I know it is actually Day 16, i’m trying to catch up after being sick and over-worked. So, considering all the ongoing resurgence of blackface on college campuses, i figured i’d share a little bit about the origins. The man credited as the first White persyn in the U.S. to perform in Black character is Thomas Rice, performing on stage in 1828. Although he was a widely known performer, whose character, Jim Crow, later became immortalized, blackface had an earlier start, going back before the American Revolution. Some early performances include Mr. Bayly and Mr. Tea’s “Negro Dance, In Character” on April 14, 1767 in New York, an unnamed White womyn’s “A Comic Dance, In Character of a Female Negro” on November 25, 1796, and “The Triumph of Love” in 1795, which was billed as a serious American drama. As author Jeffrey Stewart described the phenomenon, “Ironically the birth of an American political identity coincided with the emergence of a need among American Whites to denigrate African American characters through a caricature of Black dance.” What does this say about the reemergence of blackface, which has grown beyond just caricatures of Black people?

Blackface not only became popular on the stage, but eventually evolved into a virus infecting much of American culture through the late 20th century and arguably today. Blackface was used in newspapers, posters, tins, clocks, toys, cartoons, movies, it was everywhere. It would later serve as the inspiration for popular characters like Mickey Mouse.