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Cover art for the week of 8/14/14 (87319)
Cover art for the week of 8/14/14

Out in the Windy City, there’s a flamboyant African American magician who calls himself “The Spellbinder.”

His real name is Walter King, and he’s been a professional illusionist since the 1980s. In one of his videos on YouTube, he performs while dressed in a blood-red costume and wide-brimmed hat. King also waves a cane instead of a magic wand. It’s an outfit that may be more designed for a Chicago hustler, not your prototypical magician. But that’s King’s usual get up—vibrant colors, flashy costumes and he combines it with distinctive, choreographed dance routines.

In the video, as music rumbles through two large speakers—a blend of Hip Hop, Jazz, and 80’s Funk—King starts popping and locking: a form of dance popular in the 1970s. Next, he opens his hand and three doves appear out of thin air. The audience, naturally, cheers for more. The birds fly in circles above King’s head forming a halo of flapping wings. It’s the type of performance that can’t be duplicated by just any magician; it has to be done by someone with that extra something James Brown once called “soul.”

“I call it magic swagger,” says Kendrick “Ice” McDonald, the newly appointed national president of the Society of American Magicians. “We put our own personality in our routines,” he explains adding, “I occasionally use Gospel music when I perform. I’ve seen Black magicians who use Jazz. I know of a young man who uses Hip Hop during his performances. Being on the international stage, I use music and incorporate elements from whatever country I’m in. I try to relate to the culture of my audience.”

Fusing entertainment and magic began in the early 1800s. The Civil War brought the end of slavery and resulted in amendments to the United States Constitution that were intended to guarantee equal rights to Blacks. As a result, African Americans were able to participate in popular tours and performing shows, according to the book “Conjure Times (2001).”

The book also said one of these forms of entertainment was minstrelsy. This American contribution to the history of entertainment was patterned after slave performances on Southern plantations. Every plantation of any size had its talented slave dancers, and comedians, who performed for visitors and during festivals.

A minstrel show consisted of three acts. The first was typically a comedy routine. The second, called the “olio,” offered a variety of performances from songs and dances to magic and ventriloquism. The third act, called the “after piece” usually featured several reenactments of popular plays and operas. More often than not, Blacks who participated in these minstrel shows learned their skills by serving as assistants to White magicians, notes “Conjure Times.” It was also common for Negro performers to wear blackface makeup just as the White minstrels did.

History reveals that Blacks have demonstrated the highest quality of showmanship in most facets of entertainment. However, King says he was once criticized for being “too flamboyant” on stage. He agrees with the idea that Black magicians have a unique presence; but he explained that many promoters are looking for White acts.

“My Black audiences are more interested in being entertained than seeing a magic trick,” King asserts. “When I first started, many people (Whites) criticized my style and told me that it wasn’t universal; they described it as being ‘too urban.’ They were really just saying it was too Black.”

He continued, “I was told (by White promoters) that I wouldn’t be accepted. I was encouraged to go a classical route.”

This meant performing generic magic tricks and leaving out his usual dancing and cultural humor.

“But it wasn’t enjoyable. It didn’t feel natural,” remembers King after trying that approach.

The average magic routine consists of generic sleight of hand tricks, but there is little room for individuality and personal panache, says 18-year-old Jibrizy—also a native of Chicago—who performs on city streets. Gangly and soft-spoken, Jibrizy has successfully avoided the trappings of teenage vanity. He wears a simple Afro—always neat and perfectly coifed. His style of dress, deliberately understated, sends the message “don’t watch me, watch my magic.” In his YouTube video, Jibrizy bounces around his school campus and provides entertainment for other students—leaving some speechless, and the rest oohing and ahhing and begging for more. Using everyday items (rubber bands, ink pens, dollar bills, etc.), his routine combines three elements: flair, suspense, and clever trickery.

“White magicians have a great deal of skill, but their performances are usually very straightforward and linear,” he explained. “There’s a loss of soul and flavor (when you take the traditional route). I got a chance to watch the Spellbinder in person, and his show brings more to the table hands down. It was like I was being sucked into a magical soul train,” he added laughing.

Although Black illusionists have reached the same skill levels as their White counterparts, because of slavery and, later, racial segregation and discrimination, few African Americans have ever been able to earn a living as magicians, noted “Conjure Times.” The number who have succeeded are even fewer and rarer.

“Corporate America and agents think they can’t sell a Black magician,” says Diamond Cephas, one half of the husband-and-wife magic duo Victor and Diamond. The award-winning couple delivers awe-inspiring performances around the world, and they were once voted the best act for television by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

“Instead of looking at the magic and entertainment value, they look at skin tone,” Diamond explained.

She adds, “We run into this problem about 70 percent of the time. The only people who hire us are forward thinkers; they’re usually 50 and younger. The older promoters can’t get over their prejudice to give us a chance. They are intimated by us. We’ve had instances where they (promoters) were debating on having a White magician perform instead of us. Normally they would choose White; but when he didn’t work out they would come back to us and say ‘I wish I would have hired you.’ We’re just as good as they are, and in many cases we were better, but it’s always a race thing,” says Diamond, who might be the world’s only Black female magician. “I don’t know of any others,” she adds.

“Women are generally encouraged to be assistants,” she went on to explain. “It would be strange for a female magician to have a male assistant; and if the assistant were female, the issue of lesbianism would come into play. It’s also a male-dominated profession. Any woman—especially a Black woman—would have to be an exceptionally skilled performer to even be considered for a job.”

She added, “Working magicians also travel constantly. It would be extremely challenging to raise children under these circumstances.”

The earliest known American illusionist was reportedly of African descent, according to “Conjure Times.” Richard Potter, born to a slave mother and a wealthy English slave owner, crafted his legacy after being taught magic by a Scottish ventriloquist and magician. Thirteen years after Potter’s death in 1848, a slave named Henry Brown managed to escape to the North by being shipped in a wooden box. He became famous as Henry “Box” Brown and later gained acclaim as a professional magician.

Black Herman, a self-proclaimed mind reader, fortune teller and master escape artist, was perhaps the most successful African American magician of his time. He turned his fame as a mentalist into a thriving family business, publishing books, selling a health tonic and even marketing a line of beauty products.

In the 1920s, he reached unparalleled fame in the Midwest and later migrated east where he set up shop in Harlem, N.Y. He performed regularly at Marcus Garvey’s Liberty Hall—the headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Herman was also a practitioner of voodoo and other forms of the occult. Much of his fortune-telling business focused on providing lucky numbers to his gambling clients, many of whom were poor Blacks, notes “Conjure Times,” which also described a legend surrounding Herman.

According to the legend, two thugs who worked for the top numbers controllers in Harlem arrived at Herman’s home one day to threaten him with bodily harm unless he stopped giving out what were turning out to be winning combinations. Herman used the occasion to frighten the gangsters.

Ushering the men into his special voodoo chamber, Herman used all the tricks in his repertoire to scare the pants off his guests. He even called on voodoo spirits to curse them.

His assistant also gained entry to the hotel rooms where the gang resided. He bribed one of the hotel maids to allow him to rig the shower head in one of the gangster’s bathrooms so that it would dispense red paint. The first person to shower in that bathroom suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution.

In recent history, African American magicians have not been as successful at building wealth compared to Black Herman’s legacy. Cephas, the Las Vegas performer who with his wife Diamond, has practiced magic for 33 years, says their appearance used to prevent them from being booked for shows.

“We changed our image to be less intimidating,” he explained candidly. “We used to wear red on stage; but the color was too powerful. I used to wear an Afro, and they told me to cut it. When I did, things immediately changed. We started getting a higher caliber of jobs for longer lengths of time; our earning potential changed dramatically.”

“In the beginning, we might’ve been too Black,” he continued, “So instead of being defiant we made the necessary changes. We don’t regret doing it, because it changed our careers for the better.”

According to “Conjure Times,” “during the years when Black entertainers were barred from White stages, it was far more common for Black magicians to pretend not to be Black. They accomplished this by claiming to be from a foreign land. This created opportunities for Black magicians to masquerade as ‘Hindus’ and other exotic characters. They found that by posing as Hindus they could enjoy far greater opportunities in the entertainment field. White agents would book them into theaters that would normally be closed to Blacks. Also, no matter how dark their skin, if they could claim convincingly that they were foreigners, most segregation laws and customs in the United States did not apply to them. Black magicians posed as Hindus well into the 20th century.”

Although many of his peers may disagree, famed magician Jack Goldfinger denies any existence of racism in the world of magic. His perspective, no doubt, stems from his years of success as one of the world’s most celebrated illusionists. In 2010, he was made the director of entertainment at The Magic Castle in Hollywood—a coveted position for any magician.

“I haven’t seen it, haven’t experienced it and have been doing it (magic) for [more than] 50 years,” he explained. “Being a magician is a calling. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black, White Asian, male, female or whatever.”

He added, “If a magician says he experienced discrimination or racism, he probably needs to look deeper. He needs to find out where it happened, when it happened, and why it happened. I don’t use the race card.”

As a young kid, Goldfinger says his family and friends warned him that magic was a “White man’s profession.”

“I’m happy to say they were wrong,” he told a reporter for Ebony magazine in 1977. “I didn’t find a color barrier in professional magic; what I found was a talent barrier. You can’t get anywhere fast in magic if your act isn’t smooth and practiced. But when you’re good, you’re good, and no one cares what color you are.”

When young American men started being drafted into the military to serve in Vietnam, Goldfinger, born as Jack Vaughn, enlisted in the Army. His talent for magic was soon discovered by his superiors, and he was assigned to make friends among the inhabitants of Vietnamese jungle villages by doing magic tricks for them.

The Army provided him with all the props and animals he needed. When he pulled rabbits or birds out of his top hat, he would give them away to the villagers.

While on leave in Hawaii in 1969, Vaughn met and fell in love with a Hawaiian exotic dancer named Dove. After they married, the couple moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of fame and fortune. They eventually became the premiere duo in magic, appearing on a variety of television shows. They were also featured regularly in comedy legend Redd Foxx’s Las Vegas revue.

Goldfinger and Dove infused magic with a glamour that no Black magician had ever achieved before. Nevertheless, they eventually encountered discrimination while performing in front of a national audience. As guests on the former show, “World’s Greatest Magicians,” the couple’s routine was cut short prematurely.

“They were only given two minutes to perform,” says King. “The other magicians got four minutes at least.”

He adds, “Some of my friends and I wrote a letter to the producers just to get him [Goldfinger] on the show. Up to that point, we hadn’t seen any other Black magicians on TV.”

“The show was canceled a few months after Jack went on,” King further explained. “It wasn’t a coincidence; White people didn’t want to see a Black guy doing magic tricks.”

Although Goldfinger and other African American pioneers have opened doors and blazed trails for aspiring Black magicians, there are still many people—particularly African American consumers—who haven’t shown interest in viewing a magic show.

During an interview with Sepia magazine in 1977, then magician Odis Price predicted that White audiences would eventually develop a soft spot for Black performers.

“A problem I have found is that nearly all of the children who enroll for my magic courses are White,” he told the reporter. “Black kids just do not find out about these things from their parents or friends, and when they do find out, they cannot afford the equipment or the lessons.”

The few African American children who did come to him for lessons were, he believed, more likely to succeed than Whites.

“Young Black magicians actually have an advantage sometimes over new White magicians,” he observed. “There are still not many of us, so we get instant attention. In show business, the more unique you are the better off you are.”

Although modern Black magicians are more likely to succeed than their predecessors, many youngsters in urban neighborhoods aren’t being introduced to the profession.

“It definitely comes down to exposure,” says veteran illusionist Benjamin Barnes. “There are no sources of magic in Black communities. Black people don’t go to see David Copperfield.”

“There are schools of magic in South Africa; but there are certainly none in America,” he added. “I went to the largest magic convention in the world where they inducted the first African American president ever [McDonald]. I saw maybe a total of 12 Black magicians out of about 1,500 people. It was shocking to me.”

Barnes disagrees with critics who make comparisons between magic and devil worship. In part, he blames religious zealotry for discouraging African Americans from attending magic shows.

“There are a number of magicians who are priests and religious people,” he explained laughing. “In the Black community, there has always been a hesitancy about being involved with magic because they just don’t know about it. And what they do know is based on superstition. If you go see a magic show . . . a person would look at it and see that there’s nothing dark or demonic about what we do.”

McDonald agrees.

“We aren’t sorcerers, we’re sources of laughter and enjoyment,” he said softly.

He added, “My father was a pastor of a church. My brother was a minister. As a whole, the church considered magic to be a source of evil. As I progressed, they started to see what I was doing. It wasn’t voodoo. I produced white doves which is a symbol of peace. I do magic that takes people back to their childhood. I give them that warm feeling for the short time they are watching me.”

McDonald says reconciling his profession with his faith wasn’t always easy. He believes that educating Christians about the history of magic will eliminate their skepticism.

“We’re just now finding out a lot more in reference to our rich lineage (in magic). We have to see where our forefathers in magic come from and bring that out to the light so that people know who we really are. I am a magician who happens to be African American. In my position, I will continue to work hard and let my light shine. I welcome the opportunity to share our rich history with the world.”

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