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HISTORY OF BLACKFACE

UNMASKING THE PAST

During the vaudeville era in the United States, minstrel shows became a widely popular form of entertainment. White performers, in particular, would don blackface—using burnt cork to darken their skin, painting exaggerated lips, and wearing woolly wigs. These performances weren’t just theatrical—they were deliberate distortions. They caricatured enslaved Africans and free Black Americans, turning real lives and cultures into comic relief for white audiences. Minstrelsy helped cement harmful stereotypes and racist imagery that didn’t disappear with time—they evolved. And the echoes of those performances still shape perceptions today.

Blackface was a popular form of theater entertainment in the United States starting around the 1830s and lasting roughly 100 years.
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An actual make-up guide from the early 1900s, published by DENISON (COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY EBEN H. NORRIS)

The 1951 film "Yes Sir, Mr. Bones" shows several EXAMPLES OF A BLACKFACE MINSTREL SHOW:

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