In 1932, the students of the Lykens Valley Vocational School at Berrysburg, staged a black-face comedy to benefit the school’s Athletic Association. This appears to be the same production that previously was presented on this blog as performed by the students of the Berrysburg High School. The high school in Berrysburg was the valley’s vocational school and was not an “academic” high school in the same sense as other area high schools in 1932 which were found in Elizabethville, Lykens, Millersburg, etc.
The article describing the event appeared in the Elizabethville Echo, April 7, 1932:
SCHOOL BENEFIT SHOW APRIL 7-8 [1932]
Berrysburg, Pennsylvania — Students of the Lykens Valley Vocational School will stage a benefit show Thursday and Friday evenings, April 7th and 8th at 7:30 o’clock each evening.
The show has been arranged as a black-face comedy and dance revue with the Athletic Association receiving the proceeds. Tickets for children and adults are being sold for 15c and 25c respectively.
Black-face skits include “Eliza Rosewater‘s Divorce Case” and “That Famous Chicken Debate” with the “University of Africa and Booker Tea College” participating. The program also includes a comic monologue by Eugene Lentz and a humorous dialogue by Elvin Savidge and George Schaeffer, novelty dances and song specialties.
The cast for the presentation of the Rosewater divorce case includes Lee Dietrich, Eugene Snyder, Paul Latsha, Marlin Straub, Lester Hoover, Eugene Lentz, Robert Miller, William Witmer, Norwood Deibler, and Earl Hartman.
For previous blog post on this event, see:
News articles and other “memorabilia” will be presented on this blog to show how “black-face” was infused into the culture of the Lykens Valley area. Readers are invited to submit photos and recollections on how long this offensive “entertainment” lasted and what locals thought of it as part of the culture of the area.
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From Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.