Saturday, February 02, 2019

Blackface

I was in blackface, as a six-or-seven year old in 1959-60.  It was in Massachusetts in a minstrel show my father was in. He played the poor sap who always has trouble land on him but resourcefully has a trick up his sleeve.  I was a hungry-looking child who came and looked sadly at his sandwich as he sat on a park bench.  I had fun writing about it in 2013, tracing how minstrel slowly went away.  Or rather, how it merely morphed into picking on another kind of victim.  There's a clip from a minstrel show at the link.

1 comment:

Christopher B said...

I'd be willing to bet nobody in your show was in a peaked white hood, though.

I was in college roughly the same time as Northam. There was a certain amount of Southern chic - Tom Petty and .38 Special, Dukes of Hazzard, Gone with The Wind - floating around but I don't remember anybody thinking the Klan was cool. Jokes, like the famous Illinois Nazis, but nothing serious. Dressing up for any reason? Doubtful.