# Banana Ball's racial minstrelsy past  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Banana Ball's racial minstrelsy past - Show: Code Switch - Owner / Host: NPR - Guests: [Josh Levin](https://share.snipd.com/person/4d060d7e-07ae-4c62-a1a5-b1b0f03d5aa2) - Episode publish date: 2026-08-28 - Episode AI description: Josh Levin, investigative cultural journalist who reported on the Indianapolis Clowns, discusses the revival of Banana Ball and the controversial resurrection of a Negro League team tied to minstrel-style performance. He traces the Clowns' origins, players' motivations, and how modern promoters reshape or erase difficult history. The conversation highlights media portrayals and public backlash. - Mentioned books: [The Queen](https://share.snipd.com/book/b0bec86e-471e-4bf7-8023-18488e367a24) by [Josh Levin](https://share.snipd.com/person/a49e3074-0911-485e-b20e-114a2ea749b0) - Duration: 27:02 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/a2c5a4cf-4e39-4694-b870-974dbe5405ee) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/010bc8a0-a9fc-452a-9c6e-774dfb093859) - Export date: 2026-09-03T00:09:02 ## Snips ### [How Savannah Bananas Became A Viral Baseball Phenomenon](https://share.snipd.com/snip/093a1258-f743-4ca6-a725-764074ac8d4b) 🎧 02:25 - 04:27 (02:01) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/62949b2a-8920-4fe8-979d-9bc2f0e8cd51" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Savannah Bananas turned minor-league baseball into a TikTok-optimized traveling variety show that sells out huge stadiums. - Josh Levin reports the Bananas and their league mix real players with choreographed dance, stunts, and extreme fan accessibility, drawing millions of social followers. #### 💬 Quote > They provide nine innings plus of entertainment, some of which is baseball, some of which is singing, dancing, things optimized for TikTok. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on the Bananas' entertainment-focused approach #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** I **Gene Demby:** know that voice. Yes, because that is Josh Levine. **Josh Levin:** And they go around the country. They provide nine innings plus of entertainment, some of which is baseball, some of which is singing, dancing, things optimized for TikTok. And they're wildly popular. **Gene Demby:** Josh has been on the podcast a grip of times once to talk about his book, The Queen, which was about the woman who was the basis of the welfare queen trope. **B.A. Parker:** Right. And he wrote about the marketing forces that conspired to sell menthol cigarettes to black folk. **Gene Demby:** Yes. And Josh said the Savannah Bananas and the teams they play as part of their extended universe, you want to call it that, teams like the local Beach Coconuts and the Texas Tailgaters, they are made up of a mix of some very good baseball players whose careers never quite took them to the majors. And Josh said, these teams do numbers, Parker. Like, the Bananas alone have over 4 million followers on Instagram. Like, just by way of comparison, your beloved Orioles, who've been around forever, by the way, ain't even cracked 800,000 followers until this season. **B.A. Parker:** And that's okay. That's **Gene Demby:** fine. That's fine. That's okay. Last year, the five teams in the Banana Ball League sold more tickets than 11 major league baseball teams. **Josh Levin:** Very recently, they filled up 102,000 Kyle Field at Texas A&M, which was their biggest crowd ever. And so it's a lot of families. It's some people who are like out for you know a fun night out on the town um and the party animals they have this sort of aesthetic that's like very shirtless they do appeal to older people who find it wholesome they appeal to younger people who want beefcake and they appeal to kids. Because the one that really blew me away about this experience, and it might be different if you go to a football stadium, but in this AAA park, is just how unbelievably accessible the players are. --- ### [Bananas Revive The Controversial Indianapolis Clowns](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fae5ef48-0cc7-4d6a-a9e7-6e8c4b84c34d) 🎧 05:20 - 06:42 (01:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f8e98e45-841a-487a-bd66-71e631b361c4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Savannah Bananas resurrected the Indianapolis Clowns in 2026 as part of their touring universe, leaning into the team's circus-like history. - Josh Levin explains the original Clowns performed comedic bits, sometimes in white clown makeup, explicitly tied to racial minstrelsy. #### 💬 Quote > They were literally wearing white clown makeup sometimes because they were supposed to be laughed at. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on the Clowns' minstrelsy roots #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** And I read an article for The Atlantic about the brand new but also old Indianapolis Clowns. **B.A. Parker:** Oh, like the Indianapolis Clowns, as in the Negro League team back in the day? Yes, **Gene Demby:** the Savannah Bananas resurrected the Indianapolis Clowns in 2026, this year, as a nod to the Negro Leagues. Okay. Also as a nod to this whole vibe of the original Indianapolis Clowns, because they used to put on, you know, popular circus-like games baseball, you know, lots of hijinks, lots of bits, lots of crowd work. They were popular enough that they outlasted the Negro Leagues by decades. But, and this is the shoe drop part, Parker. Lots of black folks and lots of people in black baseball really did not rock with the clowns. So **Josh Levin:** we can go back to the 30s when they started as **Gene Demby:** the Ethiopian clowns. The Ethiopian **B.A. Parker:** clowns? Yes, **Gene Demby:** and that team was itself downstream from another team called the Zulu Cannibal Giants. The **B.A. Parker:** Zulu Cannibal Giants? What? Yes. **Gene Demby:** No relation to the San Francisco Giants, by the way. And the Zulu Cannibal Giants used to wear grass skirts and bare feet. It was a whole thing. Oh, **B.A. Parker:** no. **Gene Demby:** Right. And Josh said that the clowns were part of this tradition of racial minstrelsy. Like, they were literally wearing white clown makeup sometimes because they were supposed to be laughed at. --- ### [The Ethiopian Clowns Origin And Its Troubled Symbolism](https://share.snipd.com/snip/34f1e48f-3508-4313-98e2-f3b591f3b530) 🎧 09:21 - 12:12 (02:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/52676b15-d529-4d59-9a64-4c0f6be6d6b3" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Indianapolis Clowns began as the Ethiopian Clowns and drew on deliberate Africanized stage personas tied to contemporary news about Ethiopia. - Levin notes the team used faux African names, painted faces, and routines (e.g., King Tut's prison escape bits) that referenced minstrel tropes. #### 💬 Quote > The players painted their faces. Like clowns. Like clowns. And they played under faux African names. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on the Clowns' original presentation #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** when they started off as the Ethiopian clowns. And the players painted their faces. Like clowns. Like clowns. And they played under faux African names. There was a player who was listed in the box score as Tarzan. Oh, my God. And they were sort of widely reviled in some circles of black America. They were also popular in some circles of Black America and in White America, but they were a big box office draw. And what they would do in these games is play baseball and do comedy routines that were minstrelsy or minstrel adjacent, if you want to... On **Gene Demby:** the same block as minstrelsy. **Josh Levin:** Yes, they received mail in the same block. So there was a guy named Richard King who went by King Tut, who was their sort of main comedian. And he would emerge from the dugout looking like an escaped prisoner. He would play a game of craps, like he would play dice on the field. There was a routine that he would do with his main comedy partner, Ralph Bell, who went by Speck Bebop, where they would do a dentist routine They would involve kernels of corn and a lit firecracker where the firecracker was dropped. And there were efforts made by other Negro League teams. This in, you know, early 40s to prohibit their clubs from playing against the clowns. **Gene Demby:** Because they thought these guys were like making black baseball look bad, or black people look bad. **Josh Levin:** There were a sort of constellation of reasons. That was definitely one of the reasons that the image that the clowns were projecting was not an image that black owners, black teams, other black players wanted for black baseball. There were also more just business disagreements, like the clowns stealing other teams' players and things like that. So there was a combination of reasons, but a ban was put into place. clowns were banned, and it just was never enforced because these other teams were like, we just can't do it. They're too popular. **Gene Demby:** They needed the money. Like, we're playing them. We need the box office, right? We **Josh Levin:** need the box office. And so they were eventually admitted, allowed into the Negro American League under the stipulation that they would no longer be known as the Ethiopian clowns and that the players would no longer wear face paint. --- ### [Why Critics Said The Clowns Hurt Integration](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ec209c0-b66b-49fa-927c-39705ab52d19) 🎧 13:40 - 14:57 (01:16) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ce404787-52a1-4167-918b-0ec9e5e15a25" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Prominent Black journalists feared the Clowns' comedy undercut efforts to integrate Major League Baseball and to present Black players as serious athletes. - Levin cites Wendell Smith calling the team "a fourth-rate Uncle Tom minstrel show" in the campaign for integration. #### 💬 Quote > He referred to the clowns as a fourth-rate Uncle Tom minstrel show. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on Wendell Smith's critique #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** He's integration of Major League Baseball is going to come later in the decade. But there has been a push, a desire to integrate for a while. This is like a slow building process and a campaign that's being conducted largely in black newspapers. And Wendell Smith was the primary driver of this idea. He was a very influential columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, and he was the leading voice pushing for the integration of Major League Baseball. and their act and what they were doing on the field could ruin the entire project, that it could tarnish the image of every black baseball player, not just the individuals who were suiting up for the clowns. He referred to the clowns as a fourth-rate Uncle Tom minstrel show. Tell us how you really feel. And there were others who signed on with that opinion. He was the leading voice, but he was not a lonely voice. --- ### [Players Joined The Clowns Out Of Economic Necessity](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b223c987-24c6-4358-a35c-b4cfc5f1a0eb) 🎧 15:00 - 16:12 (01:11) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ed3ef4fa-b70b-4b59-9a3c-941b1ef1e591" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Economic survival shaped players' choices to join the Clowns; most were regular ballplayers who needed work, not full-time comedians. - Levin emphasizes that roster composition varied and that many players tolerated the act because it paid better than other options. #### 💬 Quote > You have to consider the economic choices that players were forced into at the time. This was a job and they needed a job. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on why players signed with the Clowns #### 📚 Transcript **Gene Demby:** the clowns feel about this idea that was out there that they were, like, sort of counterproductive to the project of racial uplift via baseball? **Josh Levin:** You have to consider the economic choices that players were forced into at the time. This was a job and they needed a job and this was the job that they could get and the job that they did. And they, you know, the vast majority of players on the clowns were not clowns. Like they had a couple of guys, and it changed over time the ratio of comedy to baseball. But for the majority of time, was a couple of people were dedicated comedians and the rest were baseball players. And so they were baseball players who just happened to be employed in this particular team and did the best that they could under those circumstances. Then if you talk to the clowns opponents, sort of those voices and the way that they're, you know, what they say, a lot of resentment that the clowns did create this image, this perception that the entire Negro leagues were like this, that it was just all a clown show, that it was all comedy, that they didn't take baseball seriously. --- ### [Hank Aaron's First Pro Team Was The Clowns](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1096e914-9294-4f09-b36e-69f102a55cc7) 🎧 19:16 - 21:40 (02:24) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4d1267a3-1e54-4203-a895-10fa84cd7e3c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Clowns helped launch careers: Hank Aaron's first pro contract was with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1952, though he did none of the comedy. - Levin notes the team sold rising stars to Major League clubs as a revenue tactic during the Negro Leagues' decline. #### 💬 Quote > The Clowns in 1952 sign an 18-year from Alabama named Hank Aaron. He's on the team for a few months, then they sell him to the Braves. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on Hank Aaron joining the Clowns #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** Yeah, so what the Major Leagues do is that they sort of pick off systematically the best black talent from the Negro leagues. You have Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, and it goes on from there. And there's compensation given to Negro league's owners, but it's not very much. It's economically devastating to the Negro Leagues. Attendance dwindles because the reality is now that the best talent is in the majors. Plus, there's this idea that it's the culmination of this dream and decades of work, and it's this huge moment for civil rights in America. So we want to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers. We want to watch these stars that are, you know, striking a blow for equality for black America. We want to root them on. It makes a lot of sense. And then back in the Negro Leagues, you have hollowed out rosters, you have diminished interest, you have smaller gate receipts. And you have leagues start to crumble. You have teams start to fold. And then you have a team that in this environment is better equipped than anybody else to weather this, which is the team that is not just a baseball team, that is more of a circus, that is an entertainment act, has these other things and other attractions that bring people to the ballpark. And that's the Indianapolis Clowns. The Clowns in 1952 sign an 18-year from Alabama named Hank Aaron. He's on the team for a few months, then they sell him to the Braves. I **Gene Demby:** feel like... Do we need to pause on that? I mean, it's wild to give an explanatory comment about Hank Aaron. So Hank Aaron is, like, one of the most important baseball players of all time. He had the home run record for a long time. And, like, the run-up to him breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record was, like, this giant moment that everyone paid attention to. He was, like, greeted with all this racist abuse. But, like, he broke the home run record in the 70s after playing for decades. **Josh Levin:** It was his first pro team was the Indianapolis Clowns. They signed him out of Mobile, Alabama, and had the opportunity to sign a pro contract and he jumped at it. He wanted to get out of Mobile. And he writes about it in his autobiography, but he did not do any of the clowning stuff. He was a baseball And there was an economic imperative for the team at that time. --- ### [The Clowns' Long Decline Into Pure Entertainment](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7e7e2a44-35d7-4958-a6d7-b09c112e0e8f) 🎧 22:40 - 24:04 (01:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3a395ff1-e938-4224-87ae-8c35e45cef6b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - After leaving organized Negro Leagues, the Clowns barnstormed and gradually reversed-integrated until they became an all-white comedy act by the 1980s. - Levin says the team survived longer than many Negro League clubs by leaning into circus comedy rather than elite play. #### 💬 Quote > They reverse integrated. They added a white player after they left the Negro Leagues. And by the 80s, they were all white. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on the Clowns' later years #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Levin:** The women are all out of baseball after that season. And the clowns make the decision that the Negro Leagues are not going to last. And they went independent. They became a full-time barnstorming club after that, you know, into 1954, 1955. And they were still going, but just as an independent team until the 1980s. That's bananas. **Gene Demby:** Sorry. That is wild to think they were still out there until the 1980s, like in like the Reagan years. What did the clowns look like at that point? **Josh Levin:** So the clowns reverse integrated. They added a white player after they left the Negro Leagues. And by the 80s, they were all white. Oh, they gentrified the clowns? And it was a really shoestring operation. They weren't paying the players at a certain point. They were playing smaller and smaller vacations. And as time went on, they leaned more and more into comedy. These were not world-class players. And it was just more and more like the circus is coming to town. We're going to do sort of silly and ridiculous things. the clowns left off. Like, they weren't able to stain it anymore. They stopped in the late 80s. And so it was just sort of a name. --- ### [How The Bananas Present A Sanitized Clowns History](https://share.snipd.com/snip/41c8c7dd-1b73-41ac-9a57-5e42b92507c2) 🎧 24:21 - 25:53 (01:32) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ca1c5819-1459-4914-b232-3a615ead073a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Savannah Bananas' portrayal of the Clowns omits the fraught history; Levin calls it a Disney-fied, incomplete version that avoids political or painful context. - He argues the company emphasizes family-friendly spectacle and thus commits a sin of omission about minstrelsy. #### 💬 Quote > They're a corporation that does family-friendly entertainment. no history within this company of presenting things that might make people mad, that are contentious, that are, like, politically fraught. > — Josh Levin Josh Levin on the Bananas' framing of the Clowns #### 📚 Transcript **Gene Demby:** So **Josh Levin:** when I saw the team and based on what I've seen that they've put out on social media, which is a lot of how they communicate with their fans, they don't reckon with that history at all. They lean in heavily to the history of the clowns, but it's a very particular version of the history that I would say is a kind of Disney-fied version. Or it's like, you know, what you might learn in elementary school about civil rights heroes, but not about what they were struggling against. So they're not saying things in their presentation that are wrong or false or inaccurate. It's just extremely incomplete. And the history of this team is fraught. It's contentious. It was fraught and contentious at the time. They weren't totally reviled. There were people, black writers at the time who were down with the clowns, who didn't **Gene Demby:** have... You're waiting to see that. **Josh Levin:** It just popped out. Who didn't have a problem with what they were doing. And so there is a history here that is nuanced. And, you know, they're a corporation that does family-friendly entertainment. no history within this company of presenting things that might make people mad, that are contentious, that are, like, politically fraught. Like, they are out there, like, singing show tunes. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts