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.
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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.
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