Burnt Cork and Liquor were once the two main accessories
for the Comics. Or at least those are the ones that have
stuck in my memory from childhood.
My impression then was that all you needed were
some like minded friends, raggedy old clothes
and some burnt cork to join in the most amazing
outburst of joy and mayhem, I had never before imagined.

Blackface and Minstrel Show Antics are Pretty Damn Offensive and it is an Embarrassment that they were Such a Large part of this Parade for So Many Years

Here's the point of view of an African American
activist from Philadelphia
He's not happy at all with the Mummers.
I must admit that he has some points.

For the education of the young or ignorant. Here is a classic example of a blackface minstrel. A white man with cork blackened face and lips exaggerated with light colored greasepaint. He has white gloves and is playing a banjo.  A laughable combination of the pitifully stupid and hateful, that was a huge part of American entertainment, from the mid 1800's to the 1930's. The first major sound film was The Jazz Singer (1927) that starred Al Jolson as a blackface minstrel singer. That's who Jerry Lewis is imitating every year in the Telethon when he sings "Mammy". What is he thinking! I've searched the web high and low for some examples of mummers in blackface but came up empty-handed.

That being said, when I first noticed people blackening their face with cork as a child, I naively did not associate it with a mockery of African Americans. ("Colored people" was the usual not trying to be offensive phrase in my Italian American family.) My contact with black folks was zero at the time as there were none in my South Philly neighborhood, and theTV was still lilly white.  I just saw it as a cheap way to change your identity and go wild. It did not even enter my consciousness that these ragged maniac were supposed to be "Negro" (the pc term of the era).
I just saw it as a wilder adult version of my favorite holiday, Halloween.

My first up-close encounter with the up all night comics probably wasn't until maybe 1961 when I was twelve years old. This was just 3 years before the 1964 ban on blackface. Prior to that I am sure that my mother's take on the Comics was that they were a disreputable bunch, and she would have steered me away from going to the parade until the refined excess of the Fancies and the String Bands took over Broad Street in the afternoon. I knew that some folks definitely stayed up all night on New Years Eve. I could hear them through my bedroom window singin and banging or blowing on god knows what and roaming the streets of my neighborhood all night. But I had been sheltered from any close encounters with the noisemakers until the morning I went by myself to Broad Street and Snyder Ave. The chaos, exuberance, joy and touch of danger I felt from seeing that throng of Elemental Anarchists is still strong in my memory. And it is probably that memory that is causing me to write these pages right now.

Back then the Comics could interact much more closely with the crowd. Audience members were even subject to getting their faces blackened by the passing comics who would pat their faces with fingers covered in burnt cork. I stood far enough away from the action that I avoided getting my face blackened, but I do remember seeing many people who had not been so cautious, walking home with black finger
smudges on their cheeks.
This doesn't happen any more as far as I can tell.

Life goes on....

Today's commercial equivalent is the obnoxious silly string in a can that is sold by vendors to the parade audience. Broad Street is left littered by the resultant Multicolored Mess.*

Life goes on....

*warning mess simulated by computer trickery Click here for a real mess