Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment

Never before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. Darkology, from Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes, meticulously unravels this complex, subterranean, and all–too–often expunged history. By 1830, blackface, which caricatured ex–slaves for their supposed subservience and happy demeanor, had become a venomous cultural export. Blackface theater soon segued into everyday amateur shows, with minstrelsy proliferating in Elks Clubs, churches, universities, and schools during Jim Crow, whose name derives from minstrelsy’s founding character. Beloved by presidents including FDR and Gerald Ford, blackface saturated twentieth–century America, permeating US military bases abroad and World War II Japanese American internment camps as an “Americanization” tool. Despite a 1950s backlash led by Black mothers protesting public school performances, 1960s college students from California to Vermont aggressively challenged legal bans. With its gripping writing and penetrating archival research, Darkology is a landmark work that peers beneath the historical boulders that deliberately obscure our racial past.