Blackface!

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:
 

The term Jim Crow originated in 1830 when a White minstrel show performer, Thomas "Daddy" Rice, blackened his face with charcoal paste or burnt cork and danced a jig while singing the lyrics to the song,
"Jump Jim Crow."

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.

Mammy is a source of earthy wisdom who is fiercely independent and brooks no backtalk. Although her image has changed a little over the years, the stereotype lives on. Her face can still be found on pancake boxes today.
 

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.

The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing, and always interested in White women.

The temptress. During the minstrel era, wenches were typically a male in female garb. In film, wenches were usually female mulattos.
 

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.

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 and film. 

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, large hats.

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 entertainments 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 zoo, with trained dogs, ponies, and 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 blackface stereotypes. It's one of the interesting twists of history that in the early years 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 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 was Hattie McDaniel.

Silent Movies

Movies have always been a powerful medium for the propagation of racial stereotypes. 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. But few of the small independent Black film companies survived the Depression plus the added costs associated with the change in technology from silent to sound, and eventually 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 black 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. 

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. 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 African-American 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 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 blaxploitation 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. 

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. 180 years after "Daddy" Rice donned blackface makeup and sang Jump Jim Crow for white audiences, Black families in television comedies remain negative, stereotypical portrayals that White television producers and distributors believe the majority of the American public imagines Black families to be.

Tyler Perry, currently the most prolific Black producer, director, actor, writer, and one-man multimedia conglomerate has populated many of his stories with classic stereotypes. His latest blend of low comedy, Madea Goes to Jail, is centered around a modern-day mammy character. The recurring character of Mabel "Madea" Simmons appears in much of Perry's work and is played in drag by Perry himself. Perry first introduced Madea in his 1999 play I Can Do Bad All By Myself and the character has appeared in many of his subsequent works. Perry has said he based Madea on an aunt who lives in Georgia, as well as on his mother and several other women he knew from his childhood.

In 2009, director Spike Lee criticized Perry's work, saying, "Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is 'coonery' and buffoonery...As African Americans, we're not one monolithic group so there is room for all of that, but at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it harkens back to Amos 'n' Andy." Perry has bristled at the criticism but he also has gone on to much more serious work, producing with Oprah Winfrey the critically acclaimed, Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, an uncompromising look at one Black girl's journey from sexual, physical and mental abuse, and teen pregnancy to adulthood and independence.

Rap Music

Negative stereotypes of Blacks are a staple of Black music videos that glorify gangsterism. In Rap music and videos, the minstrel-show plantation has been born again as the "hood." While the setting has changed from an idyllic plantation to the mean streets of urban America, the process is the same: a black culture is being marketed for white profit, with black performers portraying racist stereotypes. Performers claim that they represent authentic black America, while critics decry the glorification of ugly caricatures and its effects on Black youth.