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Chapter 1: What sparked Rhae Lynn Barnes' research on blackface?
At this year's Oscars, one battle after another took home the award for Best Picture, Michael B. Jordan won for Lead Actor, and the telecast had plenty of jokes at Timothee Chalamet's expense. Listen to a recap on Pop Culture Happy Hour via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
If you're a well-known public person, whether you're a performer or a politician, if someone uncovers that you've worn blackface at a party or on stage or in a college fraternity, you're going viral, and it will be a scandal. But white people posing in a racist depiction of black people was much more popular than you might think. The new book, Darkology, uncovers the hidden history of blackface.
My guest is the author, Rayland Barnes.
Chapter 2: How did amateur blackface shows become popular in America?
In the late 1800s, as professional minstrel shows were becoming obsolete, amateur blackface shows became one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and that's where Barnes' focus is. Many groups like fraternal orders, clubs, PTAs, police and firemen's associations, and soldiers on military bases put on their own blackface shows.
Chapter 3: What role did FDR play in the history of minstrel shows?
FDR was a fan of minstrel shows and even co-wrote a show to be performed by children who had polio like he did. During his presidency, he created the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs to millions of people during the Great Depression, but also provided minstrel sheet music to schools and helped fund minstrel productions.
Chapter 4: Why is the history of blackface considered hidden?
There's lots of surprising and disturbing history in darkology. Raelynn Barnes is an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University and a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. She grew up in Orange County, California, an area where blackface thrived. Raelynn Barnes, welcome to Fresh Air. Your book is really fascinating.
Why is this history of amateur blackface so hidden? Thank you so much for having me. So I think there's a few reasons that the history of blackface is so hidden.
Chapter 5: How did blackface evolve during the Civil Rights Movement?
Ironically, it's a huge success of the civil rights movement. Civil rights activists protested against blackface and tried really hard to strip it from the school curriculums and everyday performances where it was really common currency. And by doing so, they turned blackface into something that was culturally taboo. And so it became so taboo, in fact, that the history of it is no longer taught.
But in terms of the material evidence, the story is more complicated. Blackface was the number one entertainment form in America in the 19th and 20th centuries. And when these materials were cataloged by libraries, it was at the height of Jim Crow America, Jim Crow being the name of the most famous blackface character.
And Jim Crow libraries had no interest in cataloging and collecting white supremacist culture because that was the air that they breathed. It wasn't something that they felt needed to be protected and collected because it was just... what was happening every day.
Chapter 6: What influence did the WPA have on minstrel songs?
Well, something I found really interesting is that you went to libraries, to the Library of Congress, and there were at least two black librarians that didn't want you to see the blackface material that they had because they thought it was so offensive. What was your reaction to that? I was surprised to see that. Yeah. So this was during the Obama administration around 2013.
And I had this really unique experience because the Library of Congress is the people's library. And so their responsibility is to try and protect and make sure
pretty much any title that's ever been published in the United States available and I kept calling different primary sources and it kept coming up missing on shelf item missing missing on shelf and I asked a librarian what's going on how can 70 or 80 books just be missing and she took me aside and
She gave me almost an hour interview, for lack of a better word, trying to understand what did I want to do with this collection? What was I trying to understand?
Chapter 7: How did blackface performances impact American culture?
What were my intentions? And so I explained to her that I had been working on this for years and that I was trying to uncover this massive hidden history of white supremacy in America and that had been culturally expressed.
And she admitted to me that in 1987, she had personally hid some of these books, removing them from where they should be in the storage, because in the 1980s, there was a Klan revival in Virginia that And with the sort of rise of Xerox and photocopying machines, a lot of Klan's members and white supremacist publications that were thriving in the United States in the 1980s and 90s
were trying really hard to revive blackface history and performances, and they understood it as important forms of, they called it white folk culture. And so she wanted to know what I was doing. Was I trying to do something nefarious with these materials? And once she understood the research I was doing, she was very proud of me. And a few hours later, she came up with a
Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the history of blackface today?
cart packed to the brim with all of the material that I had been hoping to see. You know, at the Library of Congress, when you were initially denied access to the books about blackface and other documents, do you think you would have gotten a different reaction if you were black? I'm not sure.
So an interesting thing about blackface material and why it's censored is it's considered so taboo and so dangerous that even looking at it can do significant harm and damage, right? when it's placed out of context. And so I know other Black scholars who are working on this material who have also had trouble accessing this material.
And that's part of why I had to ultimately create, in some ways, a new collection that was not being regulated. So I actually don't think that it was racially motivated. I think it was actually fear of the material itself.
You know, it's interesting that we're talking about this at a time when President Trump is basically trying to erase parts of history that he thinks don't positively reflect on America and patriotism. And, of course, everything that's, quote, woke has got to go. And he's been like, you know, he and his administration have been ordering like taking down statues and commemorative plaques.
that recognize the harms of slavery. And he doesn't want textbooks to, you know, show the brutality of slavery. And, you know, it's very disturbing to see a president trying to erase American history. I'm sure you're paying a lot of attention to that. Absolutely.
Historians right now are in somewhat of a culture war in that it is our patriotic duty as American citizens and as patriots to help make sure that the American public has access to our history in all of its complexity. And the truth is, is that you can't understand the victories and the triumphs without understanding how far Americans had to push. And I think that's especially true of blackface.
When we didn't adequately understand how long blackface Blackface was a mainstay in American culture because many historians believe that it had died out by 1900, when in fact only accelerates and increases up through the 1970s. And so if you just say, oh, it just died out, it was no longer in fashion, then what you're losing is the incredible, dangerous, and brave work of Blackface.
Thousands of black and white mothers across the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s of students who stood up during Jim Crow America and said, this is not okay. We are humans. We deserve dignity. And we want you to understand our history. But this, this is not our history. This is white supremacist history. So let's talk about early blackface before it became amateur blackface.
And let's start with Jim Crow, who is one of the first blackface characters. And Jim Crow laws in the South after Reconstruction changed. that legally separated black people and white people. So those laws, Jim Crow, were named after this character. So tell us a little about how the character was portrayed. Absolutely. Jim Crow is created by a failing actor named T.D.
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