries, African Americans were unlikely to get jobs as performers in the circus unless it was as part of the side show."
Black workers were primarily employed as cooks, waiters, stable boys, and later as musicians. "They were unable to escape the racism or informal segregation of the era," Childress documents. They received lower pay than white counterparts performing the same work, and were excluded from union membership — forcing them to form mutual aid societies through churches and fraternal organizations instead.
The Sideshow Exhibition Record
The documented history of Black circus presence begins with a painful record. In 1835, P.T. Barnum purchased Joice Heth — an enslaved woman in her late seventies or early eighties — from her enslaver in Kentucky, exhibiting her in museums as the 161-year-old nurse to George Washington. After her death in 1836, Barnum staged a public autopsy charging fifty cents admission. He later admitted fabricating the story entirely. This was, as the Smithsonian records, "Barnum's first foray into sideshows, museums, and circuses."
Subsequent documented cases compound the record. William Henry Johnson — known as "Zip the Pinhead" — was exhibited by Barnum from the 1860s through 1926, dressed in a fur suit and billed as "The Missing Link." The Muse Brothers, Willie and George, were kidnapped by Ringling Brothers circus sometime between 1911 and 1914, displayed as "Ecuadorian cannibals" — children who were told their mother had died to prevent them asking for her. They were not reunited with their mother Harriet Muse until 1927, when she located them in Roanoke and successfully sued Ringling Brothers for $100,000.
Violence against Black circus workers was documented in real time. In 1913, The Crisis recorded an incident in Cleveland, Mississippi, where members of Ephraim Williams's company were attacked — a horse was struck until it bled and fell, and a four-year-old child performer was assaulted. The predominantly white audience refused to pay admission.
A Documented Timeline of Presence
P.T. Barnum introduces Joice Heth — the first documented African American in the American circus exhibition economy.
William Henry Johnson ("Zip the Pinhead") begins six decades of documented circus performance with Barnum's shows.
Ephraim Williams founds the first African American circus in Milwaukee — all-Black cast, no minstrelsy, programming includes acrobatics, opera, and trained animal acts.
Newspaper records confirm Williams owns 200 Arabian horses and employs 75 workers.
Williams launches the Great Northern Railroad Show, touring Midwest and South with 75+ performers. P.G. Lowery's Concert Band tours with Forepaugh and Sells Brothers — a young Wilbur Sweatman is in the band.
Willie and George Muse are kidnapped, exhibited as "Ecuadorian cannibals" — their mother Harriet sues Ringling Brothers in 1927 and wins $100,000.
The Crisis documents racially motivated violence against Black circus workers in Mississippi.
The Sound That Escaped the Sideshow: Ragtime, Jazz & the Circus Band Network
What is perhaps least known — and most significant — is what happened musically inside those sideshow annexes. Restricted from the main tent, confined to the margins of the circus economy, Black musicians transformed those margins into one of the most consequential music distribution networks in American history.
Scholars have noted that without the established Black theater and entertainment network already in place by 1900, the whole course of jazz history would have been altered massively. The circus sideshow band was a central node in that network — providing steady employment, technical training, improvisational development, and a touring infrastructure that carried new musical forms to rural and small-town audiences who had never heard them.
Ragtime historians confirm that turn-of-the-century African American traveling acts were havens for musicians, magicians, aerialists, and jugglers. Black circus employment created educational opportunities for young ragtime and jazz performers that enhanced their mobility for generations.
Key Documented Musicians
Toured with Forepaugh and Sells Brothers Circus from 1902. Documented as one of the premier Black circus bands of the era. Lowery's band served as the training ground for Wilbur Sweatman — who went on to become the first African American to record jazz. The band required advanced sight-reading skills and improvisational ability, performing arranged marches, popular songs, and spontaneous accompaniment for various acts.
Born in Brunswick, Missouri. His professional career began as a teenager in the late 1890s touring with circus bands — first Professor Clark Smith's Band, then P.G. Lowery's Band. By 1901, he was the youngest orchestra leader in America. He made what is believed to be the first-ever recording of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1903. He is widely considered the first African American to record jazz. Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Cozy Cole all passed through his band.
Performed with Barnum and Bailey. His stage manager and bass drummer, Elvis "Slim" Mason, scored a national hit in 1916 with "Walking the Dog" by Shelton Brooks — a dance that spread across American entertainment venues. The 18-piece formation represented the sophisticated scale Black circus musicians operated at even while confined to sideshow annexes.
The downstream impact is documented: musicians who received early training in circus and touring show environments include Earl Hines, Bennie Moten, Walter Page, Ray Nance, Milt Hinton, Lionel Hampton, and Cab Calloway. The circus sideshow didn't just provide employment — it provided a conservatory.
Ephraim Williams: The Black P.T. Barnum
The Wisconsin Historical Society documents the biography of Ephraim Williams (1860–1920s) — the first Black circus owner in American history, and one of the most remarkable entrepreneurial stories of the Gilded Age. Born in Nashville and raised in Wisconsin, Williams began as a porter and shoeshine worker at Briggs Hotel in Appleton, Wisconsin in the early 1880s.
His route into showbusiness was self-made: he trained a black stallion to perform arithmetic by hoof-stomping and toured the act through opera houses and lumber camps. By the late 1880s, he had built enough capital and reputation to establish the first African American circus in Milwaukee — an all-Black cast company that programmed acrobatics, opera performances, comedy, and trained animal acts. He deliberately excluded minstrelsy from his programming in a period when nearly all Black entertainment was expected to include it.
Williams styled himself "The Black P.T. Barnum," performing in top hats, tailored evening wear, and distinctive red vests. An 1897 newspaper confirmed he owned 200 Arabian horses and employed 75 workers.
Wisconsin Historical Society Biographical RecordHis Great Northern Railroad Show, launched in 1901, toured the Midwest and South with more than 75 performers. He later acquired "Silas Green from New Orleans," a vaudeville show that employed performers including Bessie Smith. He operated under the same hostile conditions that defined the era for Black business owners — yet he built, expanded, and kept building.
Internationally, the pattern repeated: Ephraim Thompson — described by contemporaries as arguably the finest elephant trainer of his era — left the United States entirely to perform in France, Germany, and England, where racial restrictions on his craft were less absolute.
Two Workforces, One Industry
Both Irish and Black workers were essential to the American circus. Both faced discrimination. Both developed parallel mutual aid institutions when excluded from mainstream trade unions. But the structural conditions they operated within were categorically different — and that difference explains the divergence in their outcomes.
Irish Workers
Classified as white despite significant discrimination. Pathway existed into performance, management, and eventually ownership roles.
Could eventually access trade unions initially closed to them.
Achieved fuller integration into white American society by late 19th century.
Discrimination faced was real — but was not enforced by law or systematic violence in the same way.
Black Workers
Faced rigid racial segregation enforced by law and documented violence. Excluded from main tent performance and management regardless of skill or tenure.
No pathway to racial reclassification existed — no equivalent of "becoming white."
Created independent operations when possible (Williams, Thompson) but faced persistent violence, theft of wages, and in documented cases, kidnapping.
Musical and cultural innovations they created were frequently absorbed by the mainstream industry without credit or compensation.
Circus companies timed their routes to coincide with harvest cycles and paydays in the South and Midwest — arriving when Black field hands and Irish construction workers received wages. Workers who built and performed in shows then spent those earnings attending them. The circular economy enriched owners while maintaining worker poverty across racial lines, even as the conditions of that poverty were enforced differently for each group.
The American circus was not built by glamour. It was built by labor — Irish immigrants who crossed an ocean with nothing and learned to raise tents in the dark, and African American workers who were denied the main stage but invented the music that would eventually fill every stage in America. The Smithsonian has documented it. The historical journals have recorded it. The Wisconsin Historical Society has preserved the biographies. This is not disputed history — it is simply history that has not yet received the attention it is owed.
Primary & Scholarly Sources
- National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian), "African Americans & The Circus," 2021
- Wisconsin Historical Society, "Ephraim Williams" biographical entry
- Library of Congress, "Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History: Irish"
- Childress, Micah, "Life Beyond the Big Top: African American and Female Circusfolk, 1860–1920," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2016)
- Abbott, Lynn and Doug Seroff, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, 'Coon Songs,' and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz, University Press of Mississippi, 2007
- Berresford, Mark, That's Got 'Em! The Life and Music of Wilbur C. Sweatman, University Press of Mississippi
- Dolan, Jay P., The Irish Americans: A History, Bloomsbury Press, 2008
- JSTOR Daily, "Race and Gender Under the Big Top," citing Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
- Florida Memory / State Archives of Florida — photographic documentation of roustabout labor, Ringling Bros., 1941
- Michigan State University Dissertation Archive, "Under One Big Tent: American Indians, African Americans and the Circus World of Nineteenth-Century America"
- American Experience: The Circus, PBS / WGBH, directed Sharon Grimberg
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