The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia, 1820-1930 Review

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(More customer reviews)Gergory Renoff's The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia 1820-1930 is a well-researched and valuable contribution to the history of the circus in America, providing a great deal of insight into the relationships that existed between the circus as an institution and the Southern audiences they performed for from the pre-Civil War era up to the beginning of the Great Depression. While other books are better regarding the internal life and culture of circuses in general, The Big Tent focuses on the complex and often unique problems the circus faced in the South, from the hostility of the elites who saw the circus as low-brow entertainment unworthy of patronage to religious leaders who viewed circuses as hot-beds of immorality and temptation, and to the frequently rowdy circus goers who viewed Circus Day as an opportunity for behavior that they couldn't indulge in the rest of the year. How the circus managers of the time dealt with and ultimately overcame these problems, and how Southern attitudes towards the circus changed over the years, gives the reader a remarkable perspective on this aspect of circus life.
The book's chapters will give you a good idea of the areas covered:
1. Get the Show on the Road: Circus Trouping in the Old South
2. Selling Southernism: Showmen in Georgia, 1865-1874
3. The Slow Embrace: Religion, Social Status, and Circus Attendance
4. Wait for the Big Show! The Economics of the Circus in Georgia, 1865-1920
5. The Canvas City: Social Mixing on Circus Day, 1870-1920
6. Performers in Bleachers: Audience Behavior and Social Interaction in Turn-of-the-Century Circus Tents
7. It's Showtime: The Cultural Content of the Circus, 1880-1920
8. Sparks Circus and the Reinvention of Circus Day
Also, The Big Tent is, I believe, unique in its dealing with the historical aspect of the circus regarding the racial divisions and attitudes that existed in the Southern crowds it played to. The portion of the book that deals with the role of the circus in black social life in the South of the time is truly fascinating reading, providing an insight unlikely to be found anywhere else as can be seen in this excerpt:
"This 'visiting' done at snack stands by African Americans, like parade-watching from balconies by evangelical elites, is one key to understanding the social nature of Circus Day. In general, the area around the snack stands served as a social space for crowds of African Americans to greet old friends, visit with family, and chat with new acquaintances before they went into the tent. But particularly for poverty-stricken, pious, and elite African Americans, these eating booths, rather than the circus proper, became the central place where time could be pleasurably passed in lieu of going to the show."
"In the case of the poor, their appetite for socializing at the stands is easy to appreciate once the percentages of African Americans who did not enter circus tents, but came to town, are considered. While racially differentiated attendance estimates by observers are rare, one man noted that a big top in Bainbridge admitted about two thousand Georgians, but less than 15 percent of the audience comprised black southerners, even though they 'predominated' in the crowd in town. Perhaps equally as useful are the words of a Columbus Enquirer Sun reporter, who wrote that 'it is a fact, almost proverbial, that a country negro too poor to pay his way into the circus, will walk ten miles to see a free parade.' Here the journalist might have valuably asked how all these rural African Americans passed the time in town after the procession ended around 11 AM. On this holiday, African Americans who could not afford tickets could head over to the snack stands where they could spend a handful of nickels and savor a delicious meal, along with all the other free attractions available on Circus Day. One Americus journalist explained in 1885 how the typical poor black family 'never missed a single sight that was free': 'They did not go inside the circus tent, but they had a good time nevertheless. They ate a frugal breakfast, saw every wagon hauled from the depot to the grounds, the tents erected, the grand parade, listened to the bands, the calliope, the loud-lunged ticket sellers, and feasted their eyes on the gorgeous pictues of the sideshow banners. The dissipated to the extent of a fish dinner and five cents worth of candy for the children... Others might spend more money, but none secured more pleasure from the occasion.' Even if they did not go to the show, African Americans of limited means could extend the pleasures of the day by vising with friends as they patronized the snack stands."
My only real quibble with this book is that on occasion it left some interesting questions unanswered. For example, in one section Renoff details the history of two early attempts at home-grown Southern circuses (most circuses were of Northern origin) that occurred in the 1870's, but when both circuses ultimately failed, he gives no background or insight as to the causes of those failures.
In general though, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the circus in the U.S. in general and particularly to anyone interested in the evolution of social attitudes towards the circus and the role the circus played in Southern cultural and social life of that era.


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For many people, the circus, with its clowns, exotic beasts, and other colorful iconography, is lighthearted entertainment. Yet for Greg Renoff and other scholars, the circus and its social context also provide a richly suggestive repository of changing attitudes about race, class, religion, and consumerism. In the South during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traveling circuses fostered social spaces where people of all classes and colors could grapple with the region's upheavals.

The Big Tent relates the circus experience from the perspectives of its diverse audiences, telling what locals might have seen and done while the show was in town. Renoff digs deeper, too. He points out, for instance, that the performances of these itinerant outfits in Jim Crow-era Georgia allowed boisterous, unrestrained interaction between blacks and whites on show lots and on city streets on Circus Day. Renoff also looks at encounters between southerners and the largely northern population of circus owners, promoters, and performers, who were frequently accused of inciting public disorder and purveying lowbrow prurience, in part due to residual anger over the Civil War. By recasting itself as a showcase of athleticism, equestrian skill, and God s wondrous animal creations, the circus appeased community leaders, many of whose businesses prospered during circus visits.

Ranging across a changing social, cultural, and economic landscape, The Big Tent tells a new history of what happened when the circus came to town, from the time it traveled by wagon and river barge through its heyday during the railroad era and into its initial decline in the age of the automobile and mass consumerism.

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