“Squid Game” Recalls the “Battle Royals” Held to Entertain White People

• White audiences from the segregation era in America could witness brutal shows called battle royals.
• Black men and boys were forced into mass brawls by the show’s producers, often blindfolded.
• Fourth of July festivities featured battle royals, boxing events and military shows.

“Squid Game”The 2021 revolution took the world by storm, and it was named “The World’s Most Wanted Person” The top Netflix showGlobal phenomenon. The South Korean hitImagine a dystopia in which desperate, cash-strapped individuals fight each other in a series reinvented children’s games for the pleasure of the powerful and wealthy, until the last remaining contestant wins a cash prize that will change your life.

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Generation has “Squid Game,”In the segregation era in America, white audiences saw brutal live shows called “battle royals.”And unlike the games in, “Squid Game,”They were not intended to be fatal.

Ferris State University in Michigan, has the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. The battle royals were documented. The event involved young Black men and boys being forced to fight in a boxing match, often with their eyes closed, for the entertainment of a white crowd. They were required to fight each other until one man was left standing. The prize was a few dollars.

They were common at Fourth of Jul celebrations, boxing events and carnivals in the US in late 19th- and early 20th centuries.

Website of the Jim Crow Museum includes many newspaper accounts and promotional bills for battle-royal forces.

The Lubbock Evening Journal reported on September 27, 1950 that Saturday night entertainment began with a “negro battle royal.”

According to the museum, many of these shows were hosted by the US military where participants were often enlisted soldiers. For example, the 1930 Armistice Day celebrations in Moorhead, Minnesota featured a battle royale. The local newspaper reported that this was the case. “rough and tumble affair”For 10 people “turned out to be as advertised and kept the fans in a constant uproar.”

Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic novel opens with the opening chapter “Invisible Man”Based on Ellison has written a short story titled “The Story of Ellison”. “Battle Royal”() described in chilling detail a battle royal.

“Everyone fought hysterically,”Ellison wrote the story. “It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long. Two, three, four, fought one, then turned to fight each other, were themselves attacked.”

Franklin Hughes, a multimedia specialist at The Museum, stated that he believes that the account is insufficient. “Invisible Man” — and its place in America’s literary canon — is a vital record.

It’s the story of “this intellectual young man who wants to present a speech to these influential white folks to win a scholarship to an all-Black university, so he goes to this event,”Hughes stated. “He thinks he’s going to have the opportunity to do that.

“They put him in a fight with these other Black children, and then the winner could present their work and themselves. As he talks, the bloody taste in him is evident as he presents this intellectual argument for these people to get an education.

‘Revolting spectacles’

According to Cageside Seats.com, the website for wrestling news.Battle royals were first popularized in England in 18th century as bare-knuckle combats. Later, they were exported to the American colonies.

A version of the battle Royal was used during slavery in the United States. “free for all” contest. The book “Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States” This describesParticipants were given a 10-pound bag with cotton and rags that contained cotton, which they used to beat their opponents until they fell.

After the Civil War, battle royale was given a horrifyingly racist twist. According to Cageside SitsThey were described as “unsportable” by the New York State Athletic Commission in 1911. “revolting spectacles.”However, they were still in existence in many states and continued for decades. They eventually ended in the South with civil-rights reforms.

Hughes stated that these events would be targeted at Black children who go to carnivals with friends and will often cause them to fight each other.

James Brown, the soul star and music producer, was born in extreme poverty in South Carolina during the 1930s and 1940s. He recalled this experience in “The Godfather in Soul: An Autobiography.” On the website of the museum, you will find this passage:

“Because of my reputation the other kids always pointed me out to the white men who came around to recruit scrappy black boys to be in the battle royals they put on at Bell Auditorium. In a battle royal they blindfold you, tie one hand behind your back, put a boxing glove on your free hand, and shove you into a ring with other kids in the same condition. You swing at anything that moves, and whoever’s left standing at the end is the winner. It sounds brutal, but a battle royal is really comedy. I’d be out there stumbling around, swinging wild, and hearing the people laughing. I didn’t know I was being exploited.”

Hughes claimed that the battle royal’s legacy in manufactured disunity, humiliation and violence still reverberates throughout Black America.

“These would lead to internalized racism, or internalized bias, where you don’t like yourself, you don’t like your culture, your community,”He stated.

“It’s within the whole list of things that happened, particularly during the Jim Crow era, which is still undermining a lot of communities today.”