Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment

Historian Barnes (American Contact) offers a startling, eye-opening examination of the scope and sweep of blackface minstrelsy in the U.S. in the century following the Civil War. Pushing back against the notion of blackface as a fleeting 19th-century phenomenon, Barnes meticulously traces how after the war, the practice boomed, jumping from professional stages to local venues, with amateur performances routinely staged in and funded by schools, businesses, governments, and fraternal organizations. As Barnes traces the deep entrenchment of minstrelsy in social life during the Jim Crow era—itself so named after a minstrel character—even readers familiar with the topic will be astonished by the extent of the practice’s cultural penetration, and its enduring ties to anti-Black political agendas. For instance, the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, founded in 1868 and reaching its apex in the 1920s with more than 800,000 members, was started by professional minstrels, who used the Order to “transform minstrel shows from casual entertainment into a fundraising juggernaut,” siphoning profits to segregationist politicians. Other illuminating avenues of inquiry include the Works Progress Administration’s support of blackface performances, and blackface performances staged by Japanese American internees during WWII and at FDR’s Warm Springs polio hospital. Painstaking and impressive, it’s a magisterial and disturbing reconsideration of American cultural history. (Mar.)