The Wisdom of a Buffoon

Ever since the night the Ku Klux Klan lynched his father and his mother disappeared during the confusion, 15-year-old Bartholomew Buford had been fending for himself. At first he traveled the Jim Crow South taking any odd job he could find. But after a while he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and join a minstrel show. Like his father before him, the slight-built boy, B. B. as he was called, was a natural when it came to singing, tap dance shuffling and acting like a lazy ignorant buffoon.

After all, he'd watched his father perform in black face since he was a small tike and had begun to imitate him at an early age. He'd also heard all of his father's tales--of tragedy and reward-about his past travels and adventures. The one story he told most often was about when he'd initially begun working the minstrel circuit. Hired by a so-called medicine man, he joined a four-man and two women troupe of blacks. Their antics attracted customers to buy the sleazy man's snake-oil products, which had absolutely no medicinal value. That first touring job, however, ended when an angry mob tarred and feathered the medicine man and ran him out of town.

"The rest of us were lucky to get out of there with our skin intact." His father laughed with each retelling.

As B. B. was soon to experience himself, minstrel shows were always breaking up for one reason or another. Therefore, B. B. often found himself looking for a new traveling show to join or more odd jobs to feed himself. But when the spring of 1920 rolled around, two years after he'd been on his own, he teamed up with Willie Packer near Tupelo, Mississippi. Although the two worked alone, they drew large crowds in all of the small towns where they performed, billing themselves as Jam and Molasses.