In 2013, historian Rhae Lynn Barnes was researching blackface in America when she encountered a stumbling block at the Library of Congress: Various primary sources on the subject were listed as “missing on shelf.”
Barnes spoke to one of the librarians, and explained that she was writing a history of minstrel shows and white supremacy. Barnes says the librarian admitted that, in 1987, she had personally hidden some of these books because she feared the material would be used by the Ku Klux Klan.
“Once [the librarian] understood the research I was doing … a few hours later, she came up with a cart packed to the brim with all of the material that I had been hoping to see,” Barnes says.
In her new book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Barnes traces the origin of minstrel shows, performances in which an actor portrays an exaggerated and racist depiction of Black, often formerly enslaved, people.
Barnes says minstrel became so popular in the 1800s that the stars began publishing “step-by-step guides” explaining how amateurs could create their own shows. By the end of the century, amateur minstrel performances became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the U.S. Many groups, including fraternal orders, PTAs, police and firemen’s associations and soldiers on military bases, put on their own shows.
During the Great Depression, Barnes notes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration sought to “preserve American heritage” by promoting blackface. As part of the effort, she says, the government distributed lists of “top minstrel plays that they recommended to schools, to local charities, to colleges.” Roosevelt was such a fan of minstrel shows that he co-wrote a script, to be performed by children with polio.
Barnes credits the civil rights era and especially mothers with helping de-popularize blackface in the 1970s, first in schools and then in the larger culture. “They successfully get the shows out of school curriculum piece by piece. And by 1970, most of these publishing houses are going under because of the incredible work of Black and white mothers who worked with them,” she says.
Interview highlights
Stein’s makeup company created multiple shades of blackface for performers in amateur minstrel shows.
WW Norton
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WW Norton
On commercial blackface makeup that replaced shoe polish and burnt cork
It’s an entire commercial empire. So Stein’s makeup was one of the largest. They were a theatrical makeup company. And you’ll actually find today when you go into Halloween stores that a lot of these blackface makeup companies still exist today for Halloween costume makeup and also for clown makeup. …
Burnt cork was incredibly difficult to get off of your face. You’re essentially taking fire ash and then mixing it with shoe polish or some sort of shiny ingredients, and so it was incredibly hard to get it off. So when Stein and these other cosmetic companies begin to create the tubes … that did come in 29 colors and you could pick which bizarre racial calculus you wanted to represent, they would come off with cold cream or makeup remover and that was one of their selling points — now it’s easy to take off.
On Stephen Foster‘s songs for minstrel shows, like “Oh Susannah!”
What’s interesting about those songs is they are romanticizing the relationship between an enslaved person and their enslaver. And so when we have commentary, even from the president now, who recently said slavery wasn’t so bad, well, slavery was horrific, but if you were raised on a diet of Stephen Foster music, and going to minstrel shows, you can somewhat understand how somebody at the time could easily be led to believe that slavery was a grand old party because that’s what it was supposed to be telling you. It’s pro-slavery propaganda.
On the slogan “Make America Great Again” originating from early 20th-century minstrel shows
“Make America Great Again” or “This Is Our Country” or “Take Back Our Country” are all slogans and songs that were very common in minstrel shows. And so a lot of minstrel shows reinterpreted slavery in a fantastical way, that the Civil War ended and that in these minstrel shows there was Black rule and that everything America held dear was desecrated. And so this [blackface] “Zip” character … sometimes he’s named “Rastus” — he has different names that he goes by — runs for office, political office, becomes president, and he’s the first Black president and the first thing he does is he takes away America’s guns. Sound familiar? And so a lot of these terms that you could perhaps say [are] dog whistles in white of supremacy are taken line for line from these minstrel shows.
On not censoring this history
Historians right now are in somewhat of a culture war in that it is our patriotic duty as American citizens and as patriots to help make sure that the American public has access to our history in all of its complexity. And the truth is that you can’t understand the victories and the triumphs without understanding how far Americans had to push. And I think that’s especially true of blackface. When we didn’t adequately understand how long blackface was a mainstay in American culture. Because many historians believe that it had died out by 1900, when in fact it only accelerates and increases up through the 1970s. And so if you just say, “Oh, it just died out. It was no longer in fashion,” then what you’re losing is the incredible, dangerous, and brave work of thousands of Black and white mothers across the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s, of students who stood up during Jim Crow America and said, “This is not OK. We are humans. We deserve dignity. And we want you to understand our history.” …
I think these are the hard conversations Americans actually want to have. And I think America is completely ready for those hard conversations and moving forward.
Anna Bauman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
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