As the troupe prepares to go into town, a heavy-set man named Norman applies bootblack to James's face. When James speaks in exaggerated slave diction, Norman quietly tells James he can stop, then reveals that he is also enslaved. Norman says a slave can recognize another slave, and James is shaken to realize Norman has seen through him even though the white men in camp have not.

While working, Norman explains the minstrel show to James. White performers blacken their faces and mock Black people for entertainment, sometimes singing Black songs and sometimes writing songs they imagine Black people would sing. Norman says the mockery is worst when they imitate things like the cakewalk, which James knows began as Black satire of white people; James notes the strange "double irony" of whites copying a joke aimed at themselves without understanding it.

Norman also explains his own reason for staying with the troupe: he wants money so he can return to Virginia and buy his wife. James asks whether Emmett's men know Norman is Black, and Norman says they do not. James then wonders whether Emmett will pay him too. Norman cannot promise that, but says Emmett has never before knowingly brought a Black man into the band and only did so because a tenor recently fled after trouble involving a local girl.

When Daniel Decatur Emmett arrives, he inspects James's costume and makeup, declares him authentic enough, and orders Norman to darken the tops of James's feet and add a little white around his eyes. Emmett also tells James to keep singing "Jimmy Crack Corn" until he knows it. After Emmett moves on, Norman explains the absurd rule governing James's disguise: James must be hidden under stage makeup because the auditorium would not admit an openly Black man, only a white performer made to look Black. Norman advises James to say as little as possible and simply follow the songs. James, overwhelmed but newly hopeful, begins imagining that wages from singing might help him buy his wife and daughter, and when Emmett calls for him, James cautiously answers in slave speech.