Black Autonomy and White Entitlement

P.T Barnum put on a performance as an owner of enslaved individuals, white Americans poked at Black Africans behind bars in zoos, and children pulled on the dreadlocks of two kidnapped men: for many Americans, it was the greatest form of entertainment. American “freak shows” were sites of racism, re-enactment of enslavement dynamics, and white entitlement. Black individuals who were enfreaked in nineteenth and early twentieth century American sideshows were forced into performances of white superiority and Black inferiority. These sideshows were not merely entertainment: they were vessels to construct social ideas of white ownership of Black individuals and audiences in post-emancipation America. Figures like Joice Heth, Ota Benga, the Batwa people, and George and Willie Muse reveal that sideshows were utilized to uphold a racialized American identity. This paper will argue that the “freak show” acted as a staged performance of race that enabled white control over Black bodies. Additionally, this paper argues that these mistreatments on the sideshow stage were embodied dimensions of the social construction of racial hierarchy in America.