The Completely True Story of the Fraudulent Ethiopian Princess: Racial Stereotypes and Journalistic Conventions in the Framing of a Media Hoax

Abstract

Princess Rassari Heshla Tamanya of Ethiopia predicted race war when she met with white reporters in New York in 1935, as Italy prepared to invade her homeland. The princess, though, was a fraud. She was a Harlem singer. This article examines the creation and coverage of a short-lived media hoax to illustrate how the widespread acceptance of racial stereotypes in the mid-twentieth-century United States informed reporters’ understanding of the professional practices of objectivity and sensationalism, which mirrored the racist assumptions that saturated popular culture, especially in mediums influenced by blackface minstrelsy and human zoos. The hoax succeeded because the princess satisfied the expectations of readers and reporters, regardless of race. The article also examines the unmasking and remembrance of the fraud. A Pan-Africanist scholar exposed it because it jeopardized his understanding of the world. It became a historical footnote only after it was stripped of its political and social implications.

Notes

1 “Ethiopia Sees a World War,” New York Times, July 14, 1935, N7.

2 Haile Sellassie I, “Haile Sellassie I Rejects Idea of an Italian Sphere,” Times, July 14, 1935, 1.

3 Times, July 14, 1935, N7.

4 “Falasha Princess Says Ethiopian Emperor Is Black Jew Who Observes Kashruth,” Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, July 19, 1935, 6. I searched for press accounts of the hoax with Newspapers.com, ProQuest’s Historical Black Newspapers database, and microfilm of selected newspapers.

5 Times, July 14, 1935, N7; Edna Ferguson, “Ethiopia All Set for Duce, Says Princess,” New York Daily News, July 16, 1935, 6; “Snakes, Insects to Be Effective Allies Against Il Duce, Princess Says,” Pittsburgh Press, July 17, 1935, 3; “Ethiopia Will Beat Italy by Poisoning Rivers, Says,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 20, 1935, 1.

6 Ferguson, “Find Princess Is a Maid – With a Press Agent,” Daily News, July 20, 1935, 3; “Haile’s ‘Cousin’ Lady Named Smith,” New York Post, July 18, 1935, 2; Roi Ottley, New World A-Coming: Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 284. Note: Both Harvey’s first name and her princess persona were spelled multiple ways in press accounts.

7 Brian Roberts, Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Melvin Patrick Ely, The Adventures of Amos ‘n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon, 2nd. ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 35–46.

8 Paul Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, and Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, eds., Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage (Arles: Actes Sud, 2011), 20.

9 Bernth Lindfors, Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 158–165; Pamela Newkirk, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (New York: Amistad, 2015).

10 Blanchard, et al., Human Zoos, 25.

11 Sterling A. Brown, “Negro Character as Seen by White Authors,” Journal of Negro Education 2 (April 1933): 179–203.

12 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922), 81.

13 David T.Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 113–137.

14 Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960, 3rd. ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1968), 442.

15 James W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication,” in Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (New York: Routledge, 1992), 1–17.

16 “Police Hunt Ape-Man on Single Clue,” Daily News, July 16, 1935, 38; “‘Ape Man’ Sought in Nickel Murder,” New York American, July 16, 1935, 32.

17 “Conquering Lion of Judah Sounds War Drums,” Daily News, July 17, 1935. Also see S. Elizabeth Bird, “Tabloidization: What Is It, and Does It Really Matter?” in The Changing Faces of Journalism: Tabloidization, Technology and Truthiness, ed. Barbie Zelizer (New York: Routledge, 2009), 40–42.

18 Frank Doyle, “Harlem Army Eyes Ethiopia,” Daily Mirror, July 13, 1935, 2.

19 Times, July 14, 1935, N7.

20 For examples of typical wire coverage, see “Forecasts World War,” The Express (Lock Haven, PA), July 16, 1935, 1; Pittsburgh Press, July 17, 1935, 3.

21 “Harlem Ponders Ethiopia’s Fate,” Times, July 14, 1935, E10.

22 Marcel Broersma, “A Refractured Paradigm: Journalism, Hoaxes and the Challenge of Trust,” in Rethinking Journalism: Trust and Participation in a Transformed News Landscape, eds. Chris Peters and Marcel Broersma (London: Routledge, 2013), 30.

23 Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017), 96. Other books about media hoaxes include Robert E. Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford, The Martians Have Landed! A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012); Fred Fedler, Media Hoaxes (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989); Kembrew McLeod, Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World (New York: New York University Press, 2014); A. Brad Schwartz, Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015).

24 Sara C. Jorgensen, “Lies, Larceny, and the Christian Zulu Prince: An Examination of the Realm of the Reasonable in American Imaginings of Africa,” Journal of American History 104 (June 2017): 42–67.

25 Robert A. Hill, “King Menelik’s Nephew: Prince Thomas Mackarooroo, aka Prince Ludwig Menelek of Abyssinia,” Small Axe 26 (June 2008): 15–44, with Garvey quoted on 40.

26 Fred Carroll, Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

27 Enoch P. Waters, American Diary: A Personal History of the Black Press (Chicago: Path Press, 1987), 235.

28 Alice Dunnigan, Alone Atop the Hill: The Autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, Pioneer of the National Black Press, ed. Carol McCabe Booker (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 164.

29 Waters, American Diary, 166–67.

30 T.R. Poston, “Chappie Gardner Makes ‘Princess’ Out of Harlem Home Relief Client,” New York Amsterdam News, July 20, 1935, 1.

31 Gardner, “Says Race Artists More Creative Than Whites,” Courier, December 15, 1934, A8.

32 Gardner, “‘Africana,’ Panned by All Critics, To Reopen Soon,” Defender, December 8, 1934, 9.

33 Cleveland G. Allen, “Heshla Tamanya, African Singer, Wins Acclaim,” New York Age, December 30, 1933, 2.

34 Gardner, “Singing of Heshla Tamanya, African Girl, Stops Show,” Courier, December 30, 1933, 7.

35 “Heshla Tamanya, Colorful Hebrew Songbird, in Recital Here at Ebenezer Church,” Courier, March 31, 1934, 8.

36 Courier, March 31, 1934, 8.

37 “Heshla Tamanya, African Singer, in Broadway Show,” Courier, May 5, 1934, 18.

38 L.L., “‘Africana’ Music Pleasing but Action of Show Drags; Cast Is Colored and White,” Age, December 1, 1934, 4.

39 Defender, December 8, 1934, 9.

40 Gardner, “Concert Singer of Abyssinia Has No Fears of Italy,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 9, 1935, 9.

41 Annabelle Darden, “Ancient Abyssinia Sends a Daughter to Join Our Array of Concert Artists,” Afro-American, February 17, 1934, 6.

42 Fikru Negash Gebrekidan, Bond without Blood: A History of Ethiopian and New World Black Relations, 1896–1991 (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2005), 53.

43 Clare Corbould, Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 198.

44 St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York, 1945; Chicago, 1993), 403.

45 Ottley, New World A-Coming, 105. Regarding African American support for Ethiopia, see William R. Scott, Sons of Sheba’s Race: African-Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) and Joseph E. Harris, African-American Reactions to War in Ethiopia, 1936–1941 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994).

46 J.A. Rogers, “Rogers Holds Il Duce Has Chosen Real Foe,” Amsterdam News, February 16, 1935, 1. For more on Rogers’s career and racial outlook, see Darryl Pinckney, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2002), 1–53; Thabiti Asukile, “Joel Augustus Rogers: Black International Journalism, Archival Research, and Black Print Culture,” Journal of African American History 95, no. 3 (Summer/Fall 2010), 322–347.

47 Robin D.G. Kelley, “Introduction,” in Keisha N. Blain, Christopher Cameron, and Ashley D. Farmer, eds., New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018), 195.

48 “Denies Relationship to Haile Sellassie,” Times, July 18, 1935, 4. Interestingly, Huggins was accused of “‘too much theatricalism,’” after he started wearing an “African costume ... on all occasions possible.” See St. Clair Bourne, “In This Corner,” Age, October 19, 1935, 5, and March 28, 1936, 4.

49 In the first book, Huggins thanked J.A. Rogers for introductions that allowed him to view private collections and other materials in Europe.

50 Hill, “King Menelik’s Nephew,” 42.

51 Ottley, “Hectic Harlem,” Amsterdam News, July 27, 1935, 11.

52 Theophilus Lewis, “Sketchbook,” Amsterdam News, July 27, 1935, 10.

53 For examples, see Rackham Holt, review of New World A-Coming, by Roi Ottley, Times, August 15, 1943; Dexter Teed, “New World A-Coming,” Negro Digest 2 (May 1944): 81.

54 Ottley, New World A-Coming, 282.

55 Examples of continued coverage of Tamanya include, “Celebrities in the News This Week Maintain Spotlight Roles,” Courier, Aug. 8, 1942, 21; “J. Payne Presents ‘Africapers’ Sunday at N.Y. Times Hall,” Age, May 13, 1944, 10.

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Notes on contributors

Fred Carroll

Fred Carroll is a lecturer at Kennesaw State University. He wrote Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2017). Race News won the Best Journalism and Mass Communication History Book Award from the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 2018.