ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

Amateur puppetry continued to be a place of contradictions. Munger’s Little
Black Sambo deepened the cultural connection to, albeit imagined, African American life
by introducing music she attributes to black tradition. Her choice of music, “I’ve Been
Workin’ on the Railroad,” was not the most innovative selection nor even necessarily
authentic African American music. 248 However, other puppeteers, who used her
published text, might have chosen an authentically African American musical
background.
Efforts to advance the artistic quality of local blackface puppetry were significant
but not representative of the majority of productions. Marjorie Batchelder’s collection at
the University of New Mexico preserves dozens of puppet plays, many of which feature
blackface characters. Many are either literally or essentially Jim Crow puppets derived
from the Punch and Judy tradition. James Juvenal Hayes’s blackface object provides a
useful reference. Hayes was a major figure in the Junior Leagues, a division of the
Puppeteers of America that arranged projects for such organizations as community
groups for underprivileged children and hospitals. His Punch and Judy (1927) script
included a blackface character named “Rastus” (see figure 49). Hayes took the dialect
and basic action of the Shallaballa scenes in pre-1930s Punch and Judy and depicted it as
a composite of blackface puppet traditions. McPharlin’s illustration of the object
suggests a combination of Sambo’s child-like vestige and Uncle Tom’s dress. The
object’s lines are in the faux-African speech of Shallaballa: “Me Master […] gwine hab
248 Having explored a number of accounts, I have determined that the author of “I’ve Been
Workin’ on the Railroad” has been lost to history. Thus, it is impossible to determine if this song is from
the African American musical tradition.
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