The forgotten history of underground magic
Many of the readers here are too young to remember this, but back in the 1940's, it was legal in the southern states and several mid-west and southwestern states to discriminate against street magicians and street mimes. Stage magicians were tolerated, as long as they didn't stray too far from the "sawing a lady in half" -style routines that had become popular on the vaudeville circuit. Stage mimes, of course, were typically shot on sight -- this was before the days when hunting stage mimes required the use of a silencer.
Street mimes had it the worst, as they were often placed into clean, clear glass boxes and left to suffocate in broad daylight on street corners. But street magicians didn't fare much better. Some turned to organized crime for protection, which gave rise to the famous Monte Lords and cross-border playing card smugglers along the Rio Grande -- this is where the term "card backs" originated. Many street magicians died because their cards were cut with all kinds of dangerous fillers.
Some of these street performers managed to escape by way of the Magic Underground -- a string of households sympathetic to the street magicians' plight who conducted these performers to the safety of San Francisco or New York City, where it was easier to blend in, or at least, avoid outright persecution.
Of course, those days are long since gone, what with the ambitious Card Legislation of the mid-1960's. But the legacy of those days remains, and many magicians still perform in the tradition of those underground magicians in honor of their memory.
--Allan
(As a footnote, I'll mention that very few mimes survived those turbulent times, but a few did escape via the very same underground, disguising themselves by using monochromatic face paint other than black and white. You can see tributes to their legacy at shows called "The Blue Man Group".)