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A32 FEATURE
Friday 8 February 2019

Racist history of blackface began in the 1830s

By JESSE J. HOLLAND blackface and wearing
Associated Press earrings, a New Orleans
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Saints bandanna and fake
racist photo on Virginia breasts under a purple
Gov. Ralph Northam’s T-shirt that said “Katrina
yearbook page and a sub- Victim.” The photos were
sequent admission from his taken two months after
attorney general that he the deadly storm ravaged
wore blackface in 1980 has the Gulf Coast in 2005, kill-
roiled Virginia politics. The ing more than a thousand
photo in the 1984 Eastern people.
Virginia Medical School AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN
yearbook shows someone BLACKFACE
in blackface standing next Early black actors, sing-
to a person in a Ku Klux Klan ers and vaudevillians were
hood and robe. Attorney forced to don blackface
General Mark Herring said as well if they wished to
Wednesday that he wore perform for more lucrative
brown makeup to look like white audiences.
a black rapper during a For example, William Hen-
party as an undergraduate ry “Master Juba” Lane is
at the University of Virginia. considered the single most
The revelations offer the lat- influential performer in
est examples of prominent In this Nov. 18, 2017, file photo, Black Petes and police officers leave after the arrival of Sinterklaas, 19th century dance and
white people facing harsh or Saint Nicholas in Dokkum, northern Netherlands. is credited with inventing
criticism for wearing black- Associated Press tap. It was only after his
face. The North Star newspaper. types. and the publisher of The fame reached internation-
Here’s a look at the prac- Blackface performers, he A letter to the editor in the Pittsburgh Courier. al proportions that he was
tice and its history: said, “have stolen from us Pittsburgh Post-Gazette NORTHAM ISN’T THE FIRST allowed to tour with an all-
BLACKFACE ORIGINS a complexion denied to from 1946 called a black- Other white politicians and white minstrel troupe and
Blackface minstrelsy is con- them by nature ... to make face performance “gro- celebrities have faced criti- to perform without black-
sidered by some to be the money and pander to the tesque” and said it at- cism for blackface perfor- face. One of the more di-
first uniquely American corrupt taste of their white tacked “by ridicule and mances. sastrous critiques of black-
form of entertainment. fellow-citizens.” cheap buffoonery the self- Comedian Billy Crystal was face was from black actor
White men would darken Civil rights organizations respect of every American criticized in 2012 for imper- Ben Vereen at President
their faces to create cari- have publicly condemned Negro.” The letter was writ- sonating Sammy Davis Jr. in Ronald Reagan’s inau-
catures of black people, blackface for decades, ten by a state lawmaker, blackface during his open- guration. Vereen’s intent
including large mouths, lips saying it dehumanizes the Inter-Racial Action ing montage at the Oscars, was a tribute to legend-
and eyes, woolly hair and blacks by introducing and Council, the Inter-Denom- a repeat of his oft-per- ary black vaudevillian Bert
coal-black skin. The perfor- reinforcing racial stereo- inational Ministers Alliance formed skit from “Saturday Williams, who was forced
mances would stereotype Night Live” from the 1980s. to wear blackface to stay
black men and women as Missouri Gov. Mel Carnah- employed. Vereen first
ignorant, hypersexual, su- an had to apologize in 2000 danced and sang “Wait-
perstitious, lazy people who for a picture of him and his ing for the Robert E. Lee”
were prone to thievery and brothers singing in a black- before a cheering GOP
cowardice. face quartet in 1960 that audience, along with the
The practice took hold in came up during his run for president and first lady
New York City in the 1830s U.S. Senate in 1999. He died Nancy Reagan. He then
and became immensely in a plane crash the next stripped the blackface off
popular among post-Civil year, but won the Senate while singing “Nobody (I
War whites. In fact, the Jim seat anyway. ain’t never got nothin’ from
Crow laws that enforced Actor Ted Danson was ac- nobody, no time)” to show
racial segregation in the cused of being racist and the pain of blackface and
South took their name from tasteless for performing a the exploitation of African-
a character played by skit in blackface, using the Americans.
blackface performer Thom- N-word and joking about But ABC omitted the sec-
as Dartmouth Rice. He said his sex life with then-girl- ond part of Vereen’s per-
his act “Jump, Jim Crow” friend Whoopi Goldberg, formance when airing it,
(or “Jumping Jim Crow”) who is black, at Goldberg’s showing only the minstrelsy
was inspired by a slave he Friars Club roast in 1993. segment. Vereen, who at
saw. Dozens of other whites, in- the time was one of the
CONTROVERIAL FROM THE cluding college fraternities nation’s top black actors,
START and sororities, public offi- faced an immediate back-
Blackface performances cials and law enforcement lash from African-American
were condemned as offen- officers, have also been fans for what they saw as
sive from the beginning. criticized for blackface in- buffoonery.
In 1848, after watching a cidents. Vereen has said he was
blackface act, abolition- Florida Secretary of State promised that both parts
ist Fredrick Douglass called Mike Ertel resigned last would be shown and that
the performers “the filthy This 1920s image shows comedian Eddie Cantor wearing month after a newspaper he was “sabotaged by the
scum of white society” in blackface while performing “If You Knew Susie.” obtained photos of him in network.”q
Associated Press