Humor, Minstrelsy, and the Representation of African Americans in Macon's Georgia Telegraph and Georgia Citizen, 1855–1860

Abstract

This article considers the role of humor in the representation of Black people, particularly African Americans, in two of Macon, Georgia’s newspapers, the Georgia Telegraph and the Georgia Citizen, in the six years before the Civil War. As the minstrel show gained popularity in the South, newspaper jokes often took on its humor, thus perpetuating the racist tropes of Black people as ignorant and childlike. Importantly, the use of a perceived African American dialect underscored the negative attributes linked to these stereotypes.1 These jokes have been understudied by historians, especially in relation to minstrelsy, where studies have focused on the theater, lithographs