Blackface and Irishface
in Eugene O'Neill's
The Emperor Jones

Abstract

Written in 1920, The Emperor Jones is a modernist, experimental play about an African American man, Brutus Jones, who is a former Pullman porter that went to jail after killing a man in the United States. Upon his escape, he tricks an uncolonized tribe on an island in the West Indies into believing he is a powerful immortal who should be their leader. When Jones learns that the natives have revolted, he disappears into the forest to make his escape. There, he is tormented by visions, including grublike monsters, a Black man he killed back in the United States, a chain gang of Black convicts, a slave auction, and a Congo witch doctor accompanied by a crocodile. Finally, the natives find him and kill him with a silver bullet, which he had claimed was the only thing that could strike him down.

This play is significant when viewed alongside the context of Ireland’s political upheavals at this time. Northern Ireland was partitioned in 1921 by the United Kingdom, creating a divide between the British-occupied Northern Ireland and the independent southern Republic of Ireland. The British colonization and occupation of the Irish people resulted in years of conflict, creating a long, complicated relationship. Many Irish lived in poverty during this time, and experienced discrimination, such as that exemplified by “No Irish Need Apply” signs in the US and Britain. They faced this both in the 1920s and even well before. Because of this history of discrimination, the Irish may have seen themselves in The Emperor Jones, especially in Brutus Jones’s struggle to achieve power as a Black emperor in an uncolonized island.

In my role as a research apprentice, I was tasked with trying to determine via research whether the casting of Irish actors as Black characters in Jones utilized blackface, used Black characters, or devised other ways for the characters to be seen as both black and Irish. The specific productions we looked at are from 1927, 1929, 1932, and 1942. We hypothesized that Rutherford Mayne, the Irish actor who performed Brutus Jones in blackface, could have been referencing the practice of  “sooting up,” from Irish mumming festivals, which is what Dr. Johnson calls "irishface", a term she coined to describe how Irish productions sought to create synergies between Blackness and Irishness. 

Using evidence sourced from scholarly research databases, newspaper archives, and archived press clippings and magazines, the evidence suggests that Brutus Jones was meant to be seen as both a character in blackface and an Irish man, and that this use of irishface demonstrated the connections between Irishness and Blackness. Given the way these productions tied in Irish culture, as well as the nuanced history of skin darkening in Ireland and irishface in the Americas, it is true that the Irish were using this play to connect with their own hardships. The oppression of the Irish people has of course not been on the same scale as that of Black people, but they also faced discrimination related to their ethnicity during this time. So, through these specific productions of The Emperor Jones, the Irish identified themselves with the struggles of Black people.