Blackface! - The History of Racist Blackface Stereotypes
Blackface!
The mask which the actor wears is apt to become his       face -- Plato
Blackface is more than just burnt cork applied as       makeup.
It is a style of entertainment based on racist Black stereotypes
that began in minstrel shows and continues today.
 
That Really Works!
 
The stock characters of blackface minstrelsy have played a significant role in              disseminating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. Every immigrant group was stereotyped on              the music hall stage during the 19th Century, but the history of prejudice,              hostility, and ignorance towards black people has insured a unique longevity to the stereotypes.              White              America's conceptions of Black entertainers were shaped by minstrelsy's              mocking caricatures and for over one hundred years the              belief that Blacks were              racially and socially inferior was fostered by legions of both white and              black performers in              blackface.
 
Racist Black Stereotypes
Originating in the White man's characterizations of                         plantation slaves and free blacks during the era of minstrel shows (1830-1890), the                         caricatures took such a firm hold on the American imagination that                         audiences expected any person with dark skin, no matter what their                         background, to conform to one or more of the stereotypes:
 
Jim Crow
The term Jim Crow originated in 1830 when a         White minstrel show performer, Thomas "Daddy" Rice, blackened his face with         burnt cork and danced a jig while singing the lyrics to the song,
"Jump Jim Crow."
Zip Coon
First performed by George Dixon in 1834, Zip Coon made a mockery of free blacks. An         arrogant, ostentatious figure, he dressed in high style and spoke in a         series of malaprops and puns that undermined his attempts to appear dignified.
 
Jim Crow and Zip Coon eventually merged into a single stereotype called simply "coon."
  
 
Mammy
Mammy is a source of earthy wisdom who is fiercely independent and brooks no backtalk. Although her image changed                         a little over the years, she was always a favorite of advertisers.
 
Uncle Tom
Toms are typically good, gentle, religious and sober. Images of Uncle         Toms were another favorite of advertisers and "Uncle Ben" is         still being used to sell rice.
Buck
The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing,         and always interested in White women.
Wench/Jezebel
The temptress. During the minstrel era, wenches were typically a male                         in female garb. In film, wenches were usually female mulattos.
 
Mulatto
A mixed-blood male or female. In film, often portrayed as a tragic         figure who either intentionally or unintentionally passes for White         until they discover they have Negro blood or are discovered by another         character to be Black.
Pickaninny
Picaninnies have bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips and wide mouths into which they         stuff huge slices of watermelon.
These stereotypes were staples during the minstrel era and carried         over into vaudeville, film and television.
 
Blackface in Minstrel Shows
Blackface makeup was either a layer of         burnt cork on a layer of coca butter or black         grease paint. In the early years exaggerated red lips         were painted around their mouths, like those of today's circus clowns.         In later years the lips were usually painted white or unpainted. Costumes were         usually gaudy         combinations of formal wear; swallowtail coats, striped trousers, and         top         hats.
Minstrel show entertainment included imitating black music and dance and speaking in a "plantation" dialect. The shows featured a variety of jokes, songs, dances and skits that were based on the ugliest stereotypes of African American slaves.  From 1840 to 1890, minstrel shows were the most popular form of entertainment in America.
White audiences in the 19th Century         wouldn't accept real black entertainers on stage unless they performed         in blackface makeup. One of the first Blacks to perform in blackface for         White audiences was the man who invented tap dancing, William         Henry Lane, aka Master Juba . Lane's talent and skill were         extraordinary and eventually he became famous enough that he was able to perform in his own skin.
In the late 1800s one of the most popular of the blackface                         performances was the adaptation of Uncle Tom's                         Cabin; an antislavery tale, it met with few objections even from anti-theater religious                         leaders. A mixture of minstrel show, circus, and spectacle; with trained dogs, ponies, and                         sometimes even a crocodile, it remained the most                         popular play in America for over a century. 
The American minstrel show was effectively dead by WW1, yet some                         old-timers continued to peddle the same blackface stereotypes later in                         vaudeville, films and television.                         It's one of the interesting twists of history that in the first half of the twentieth century, the main purveyors of the old-fashioned blackface                         minstrel tradition were Black performers, who'd began in show business                         wearing the blackface mask -- either literally or figuratively -- and were reluctant to give it up. 
But they also had little choice in the roles they                         were offered. Until well into the 1950s, Black male actors were limited to stereotypical roles: Coons, for example, Stepin Fetchit , Mantan                         Moreland , and Willie Best ; and Toms, the most                         famous were Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson .                         Likewise, the only film roles for Black women were maids and mammys, and                         the most famous mammy of all was Hattie McDaniel ,                         best known for her Oscar-winning role as "Mammy" in Gone                         With the Wind.
 
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was popular in the United States from the 1880s until the                         early 1930s. It offered a more family-friendly atmosphere than the                         variety shows that had come before, which catered mostly to rowdy                         working-class audiences. 
Vaudeville began at Tony Pastor's Opera House in New York's Bowery. By                         1900, it had become a nationwide network of hundreds of theaters and was              the dominant form of American mass entertainment. Each show was a variety of separate, unrelated acts -- short plays,                         musicians, acrobats, animal acts, dancers, magicians, and comedy                         routines -- grouped together on a common bill.  For a time, vaudeville was the                         most popular form of live theater but it died out with the advent of                         talking pictures. Many of the 20th Century's most famous performers got their start in Vaudeville including                         Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Jack Benny,                         and Bob Hope.
The heritage of blackface minstrelsy played a major part in the                         evolution of the song, dance, comedy acts and routines that vaudeville                         popularized, but actual performances in blackface were mostly relegated to a                         single skit or a song.  However blackface in vaudeville also                         provided opportunities for Blacks who performed in blackface. The                         success of Black comedians such as Ernest Hogan, Bert Williams, and George Walker                         opened the door for multiracial casts and for later black performers to take the stage without                         blackface.
 
Blackface on Broadway
The most popular Black stage performer of the early         1900s was a brilliant comedian named Bert         Williams , who performed a coon stereotype in blackface he called the         Jonah Man. Williams teamed up with George W. Walker, and billing themselves as "Two Real Coons" they         soon became one of the most successful comedy duos, while their act went         from vaudeville to Broadway and evolved into full-scale musical comedy. They produced, wrote and starred in In Dahomey (1902), the first Black musical comedy to open on Broadway.         After his partner died, Williams became the first Black to headline a         Ziegfield Follies show and the first Black comedian to produce and star         in his own silent films.
Bert Williams and George Walker
 
Silent Movies
The popularity of early film brought with it the                       propagation of racial stereotypes to large audiences around the world. Early silent movies such as The Wooing and Wedding of a                         Coon in 1904, The Slave in 1905, The Sambo Series 1909-1911 and The Nigger in 1915 offered                       the existing stereotypes through an                       exciting new medium. 
The premiere of Birth of a                         Nation in 1915 marked a change in emphasis from the pretentious and inept Jim Crow stereotypes to that of the                       Savage Negro. In D.W. Griffith's film, the Ku Klux Klan rescues the South,                       and Southern women in particular, from savage Blacks who have gained power                       over Whites with the help of Northern carpetbaggers. Griffith later                       admitted that his film was designed to, "create a feeling of abhorrence                       in white people, especially white women, against colored men."
 
Race                         Movies
Northern                       Blacks responded to Birth of a Nation by producing their own                       movies. "Race movies" were all-black affairs that were made for                       Black audiences. The most successful Black film producer of the first half                         of the Twentieth Century was a former railway porter and novelist named Oscar                         Micheaux. His Chicago-based Micheaux Film Corporation, which operated from                         1918–1940 produced over 44 films. Micheaux's most important film was Within                         Our Gates (1920), an uncompromising look at racial attitudes and prejudice                         among both Blacks and Whites, and it included both a rape and a                         lynching. 
The growth of truly independent Black film production                         was cut short by the Great Depression and the added costs associated with the change in                       technology from silent to sound. Few of the small independent Black film companies survived                         the changes and even fewer remained independent once Hollywood stepped in and took                       control of Black filmmaking by providing the financing. Race movies then changed from                       organic Black entertainment to knock-offs of standard Hollywood fare; like                       westerns, crime dramas and musicals; but featuring an all-Black cast. 
 
Racist                         Cartoons
Between 1930 and 1950, animators at Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, MGM, Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes, R.K.O., and many other independent studios, produced thousands of cartoons                       that perpetuated the same old racist stereotypes. This period is now known as the golden age of animation, and until the mid 1960s, cartoons were screened before all feature films. Later, these same cartoons would cycle endlessly for decades on broadcast TV or cable syndication. 
Eventually                       the worst of the racist cartoons were removed from television or heavily edited, but many are available on                       the internet if one knows where to look. To modern audiences, many of these cartoons are quite shocking and graphically illustrate how pervasive and institutionalized racism was in our culture just a short time ago. 
 
Radio
The most popular radio show of all time was The Amos 'n' Andy         Show. The characters were created by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll;                         two white actors with blackface and vaudeville experience. NBC began broadcasting Amos 'n' Andy on radio August 19th, 1929 and it was an instant success. It was the first radio program to be distributed by syndication in the United States.                         The show ran as a nightly radio serial from 1928 until 1943 and as a weekly situation comedy from 1943 until 1955. Portraying blackface racist stereotypes on radio was a bit of a challenge because                         there were no visuals.  The stereotypical voice characterizations needed to be                         even more exaggerated to help listeners distinguish between characters. 
Although Amos                         and Andy is cited most often as an example of blackface radio performances, there were                         many other stereotypical blackface characters in old time radio shows like                         Two Black Crows, Beulah and Aunt Jemima. Two Black Crows were based on                         coon stereotypes while both Beulah and Aunt Jemima were based on the "Mammy" stereotype.  Beulah was a supporting character on the popular Fibber McGee and Molly radio series and became a spin-off show.  The show was                         broadcast on radio from 1945 to 1954, and originally portrayed by White actor Marlin Hurt.                         Hattie McDaniel eventually took the role on radio and was one of four                         black women to play Beulah on the later television series.
Amos 'n' Andy  on radio and TV
 
Early                         Television and the                         Civil Rights Movement
When                       integration became Federal law in the 1950s it put small Black theaters                       out of business and that brought an end to the production of race movies.                       Blacks continued to play servant roles in mainstream movies but the                       only Blacks to appear in early television were those who performed                       racist caricatures. Much of early television's variety entertainment was                         transplanted from vaudeville, while many situation comedies came                         from radio. Popular radio shows like Amos and Andy and Beulah were an                         instant success on television. But it wasn't long before a backlash                         developed from Black leaders who objected to the racist stereotypes and especially                         the fact that they were the only portrayals of blacks on TV. 
Even as the TV series Amos 'n' Andy premiered in June 1951, the NAACP was in federal court       trying unsuccessfully to get an injunction to prevent CBS from televising it. In 1951, Amos 'n' Andy ranked 13th in                         the Nielsen ratings and in 1952 it won an Emmy award. The NAACP responded by initiating a boycott of                       its sponsor, Blatz beer. By                         April 1953 Blatz withdrew its sponsorship and CBS announced "The network has bowed to the change in national thinking." Yet the                         series was in syndication more than 4 times as long as it was broadcast on the network. It remained in syndication for 13                         years after it was withdrawn from the network schedule. As late as 1963, it still played on 50 US                         stations. The programs were finally locked in vaults as of 1966, but                         videotapes and DVDs continue to circulate among collectors. 
NAACP                       protests also resulted in blackface scenes being cut from TV showings of such films as Babes in Arms and Holiday Inn. 15 years passed from Amos 'n' Andy  until the introduction of another Black situation comedy                         (Julia in 1968). The series failed to gain an audience and that may explain why                         during the 1970's, stereotypical "coons and mammies" were again featured                         in shows                         such as Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, What's Happening and Diff'rent Strokes.
 
Blacksploitation                         (blaxploitation) Films
The 1970s also saw a resurgence of                       movies tailored to Black audiences in a genre called “Blacksploitation” films. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) starred Melvin Van Peebles, who also wrote, produced and directed.                       In the film, his character is a black prostitute who is forced to go on the run after he saves a young Black Panther who was being beaten by two                       corrupt White cops. The film is often credited with the invention of the                         Blacksploitation genre, because its success proved that there was a lucrative market for such                       films. The film cost only $150,000 -- most of it put up by Peebles -- and                       grossed over $15 million. Superfly, Shaft, Blackula, Black Caesar, Hell up in Harlem, Black Gestapo, Foxy Brown, and many others quickly followed. 
Melvin Van Peebles
Most Blacksploitation films were small, independent productions that dealt with       crime and the effects of illegal drugs on the inner cities. The cause was       usually portrayed as being a result of White racism and exploitation of poor Blacks. Most White cops and politicians were portrayed as corrupt, forcing Black antiheroes to take matters into their own hands.       Heavy on graphic sex scenes, gratuitous nudity and violence, as well as       stereotypes of pimps, whores, and black criminals, the films eventually       generated a backlash led by Black leaders that put an end to         Blacksploitation films by 1980.
 
An                         Enduring Legacy
In Bamboozled (2000), Spike Lee addresses the legacy of blackface minstrelsy, and raises       the question of who is wearing the blackface now. Many of the Black         characters in television comedies today are derived from the same racist stereotypes of         blacks that have existed since the days of minstrel shows.       The FOX Television sitcom, South Central (1994) was, in the words of Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Blackwell, "the Amos 'n' Andy of 1994." The Parent 'Hood (1995-2000), a program aimed at family viewers, relied on working class coon and mammy       caricatures for a good portion of its humor.
In Homeboys in Outer Space (1996), Flex Alexander and Darryl M. Bell,        "mercenary brothaa-aas, down for one anothaa-aaa" explore black stereotypes        and the galaxy in their Space Hoopty; a lowrider-style spacecraft equipped with a        computer named Loquatia spouting "ghetto sass." More recently,                         Fox Television's Method & Red (2004) transplanted hip hop recording artists Method Man & Redman                         to a White upper-class suburb in New Jersey, where they began "Puttin'                         the Urban into Suburban"  to the horror of their White                         neighbors. The Cleveland Show (2009-present) is basically Family Guy in blackface                         with a liberal helping of negative Black stereotypes. 180 years after "Daddy" Rice donned blackface makeup and sang Jump Jim Crow for                       white audiences, Black television comedies today are still relying on the same old coon and mammy stereotypes for cheap laughs.