• April 19, 1999
• Vol. 51
• No. 14

Ringling's Brother

By Dan Jewel

Johnathan Iverson, the Greatest Show on Earth's First Black Ringmaster, Fills the Big Top with Song

The animals Johnathan Lee Iverson knew best growing up in Manhattan were pigeons. So adjusting to life on a circus train—living cheek by jowl with zebras, camels and the elephants he has learned to ride—took a little work. "When I first got here I had to get used to the smell of the tigers," he says. "I thought coming from New York that my nose could take any smell. I didn't know cats could smell that bad."

But Iverson's dedication nose—er, knows—no bounds. In November, he became, at 22, the youngest and the first black ringmaster in the 129-year history of the Ringling Bros, and Bar-num & Bailey Circus. "I see this job as an awesome responsibility," says Iverson, now 23. "It's that whole statistical thing: [As a young black male] I'm supposed to be behind bars. I'm supposed to be killing somebody."

But under the big top, which boasts performers from 22 nations, the color of Iverson's skin is no big deal. "We see him as just another performer," says daredevil Erwin Urias, who rides motorcycles inside a giant steel-lattice globe. "Skin tone has nothing to do with it. We have no time for it."

What Iverson has time for, as he travels the country introducing acts and singing songs before crowds of up to 20,000, is making an indelible impression. "When I went to the circus," he recalls, "the ringmaster didn't stand out in my mind. I want kids to leave saying, 'I want to do that job.'

Iverson's ambition came from his mother, Sylvia, now 52, a secretary for the Postal Service and a devout Christian who raised Johnathan and his half-brother David, 31 (the creative arts director at a Manhattan church), as a single mom near Harlem. "If I thought I was good, my mother thought I was great," says Iverson. "If somebody said I'm a star, she'd say I'm a superstar." Sylvia and Iverson's late father, firefighter Trevor Baptiste, never married. "I never had any animosity against him," says Iverson. "When I was born, he wasn't ready to be a man yet."

At age 11, Iverson was accepted into the Boys Choir of Harlem; he performed at the White House for Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. After graduating from New York's Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts (the Fame school) in 1994, he got a bachelor's degree in '98 from the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. He was auditioning at the Fireside Dinner Theater in Fort Atkinson, Wis., when Ringling Bros, director and choreographer Phil McKinley caught his act. "The voice sounded like it came from God's angels," McKinley says. "He had the gift." Three weeks later, Iverson joined the circus.

To Iverson, who shared a room with his brother most of his life, living in a private suite on a circus train is cotton candy. "I always wanted my own place," says the singer, who begins each day with prayers and usually finds time for his "bad addiction" to video games. He also admits that listening to one of his favorite singers, Marvin Gaye, is about as much romance as his busy schedule allows these days. Which may explain why he hasn't yet decided if he'll stay on after his two-year stint ends in 2000. "I'm a free spirit," he says, "like the cowboy in the western who rides off into the sunset." On an elephant.

Dan Jewel
Jennifer Frey in New York City

• Contributors:
• Jennifer Frey.