Tag Archives: Kiwanis Club

Insensitive

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I was recently going through my Black Heritage files and came across a program for the Annual Kiwanis Club Minstrel Show. To my chagrin, my father-in-law, Tom Thurlow, Sr., was the Interlocutor. This meant he was the straight man for four Kiwanians in blackface performing as dim-witted buffoons. Most of the men listed in the program were well known men in the community. My father-in-law had high standards of behavior but he, like the other Kiwanians, seemed to be blind to the insensitivity of black-face performances.

An early form of theater, Minstrel Shows, began in New York with white performers who blacken their faces and mimicked enslaved Africans on Southern Plantations.

I was familiar with the term Jim Crow of “Jim Crow Laws” but today it is easier to go deeper with the Internet.

After the years of Reconstruction following the Civil War ended in 1877, it did not take southerners long to figure out how to create a caste system by keeping the races separate. The laws to enforce the separation were called “Jim Crow.”

 I was not aware Jim Crow was a Minstrel Show character created by Thomas Dartmouth Rice.

In 1962 the Stuart High School was located on East Ocean Boulevard and in later years was the location of School Board meetings.
This particular Kiwanis Minstrel Show took place in 1962, the year Tom Thurlow. Jr/ and I were married.

Since I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, during the era of segregation and Jim Crow, I never had Black friends. It was not until I started writing books that I developed friendships with members of the Christie family, the family of Retha Rae Meues, and Harvey Poole of Belle Glade.  I still did not have a close personal friend.

Charlene Thompson, who grew up in Jensen’s “Tick Ridge,” contacted me because she knew my book, Jensen and Eden, included this neighborhood. She visited and we became close friends.

Charlene came for a visit almost every Sunday afternoon for about three years.

Charlene is a history buff like I am. She is an excellent researcher and genealogist. She knows me better than almost anyone else and having her as a friend has been wonderful.

When I asked her if she thought publishing a blog on the Kiwanis Club’s Minstrel Shows and the insensitivity of community leaders to the feelings of the Black community, she agreed the story would be an important reminder.

The Kiwanis Club of Stuart soon became aware of their insensitivity. My father-in-law received a letter of complaint from a white woman who said the club should be “ashamed.” Soon they realized the truth of the accusation.