This Week's Strangest Find

I'm working on a book. Let's say it's the reason I'm not posting here much. I am still reading the newspapers as much as ever.

Looking in an issue of the Freedman, a Black paper out of Indianapolis, I noticed an advertisement that I found intriguing. It's only slightly bonkers:

The Freedman looks like it served as a Black alternative to Billboard, and a lot of Black actors, musicians, and performers kept in touch through its pages and advertised there. This struck me as very peculiar CV they were looking for. Despite a ton of work to do, I thought:

To the research mobile!

I figured this was so weird it had an above-average chance of ending in someone's arrest, so I looked up Batchman at newspapers.com. 

Aug 4, 1905, The Marion, Indiana Leader-Tribune had the answer:

Seems like this was a carnival sideshow freakshow stunt. Ok, fine. I was really hoping for some sort of caper, but I'll accept a sideshow exhibit. I have scratched that itch. I do remain continuously impressed the level of granularity you can get when looking up people on these databases. 

RJB