Irish & Black Builders of the Big Top: American Circus/Carnival Workforce, 1845-1920

In the dusty fields and crowded city lots of America between the 1840s and 1920s, massive canvas tents rose from the ground seemingly overnight, transforming empty spaces into worlds of wonder. Behind this magic stood two communities whose contributions have often been overlooked: Irish immigrants and African Americans. Together, they formed the essential workforce that built, performed in, and sustained the American circus industry during its explosive growth and golden age. Their stories reveal both the harsh realities of racial and ethnic discrimination and the creative resilience that allowed these communities to shape American popular entertainment across nearly eight decades.

The Irish: From Famine Refugees to Canvasmen

The Great Migration and Labor Exclusion

Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland's Great Famine drove over 1.7 million Irish to American shores. These refugees arrived desperately poor, often having spent their last resources on passage across the Atlantic. Without capital to purchase farms or skills for specialized trades, Irish immigrants settled primarily in northeastern cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, where they took the most dangerous and poorly paid work available.

Irish workers faced intense discrimination. Nativist newspapers depicted them with ape-like features, and employers frequently posted "No Irish Need Apply" signs. As predominantly Catholic immigrants in a Protestant nation, they encountered religious prejudice alongside economic exploitation. Many established trade unions refused Irish membership, forcing them into transient industries that other workers avoided.

Building the Infrastructure of Entertainment

The circus industry emerged as a major employer of Irish labor during this period. Irish workers performed the backbreaking work of erecting the massive "Big Top" tents, earning them the name "canvasmen" or "roustabouts." The saying arose that "there was an Irishman buried under every tie" of America's expanding railroad network—and those same railroads carried traveling circuses across the continent, creating demand for Irish labor in both industries.

Working conditions were brutal. Circus employees faced danger or death on a daily basis, with limited legal protections. In response, Irish circus workers formed mutual aid societies to help with medical expenses and support one another—a tradition they brought from Ireland and adapted to their new circumstances. These organizations became crucial survival mechanisms in an industry that valued profits over worker safety.

Pathways to Performance and Management

Irish immigrants and their children found opportunities in circus performance that were generally denied to Black Americans. Because they were categorized as white—despite facing intense discrimination—Irish performers could transition into minstrel shows, variety acts, and eventually "respectable" performing roles and circus management positions.

This racial privilege, limited though it was, created a pathway for upward mobility. By the late 19th century, some Irish American families had established themselves in circus ownership and management, transforming from exploited laborers to industry leaders within a generation or two. This social climbing came at a cost, however: as Irish Americans gained acceptance into mainstream white society, many adopted the same prejudices against newer immigrant groups and African Americans that they themselves had once faced.

African Americans: Musical Innovation Under Exploitation

The Sideshow System

While Irish workers could eventually access the main tent and performing rings, African Americans faced rigid segregation within the circus industry well into the 20th century. From the 1840s through the 1920s, Black circus workers were relegated to three primary roles: manual laborers, sideshow "exhibits," or musicians in the segregated sideshow annex.

Circus management deliberately assigned Black workers to the most subservient positions to maintain racial hierarchy and avoid angering white employees. This practice mirrored broader patterns in American industry; in railroad companies, for example, white workers systematically barred Black employees from advancing beyond porter positions. The circus was no different.

Human Exhibitions and Exploitation

The sideshow represented one of the most degrading aspects of circus life for African Americans. P.T. Barnum pioneered this exploitation, beginning with Joice Heth in 1835. Heth, an elderly enslaved woman in her late seventies or early eighties, was purchased by Barnum and exhibited as the supposed 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. When she died in 1836, Barnum staged a public autopsy, charging fifty cents admission, and later admitted the entire story had been a fabrication.

This pattern continued throughout the century. William Henry Johnson was displayed as "Zip the Pinhead" and "The Missing Link," dressed in a fur suit and billed as a transitional form between humans and apes. The Muse brothers, Willie and George, were kidnapped as children from Roanoke, Virginia, between 1911 and 1914, told their mother had died, and exhibited as "Ecuadorian cannibals" or "men from Mars." They performed with Ringling Brothers for over a decade before their mother, Harriett Muse, saw them again and successfully sued the circus for $100,000.

Musical Pioneering in the Margins

Despite these constraints, African American musicians transformed the circus sideshow into a crucial incubator for American music. Black circus bands, barred from performing in the main tent, became the primary venue for developing and spreading ragtime and early jazz throughout the country.

These all-Black bands were often the most popular attraction outside the main tent. Musicians like Wilbur Sweatman joined P.G. Lowery's Concert Band, which toured with the Forepaugh and Sells Brothers Circus sideshow in 1902. Band members had to be skilled sight-readers and improvisers, playing arranged marches and popular songs while also following acts onstage with spontaneous musical accompaniment.

The circus sideshow annex bands contributed significantly to mainstreaming blues and jazz. In 1916, Elvis "Slim" Mason, stage manager and bass drummer for Professor James Wolfscale's 18-piece Black circus band with Barnum and Bailey, scored a major hit with "Walking the Dog" by Shelton Brooks. This dance sensation spread across American entertainment on both sides of the color line, inspiring subsequent "dance craze" hits that introduced jazz into American popular culture.

Resistance Through Independent Circuses

In response to exploitation and exclusion, some African Americans created their own circus companies. Ephraim Williams, born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1860 and raised in Wisconsin, became the first Black circus owner in American history. Starting as a porter and shoeshine worker at Briggs Hotel in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the early 1880s, Williams trained a black stallion to "solve" arithmetic problems by stomping its hoof. This act became popular in opera houses and lumberjack camps.

By the late 1880s, Williams established the first African American circus in Milwaukee, featuring an all-Black cast. Unlike contemporary white-owned circuses, Williams explicitly refused to incorporate minstrelsy into his shows, instead showcasing acrobatics, opera, comedy, and trained animal acts. His Great Northern Railroad Show, launched in 1901, toured the Midwest and South with over 75 performers.

Williams later acquired "Silas Green from New Orleans," a vaudeville show that provided steady employment for legendary performers like Bessie Smith. An 1897 newspaper identified him as "the only Negro circus owner in America," reporting that he owned 200 Arabian horses and employed 75 men. Williams styled himself "The Black P.T. Barnum," wearing top hats and tailored evening wear with a bright red vest—a powerful statement of dignity and success in an era when Black circus workers typically faced violence and relegation to the lowest positions.

Yet even Williams faced persistent danger. In 1913, The Crisis magazine documented violence against Black performers in Cleveland, Mississippi, where white attackers struck one of Williams's horses, causing it to bleed and fall. A four-year-old child performer was also attacked, and the majority-white audience refused to pay for tickets. Being a Black circus worker remained dangerous, especially in all-white communities that sometimes greeted performers with racial slurs, violence, and even lynching.

The Economics of Exploitation: Following the Money

Traveling circuses developed sophisticated strategies for extracting money from working-class communities, particularly Irish and African American laborers. Shows frequently followed the harvest cycle in the South and Midwest, timing their arrivals to coincide with payday for Black field hands and Irish construction workers who had just received their wages.

This economic predation created an ironic cycle: the very communities that built and performed in the circuses were also targeted as the primary paying audience. Workers who earned meager wages hauling canvas and playing in sideshow bands would then spend those wages to attend the show, enriching white circus owners while remaining in poverty themselves.

The racial wage gap further compounded this exploitation. Black workers consistently received lower pay than white workers for the same tasks. The 1892 circus train accident that killed several horses but spared the Black workers sleeping in the car revealed management's priorities. The show's manager rushed to the wreck in tears, crying: "My fourteen best horses killed and every one of those darkies saved!" A newspaper headline captured the era's brutal racism: "Horses Better Than Negroes."

Diverging Paths: Race, Privilege, and Mobility

While both Irish and African American workers faced exploitation in the circus industry, their experiences diverged significantly along racial lines. Irish workers, despite facing intense discrimination, possessed what scholars call "racial capital"—they were recognized as white, even if they were considered inferior whites. This classification, however contested, created opportunities for advancement that were systematically denied to Black workers.

Irish circus workers could move from manual labor into performance and eventually into management. Their children attended schools without the complete exclusion faced by Black children in many communities. Irish neighborhoods, while poor and overcrowded, were not subject to the same level of violent policing as Black communities. And crucially, Irish workers could eventually join the trade unions that had initially excluded them, while Black workers remained locked out.

By the late 19th century, as immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe increased, Irish Americans gained fuller acceptance into white American society. Unfortunately, this acceptance often came through adopting anti-Black racism and xenophobia toward new immigrant groups. Denis Kearney, an Irish immigrant from County Cork who became a labor leader, closed his speeches with the rallying cry: "Whatever happens, the Chinese must go"—directing against Chinese workers the same hatred that had once targeted the Irish.

For African Americans, no such pathway to acceptance existed. The color line remained rigid and enforced through both law and violence. Black circus performers who achieved international acclaim, like elephant trainer Ephraim Thompson, often had to leave the United States entirely to receive recognition for their talents. Thompson, born in Canada to parents who had fled slavery, became arguably the finest elephant trainer of his era but was barred from performing in the main tent of American circuses. Only in France, Germany, and England could he showcase his abilities without racial restrictions.

Lasting Cultural Contributions

Musical Heritage

The musical innovations of Black circus musicians profoundly shaped American culture. The circus sideshow served as a crucial testing ground and distribution network for ragtime and jazz. Traveling shows spread these musical forms across the country, introducing rural and small-town audiences to sounds that would eventually transform American and global music.

Ragtime, which originated in African American communities in the Mississippi Valley during the late 1800s, reached mainstream white audiences partly through circus performances. The syncopated rhythms and improvisational elements that characterized circus band music directly influenced the development of jazz. Many musicians who later became jazz legends, including Earl Hines, Bennie Moten, Walter Page, Ray Nance, Milt Hinton, Lionel Hampton, and Cab Calloway, received early training in circus bands or related touring shows.

Labor Organizing Traditions

Both Irish and African American circus workers developed sophisticated mutual aid networks that prefigured later labor organizing efforts. Unable to join mainstream trade unions, these communities created alternative support structures. Irish workers formed societies that provided medical care, death benefits, and strike support. Black workers established similar organizations, often through churches and fraternal societies.

These organizing traditions reflected broader patterns in American labor history, where excluded groups developed parallel institutions when denied access to existing ones. The skills and networks forged in these early mutual aid societies would later prove crucial to the industrial union movement of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Conclusion: Remembering the Hidden Builders

The American circus from the 1840s through the 1920s could not have existed without Irish and African American labor. Irish workers built the physical infrastructure—raising the massive tents, laying the rails, and performing the dangerous manual labor that made the shows possible. African American musicians created the soundtrack of American entertainment, pioneering ragtime and jazz despite being confined to sideshow annexes and subjected to brutal exploitation.

Their stories reveal both the cruelty and creativity of American history. The circus industry exploited racial and ethnic hierarchies to maximize profits, paying workers poorly, exposing them to danger, and in the case of African Americans, often treating them as exhibits rather than human beings. Yet within these oppressive structures, both communities found ways to resist, create, and build institutions that would outlast the circuses themselves.

The divergent experiences of these two communities also illuminate how racial categories shaped American opportunity. While Irish immigrants faced genuine discrimination and hardship, their whiteness—however contested—ultimately provided pathways to advancement that were categorically denied to African Americans. Understanding these differences is essential for grasping how racial capitalism operated in American entertainment and industry.

Today, when we think of the circus, we might imagine the spectacle under the big top, the daring acrobats, or the majestic elephants. But we should also remember the Irish canvasmen who raised those tents in the dark hours before dawn, the Black musicians whose innovations echo through every jazz club and concert hall in America, and pioneers like Ephraim Williams who refused to accept the limitations society imposed on them. These hidden builders deserve recognition not just for their labor, but for their resilience, creativity, and enduring contributions to American culture.

Search This Blog

Irish Cabal