Black Herman
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Benjamin Rucker (born in Amherst, Virginia in 1892) was an American stage magician, better known by his stage name Black Herman. He was the most prominent African American magician of his time.
Black Herman learned the art of staged illusions from a performer called Prince Herman, who was first his teacher and later his partner. The two sold patent medicine as well as performing prestidigitation, making their act as much a medicine show as a stage show. When Prince Herman died, in 1909, Rucker, then only 17 years old, took the name Black Herman in his friend's honour and continued to tour, focussing on the stage act and dropping the medicine show aspects of his performance.
Once on his own, Rucker made Harlem his home base. Jim Crow policies were in effect at that time, so in the Northern states he could perform before racially-mixed audiences, but when he travelled through the South, often with his own tent show, segregation laws kept his audiences primarily Black. His specialities included the production of ducks, release from knots tied by audience members, and a "buried alive" act which began with his interment in an outdoor area called "Black Herman's Private Graveyard" and continued three days later with his exhumation, revival and a walk to the stage venue, where he performed the rest of his show.
Rucker was the ostensible author of "Secrets of Magic, Mystery, and Legerdemain," a book published in 1925 that contains his semi-fictionalized autobiography, directions for simple illusions suitable to the novice stage magician, advice on astrology and lucky numbers, and a sampling of African American hoodoo folk magic customs and practices. An announcement on the book's title page — "Black Herman Comes Through Every Seven Years" — referred to Rucker's pattern of returning to venues on a regular basis; the book was sold at his performances. However, Rucker was not the actual author of this work; rather, internal evidence establishes that it was ghost-written by a Mr. Young, who is also thought to be the author of books on occultism published under the pseudonym Henri Gamache and, possibly, Lewis de Claremont.
Black Herman died in Louisville, Kentucky in April, 1934 after collapsing on stage, presumably the result of a heart attack. Due to the fame of his "buried alive" act, many people in the audience refused to believe he was really dead, and thus it came about that his assistant, Washington Reeves, charged admission to view Rucker's corpse in the funeral home, bringing a dramatic close to a life spent in showmanship. He was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.
[edit] References
- Black Herman [Benjamin Rucker]. "Secrets of Magic, Mystery, and Legerdemain". 1925. Republished in 1938 first by Empire Publishing, then by Dorene Publishing. This book was ghost-written by Mr. Young, who is also presumed to be the author pseudonymously known as Henri Gamache.
