AUTOMATED: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joesph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.
NATHAN: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory. Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains a history behind the headlines. I'm Nathan Connolly.
Each week, my colleagues Joanne Freeman, Brian Balogh, Ed Ayers and I explore a different part of American history. In this episode, we're bringing you a show that's a little different. We're going to play and extended interview about the history of minstrelsy and blackface in the United States.
And, a warning. This episode includes a recording that contains some offensive language.
Last week a photo surfaced from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's 1984 Eastern Virginia medical school yearbook page. The picture is of one person in blackface, alongside another in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Politicians across the country denounced the photo, including Virginia Attorney General, Mark Harring. But Harring later released a statement saying he also regrets donning blackface for a costume in 1980 while he was in school at the University of Virginia. When the news broke about Ralph Northam's yearbook photo, he admitted to being in the picture, and apologized. A day later, he held a press conference and said neither of the people in the photo were him.
RALPH NORTHAM: I stand by my statement of apology to the many Virginians who were hurt by seeing this content on a yearbook page that belongs to me. It is disgusting. It is offensive. It is racist. It was my responsibility to recognize and prevent it from being published in the first place. While I did not appear in this photo, I am not surprised by its appearance in the EVMS yearbook. In the place and time where I grew up, many actions that we rightfully recognize as abhorrent today, were commonplace.
NATHAN: Even if Northam wasn't in the photograph, it's important to note that in the 1980s, costumes like this were still in Northam's own words, commonplace.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: The thing that I thought was most interesting in the response to that image is so many people would write to me and say things like, "You know, he lived through the civil rights movement. Why would he do that?" And, "He has to know better. He lived through the civil rights movement."
NATHAN: That's historian Rhae Lynn Barnes. She recently published an op ed in the Washington Post about the history behind Northam's yearbook photo. I spoke with her about the picture, and it's link to the history of blackface minstrelsy. She says she wasn't surprised when she first saw the picture. That it's easy for people to forget how prevalent racism like this has been, even after the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: There's this sort of funny thing that we all now do in contemporary America, which is we sort of romantically, in our mind, like to associate or imagine that if we were alive in that moment, that we would have been on the civil rights side, but I say to these people, "You know when you look at the bus boycotts, or if you look at the lunch counter photographs, if you look at the children who were integrating schools, there were an enormous amount of people there who were taunting them, who were tormenting them, and those people are still alive in America today, too. So, the civil rights movement, we're almost doing a disservice to it, if we don't stop and think about the completely terrifying threats that they had to endure. I think that we have to hold that reality, as complicated as it is, in our memory of the civil rights movement.
When we think about these moments like the governor, it's like we don't know the environment that he grew up in, and what he heard, and the kind of jokes that he possibly heard. Maybe he actually was with progressive people, but when you get these all male spaces, where men are trying to perform for each other, it does seem to have a way of devolving into these stereotypes and these traditional forms.
NATHAN: There's a really important flowering of questions now about blackface, and it's history relative to Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, in whose yearbook appears this photo of presumably him in either blackface, or in some kind of Klan costume. I want to ask you about that pairing. Is there a way to understand this pairing in the longer history of American culture of the lampooned blackface figure with the Klansman?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: It's really interesting. The Klan did use blackface both as form of recruitment and also in their raids. Sometimes they would dress as African Americans to try and confuse a victim, and make them think temporarily that they were safe. In terms of armature blackface minstrel shows, for the most part, there are not Klan characters. Where I do see this, over and over, and over again, both blackface minstrel show, the traditional three part show, and representations of the Klan, really is only on college campuses. The yearbook photo is from a med school and my educated guess on this is that I think that college men are trying to be shocking. What is the only thing more shocking than blackface would be to represent the KKK.
In terms of the vast majority of shows, these millions of shows that are taking place, that's not normally happening. Because Virginia is a cosmopolitan place, due to it's close proximity to DC, I think that really one of the only reasons that we're seeing it on college campuses in Virginia. For the most part, other southern states are not participating in this art form.
I was going to mention a story that I found in Maryland, where a local high school was putting on and amateur blackface minstrel show. All of a sudden during intermission, the lights shut off, and they turned back on, the local Klan are on stage, and they basically used the amateur blackface show as a moment to recruit local community members into the Klan. I think that they assumed that essentially, if you were at a minstrel show, you must be racist and therefore would identify with the Klan. Some people in the audience were horrified. The reason we have the record of this is they wrote to local newspapers. They tried to essentially report this to the school district and to the principle. The principal was sort of like, "Well, somebody asked to make an announcement, but I didn't really know what was going on." Basically, at the end of the investigation, they pretty much determined that it was the people who ran the school who were actually the Klans members. That is a very clear moment where I have seen a crossover between the Klan and blackface.
NATHAN: Now you've written about amateur blackface minstrelsy as distinct from professional blackface. What's the difference between those two?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: Professional blackface minstrel shows were the number one form of entertainment in the 19th century. It was primarily focused in New York City, and the northeast. They would annually, primarily in summers, do nationwide tours. It was a small cohort of global blackface celebrities who really were the powerhouse of blackface entertainment. However, after the civil war, a lot of these professional minstrels, in a moment when we have technological advances in printing technology, photography, start to create a new genre called amateur blackface minstrelsy, which was primarily how-to blackface guides that were meant for everyday Americans to learn how to represent stereotypical African Americans and perform blackface themselves.
Why this is important is it switches where blackface takes place, from the theater, where the majority of Americans are sort of passive consumers of this genre, to proliferating to schools, fraternal orders, churches, youth groups. Everyday Americans are no longer just the consumers, but they are the participates. They are writing the scripts. They're purchasing and selecting songs. They're learning how to play it on the piano. They're mastering how to perform. Tap dance. They actually have to physically draw the exaggerated eyes and mouth on their own face. They have to learn how to walk stereotypically, talk in dialect. There really creates an embodied knowledge of this art form that previously did not exist.
NATHAN: What kinds of things are happening in this shows in terms of the stereotypes, of the themes or even the physicality of the performances, that make them such a sensation?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: They often have three acts. The first act is called, "The First Part" It's basically a musical comedy show. At the beginning there would be a parade, where the minstrels would go through the audience, and they would try to get the audience on their feet, to be stomping, to be clapping, to completely be immersed in this experience. Then the interlocutor, who is sort of the combination of a ring master, and a slave master, would announce, "Gentle be seated." There would be a half circle on the stage, and the men who were donning blackface would sit down simultaneously. They were often dressed in red, white and blue outfits, so there was this intimate link to americana and patriotism and this racial performance from the very beginning. They would be sitting in a half circle, and on the ends of each half circle you would have what's called the "end men." End men would play the bones, which is an instrument, or the tambourine. That's were the two characters get their name. Mr. Tambo, and Mr. Bones. The interlocutor is the straight man for the end men, who do typical jokes and dialect like, why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Things that we think of as very classic, childhood, iconic jokes and songs.
The number one composer was Stephen Foster. So a lot of songs like "Oh Susanna, Camptown Races, Old Black Joe, My Old Kentucky Home. These are the songs that are being sung. They're very romantic ideas about southern life and slavery, with really gruesome and horrific lyrics.
So they're really commenting on contemporary political stories. I tell my student's sometimes to imagine it as a combination of a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the Daily Show. It's a completely wild situation, where the audience is encouraged to participate. Everybody knows the songs. Everybody sings along. People dance. At the same time, you're getting political commentary.
The second part, is often called the "Oleo". This is where we have stump speeches, which are primarily stand up comedy routines where a single person would do a ["Bubblition" 00:12:04] speech, which is black dialect, which is a made up language for an abolition speech. They are specifically lampooning abolition, and black politicians during both antebellum and reconstruction, and taking on major themes of the day.
One of their favorite things to make fun of is actually temperance. You would have a politician who would be going on and on in these completely illogical rambling dialect speeches, and making a fool of himself to completely ridicule black politicians, but at the same time they're also making fun of white women. It's very much a masculine affair, a pro-white, masculine affair.
NATHAN: How were women represented in the minstrel shows?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: Whenever you have a woman represented on stage, it's a white man in blackface, and also drag. They typically wore padding during reconstruction to represent the mammy figure. But, during antebellum America, they actually were really sexual. They were normally called the "mulatto wench." I think that's a really important thing to take note of, because during slavery United States obviously, after the slave trade closed down, had to focus on reproducing slave labor. That include a lot of sexual violence against African American women, to force that reproduction of the slave population. In minstrel shows, during antebellum America, before the civil war, black women were always portrayed as sexy seductresses.
However, after the civil war, it completely flips. They become obese. They have to cover their hair in kerchiefs. They are completely desexualized. I think that that's an important thing to track and pay attention to in blackface minstrel shows in terms of how the stereotypes are reacting to what is happening in African American freedom struggles, both in terms of the politicians they're making fun of and also African American women as they gain rights.
NATHAN: What does the third and final part of the minstrel show look like?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: The third part is basically a short play or routine. In between these sections, I should say, they're interspersed with Stephen Foster songs, or other blackface dialect music of the time. They tended to be very sentimental. Songs about loss. I think this is part of why the shows, when they spread out of New York City are so relatable to people. In the mid 19th century, it's really a moment where a lot of people are separated. Whether they are immigrants who came to New York. If they're people who moved west, to try and pursue gold, or if they were trying to create a new life somewhere else. Then we have this at the height of the civil war as well, when we have millions of people who are displaced. All of a sudden, these songs that are supposed to be articulating longing and displacement from African American slaves who sold throughout the American South, suddenly begins to voice this longing and displacement that white people are experiencing but through blackface, in really kind of confusing and complex ways.
NATHAN: Now many people might not be aware of the fact that what we understand as a 19th and 20th century institution, Jim Crow, segregation, draws its name from the minstrelsy character of the early part of the 19th century.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: Correct.
NATHAN: I'm curious, given what you've already outlined about the relationship between violence or portrayals of even violent themes in the music, how we're to understand why Jim Crow came to define the form of legalized segregation in America.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: One thing that I think is really interesting, is 1896 is the year that we get Plessy v. Ferguson, which federalizes and permanently entrenches mass segregation in the United States. It's also the same year that we have projected film for the first time in New York City. Segregation, Jim Crow as an era, and issues a racial representation in mass culture are intimately linked from the beginning.
Jim Crow takes on a really interesting metaphorical role during this era, because Jim Crow was essentially a buffoon. He speaks in dialect. He supposed to be dim-witted. He is supposed to love and adore his life in slavery. Highly romantic about how in slavery, this sort of pro slavery ideology that slaves were given free housing. They were given free food. They just sauntered through the fields all day and sang. So, he's a very destructive stereotype because he represents African Americans as being happy-go-lucky, and bumbling through life, and carefree, when that's really the exact opposite of what is happening during Jim Crow America.
Something that I think is really interesting is, once the NAACP is founded in 1909, and Jim Crow as a legal institution expands throughout the United States, is they start staging a lot of protests. We especially see this in the 1963 march on Washington, where obviously it's famous for Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. You would see men in the NAACP dress up in tuxedos that could be interpreted either as a slave outfit, somebody who was a house slave, or a blackface minstrel, who they often did wear tuxedos, and also pallbearers. They would literally carry caskets through these protests that would say, "Jim Crow is dead." Or, "Kill Jim Crow." This fake body of Jim Crow, the character, came to symbolize this desire and freedom struggles to destroy the suppressive legal system.
NATHAN: Wow. So you have an ebb and a flow, in terms of uses of Jim Crow's name and iconography around Jim Crow. I have to imagine that, especially after the end of the civil war, that there's really an explosion of the uses of Jim Crow among whites, given their anxiety about African Americans new status and freed men.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: Yeah, and it's also important to remember that he has a counter part, Zip Coon. Zip Coon is the urban dandy representation of African Americans. During reconstruction, and post civil war, he really takes off because of the stereotypes that are shifting for African Americans, especially as we see a mass migration of freed black African Americans who are moving to places like Atlanta. Then throughout the 20th century, as we have the great migration, when six million African Americans move north and move west, places like Chicago. In the amateur form, Zip Coon is renamed "Rastus," and he's basically this sexually aggressive, domineering, very leering character who is in the city. He's always wearing mismatched clothing, but tries to dress very sophisticated. Both Jim Crow and Zip Coon have this sort of constant stereotype that no matter how desperately they try to integrate into white America, or be professional, or be successful, they always just get it slightly wrong, and that's why they're so funny, that it's comical, every attempt to assimilate and professionalize.
It's really entrenching, or crystallizing African Americans as something that's backwards, something that affiliated with the south, even when they're clearly not anymore. The NAACP uses the phrase that blackface makes African Americans a thing apart in American civilization and it really focuses on that objectification and this issue of culturally separating just as you are in the south with legal segregation, and putting them aside.
NATHAN: As with so many other things in American society, this is also a gender evolution, the way that Jim Crow and even Zip Coon or the mammy figure is unfolding as part of this blackface cast of characters, they're very consistent gender themes running through it. Yeah?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: Correct. Before the civil war, Jim Crow and Zip Coon are not sexually deviant, they're actually sort of emasculated. After the civil war, yes, you're correct. He becomes sexual, threatening, and that really does track with the stereotypes as we see before and after the civil war. That after the civil war, there is this narrative that black men are trying to rape white women, and that we need to police them. It's very tied with lynching culture. This really becomes and important stereotype in terms of how cultural ideology is informing these stereotypes.
Probably the most famous example would be "Birth of a Nation," which is really focused on these ideas of the black male rapist. As I said, technology and blackface have been intimately linked. Birth of a Nation is the first major film in the United States and then when we see radio's first major show, "Amos and Andy." The first talkie, "the Jazz Singer." The first cartoon with synchronized sound is "Steamboat Willie." Some historians argue that Mickey Mouse is somewhat of a blackface character, but I think the more important and direct connection is that the song that's played throughout Steamboat Willie, is actually Zip Coon's song. So, there's a lot of direct connections again, and again, and again, perpetuation these stereotypes in really innocuous ways which is part of why Americans don't understand, especially white Americans in the first half of the 20th century. That they're consuming really horrific stereotypes that are not accurate, but because they're packaged in this way of being technologically progressive and entertaining. It's very deceitful.
NATHAN: The point that I think some people might be also surprised to learn is that this kind of pageantry, and the racial stereotyping is not confined to working class corners. That there are performances in bank boardrooms, for instance. The City Bank of New York has Jim Crow minstrelsy shows, as described by the historian Peter Hudson. Or there's a way in which Jim Crow minstrelsy winds up certainly being a critical feature of college campuses in ways that are sadly quite germane still to current events. How might you describe the class dynamics of these kinds of performances, and where they wind up?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: In the early 19th century, it is very tied to the working class. However, by the time we get amateur blackface minstrelsy and this print empire, it really changes where it's completely democratized. So you don't really have a distinction anymore between who is performing. The only really major distinction is that in the 20th century, it's rare, although they do happen to find a group of women performing. It's typically seen as a male performance genre that women help participate with. They might design the costumes. They apply the makeup. They are in the audiences in the 20th century in substantial numbers, but it's really seen as this male bonding experience.
So, one thing that happens that really is crucial to democratizing it, is it becomes federalized during the Great Depression, especially with things like the Works Progress Administration, who really recognizes that in this moment of crisis, they wanted Americans to remember their past. The WPAs really entire point was to identify things that were the epitome of American culture. Stephen Foster, in that moment, happened to fall into public domaine, it was free to use any of that music. Because it was so identified with the American past, this is the moment where it really integrates all of American society. That's the moment when we really start to see it in schools, but also on college campuses.
It gets to the point, by the time you get to World War II, that you have people who have grown up in families where intergenerationally this was taught in these every day spaces. Civic institutions, universities, and also these elite spaces like you mentioned like banks. That's part of why, again, you end up with people who don't understand that this is a form of ridicule, which seems incredibly obvious to you or me, but when you learn about it in the context of the school, and if you're in a place where you are rarely interacting with actual African American people, this is sort of your one exposure to African American culture as you've been taught in a classroom. A lot of people write to the NAACP, and also have written to me today, people who did this in 40s, 50s and 60s and said, "I had no clue. I honestly thought that I was learning about spirituals or gospel music, but it turns out that these are all Stephen Foster songs written by a white man.
NATHAN: If we were to understand how the history of slavery, minstrelsy, and segregation played out in places like Virginia or in the upper south, or even on elite college campuses. How might we make sense of what we saw in the use of blackface in the Northam case?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: It's actually sort of a unique situation because it is quite rare to have blackface in the American south, but Virginia does seem to be a place where on college campuses specifically, it has a very rich and intense history. UVA is a school that is completely dependent on slave laborers. Slaves build the school, they operate the school. The slaves sort of free themselves by the end of the war, because most of the male population goes to the war. There's nobody really to regulate them, or to keep them in check. Since it's a cosmopolitan place, they sort of just piece out.
What happens during reconstruction is you no longer have this massive free labor source, so there's this turn to amateur blackface minstrelsy to fund raise. I think it's important to say here, because some people are like, "Why would you select that of all things?" This is an all male tradition, and because you have these characters like Jim Crow, and Zip Coon, who ... Their costumes and outfits are so stereotypical, and they're supposed to be dirty. You essentially need no money to put on a minstrel show. You pretty much just need dirty clothing, which most frat boys have access to. So, the cost to put on a minstrel show is basically nothing.
The format is quite loose, in that it actively encourages the insertion of local jokes, so you might make fun of the local mayor, when you're talking about the politicians. You might make fun of a professor that you all know. This sort of insiderness, it's not just about whiteness. There's also this local element to it, which really thrives and is important on college campuses. This is sort of a dark, underbelly of it. I think that that's a crucial piece to it.
Surprisingly they made substantial amounts of money, because you have no production costs, so it's pure profit. Some of these shows are making up to like $20,000.00 during reconstruction. That would be amazing on a college campus today. That money is then reinvested into developing the campus, and the local community. But, it's important to state they're only being invested into white institutions. So, you have this strange feedback loop where you have the use of black bodies, fictional black bodies, who are imitating slaves, who are no longer there, generating substantial sums of money that are being reinvested into this new segregation system, and all white institutions, which is only strengthening local, political power in the Jim Crow south.
NATHAN: If we think about the 1980s as a moment where you have a lot of partricin politics about what the meaning of the post civil rights movement is. Obviously you think about it as a moment when Martin Luther King Day is written into law. There are concerns about the urban crisis, unemployment, affirmative action. Is there something about blackface as an apparently harmless form of play, that makes it common, not just to be part of campus life, but also to get past the editorial review of say yearbook designers? It's not just about the photo, but it's about the fact that these are published. Or you think about old cartoons, like Tom and Jerry that are running on syndication deep into the 1980s and 90s. Again, it's kind of harmless. Is there something about those kinds of [trobes 00:29:18] that are such a different level of engagement with the history of American race relations that makes them more acceptable?
RHAE LYNN BARNES: It's interesting because in the 1980s, the commercial print industry for amateur blackface minstrelsy is already dead. The civil rights did successfully kill it. But we do, as you say, have these cartoons, Stephen Foster music continues to be a part of every curriculum for pre-school, elementary school and so it takes on this really insidious and innocuous form, where it's sort of everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
One thing that I argue is essentially part of why that image is so shocking in the 1980s is because in a lot of ways the African American women in the civil rights movement did make blackface taboo by the 1980s in its direct form, meaning yes you have these sort of echos in cartoons, but in terms of actual people donning blackface and publicly performing it or doing it in college campuses in an organized way that would be advertised, that is definitely taboo. From that image, without having the specifics, I would guess that that's actually probably a private party, or a small thing that wasn't publicly advertised as a blackface show. That's how I would interpret that image.
NATHAN: You've written that blackface has "proved to be a hard cultural habit to break." I'm curious given your perspective on this art form in the long view what you imagine is necessary or possible in terms of breaking the habit in terms of blackface.
RHAE LYNN BARNES: My work basically argues that the century between the civil war and the civil rights movement was the era of Jim Crow. What I mean by that is not just the legal system, but also the proliferation of amateur blackface minstrelsy and then, as we've discussed, you get it in these other forms in mass culture after the 1960s.
One of the things that I think is ironically happening is we have Americans who are really concerned about blackface. They know that this is taboo. They know that this is wrong. But we've lost the language and the through line to articulate why this is so upsetting and jarring and wrong. The answer to me is really we need to openly talk about, and teach the history of blackface. There's actually, if you start Googling around, been a series of high school teachers in the United States in the last 20 years, who lost their jobs simply for trying to teach the history of blackface. I don't mean teachers who were showing up in blackface on campuses, but literally just lecturing on the history of blackface. It was so censored, and seen as so taboo, we didn't even have conversations.
Then you do have younger generations who don't understand some of the negative things that they physically embody. Sort of the way it crops up right now is a lot of times costumes of hip hop artists, or hip hop parties. Some of these younger students don't understand the longer lineage of what they're doing, but we all know the song lyrics of Oh Susanna. We all know, why did the chicken cross the road. There's these cultural touchstones. That takes the cake. It was a cakewalk. All of these things are very intense references to the minstrel show tradition that we don't fully understand exactly because we're not teaching it in schools.
My hope is that, especially at the college level, American cultural history and it's importance and it's direct connections to legal systems, political structures and systemic white supremacy will be taken more seriously and integrated into the curriculum.
NATHAN: Rhae Lynn Barnes is a professor of history at Princeton University. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, Darkology: When the American Dream Wore Blackface.
Funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation is helping Virginia Humanities and BackStory, change the narrative of race and representation. BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities.
Major support is provided by and anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Provost Office of the University of Virginia, the Johns Hopkins University, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Authur Vining Davis Foundation.
AUTOMATED: Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities, and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and american studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.