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George Primrose, promotional card, 1880s |
In my hometown of Mount Vernon, New York, Primrose Avenue ran less than a mile between two main streets. Yet to a child, it seemed to go on forever, uphill and down dale.
Since we walked and biked everywhere until we got our drivers licenses, the streetscape etched itself into our youth.
Passing by, day after day, trudging or whizzing along, one couldn’t help noticing the graffiti on a traffic box, the unruly shrubs that overran a particular corner, and the tree roots pushing up sidewalk slates.
I don’t remember seeing primroses but surely they had bloomed 90 years earlier . . . small vibrant flowers scattered beneath the trees that shaded Mount Vernon’s undeveloped tracts.
Of course that’s why the street was called Primrose Avenue. And the grassy triangle where the terrain dipped was Primrose Park.
But the time has come to make a correction. The name has nothing to do with flowers.
George H. Primrose, an entertainer who made his fortune as a Blackface minstrel, arrived in Mount Vernon around 1885. Before long, he built a “showplace mansion” for himself, his wife Emma, his brother Albert, and a terrier named Baby.
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Primrose Avenue, circa 1900 |
In 1959, an old-timer watched from across the street as the big house was razed to make room for a parking lot.
He recalled Primrose as an “end man,” the comic who stands at the end of a row of performers at a Blackface minstrel show. The end man banters with the master of ceremonies, whose serious manner contrasts with the insulting racial stereotypes that the audience finds uproarious.
Primrose, his role central to the show, continually refined his act. He was alert to “modern trends in minstrelsy,” according to a newspaper report.
Despite the demolition of his mansion, Primrose left an imprint on Mount Vernon. While he toured widely, he found time to buy land on the north side of the city where he built speculative homes with turrets, broad lawns, and wraparound porches. They still stand.
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Scientific American published special editions on architecture and building. (1893) |
By now no one recalls Primrose’s many appearances at the local Proctor’s Theater, which opened in 1914. How delightful to stroll along the promenades and enjoy climate control that was “cool and comfortable as an ocean breeze.”
Before each show, white actors darkened their skin with shoe polish or burnt cork and dressed in outlandish costumes. They performed as duos or in troupes that drew crowds through the Antebellum Era, the Civil War, and into the 1920s.
White audiences howled with laughter at skits, songs, and monologues that ridiculed Black life and culture. When vaudeville became popular in the late nineteenth century, Blackface performers also appeared on the bill. These variety shows catered to working-class whites, but racist entertainment also showed up in high and mighty places.
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Poster for Primrose & Dockstader, 1880s |
During the Theodore Roosevelt administration (1901-1909), the White House welcomed Mary L. Leech, a singer of “coon songs” including “You’se Just a Little Nigger, Still You’se Mine All Mine.”
George H. Primrose, a Canadian born in 1852, came on the scene in Buffalo as a circus performer. In 1871, he turned to Blackface.
For much of his career, Primrose toured with William H. West. Their troupe, Primrose & West, celebrated its 25th anniversary at Madison Square Garden in 1896. Mount Vernon residents must have been excited that one section of prime seats was set aside for them.
During the show, Primrose & West pleased the old-timers with a clog dance from their early days and plenty of Blackface acts.
Just a few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court would establish the “separate but equal” doctrine in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
Racism was continuing at a nice clip.
As an up-and-coming city, Mount Vernon naturally would want to be in the vanguard, so it’s not surprising that a Blackface minstrel got to be the namesake of an avenue and park.
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George H. Primrose (1852-1919) |