The music that I play and often write about, old-time music, was the most popular music in the United States from the early 19th century until World War II. The Grand Ole Opry started with that music. It was played by Americans of all ethnicities. But there is a very dark side to that music, too, some of which is revealed in the N-word in titles and lyrics and other features. Sometimes, people change the tune names or lyrics; sometimes, they just decline to play them. One well-known example is “Dixie,” which was actually written by a freed African-American in Ohio about the plantation where she grew up in Maryland. (See Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem by Howard and Judith Sacks.) One of her neighbors was a man named Dan Emmett, who claimed credit for the song and who was one of the first blackface minstrels. Emmett appears in Rhae Lynn Barnes’ new book, published on March 24, 2026, which is probably the deepest dive into the history of blackface ever written and which positions blackface not only as a shaper of musical entertainment but as a major cultural shaper of white supremacist and racist views in the United States. Ironically, “Dixie” was very popular in both the North and the South, though it has become a symbol of southern segregation over time.

Barnes is an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton as well as the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. In her introduction, she describes how difficult her twenty years of research were because the documentation of blackface entertainment was so deeply buried and suppressed. Nevertheless, it was not a fringe phenomenon, and it continued into very recent history. It was extremely widespread, and it was cleverly designed to create an absurd but powerful image of African-Americans. The organization behind the spread of amateur blackface was the BPOE (Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks), which I will refer to just as the Elks. Indeed, the first name of the Elks was the Jolly Corks, but they changed their name to the Elks near the end of their first year in 1868. Five professional blackface minstrels were among the founders; the organization began in New York. The Elks continue to exist with 750,000 members in 1,700 lodges today, though that had 1.5 million members at their peak.

Blackface began with professional minstrels in the 1830s, and their characters, Jim Crow and Zip Coon, took on a much broader significance, as we know from the long period of Jim Crow segregation which began after Reconstruction and lasted at least into the 1960s. But its real growth came from amateur performances, which happened all over the country. An entire industry grew up to supply instructions on how to put on blackface, how to perform it, and even blackened cork in a range of colors. Professional blackface minstrelsy, like the Elks, began in New York, though Dan Emmett, as previously noted, was from Ohio.

Blackface performances almost always had three acts: the First Part, the Olio, and the Afterpiece. The First Part mixed acrobatics, music, and jokes. For instance, the “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke originated in blackface minstrelsy, and the answer was given in racist dialect, “Ta git tada odder side.” The Olio included monologues and comedy, which targeted Reconstruction African-American politicians, Black pastors, and Black scientists such as Booker T. Washington. Frederick Douglass was also a common target. The Afterpiece developed racist caricatures further. The intent was to create and reinforce an image of African-Americans which positioned them as subhuman and thus not worthy of rights or power. The point, however, is that what blackface minstrelsy reveals to us has nothing to do with the actual identity of African-Americans. What it tells us about instead is the completely false identity of so-called white Americans, which was created in opposition to the false portrayal of Blacks. It is thus created by the insecurity of those who identified themselves as whites, a category which initially excluded the Irish, Jews, and southern Europeans. In particular, blackface minstrelsy was a key tool in creating a white working class, or at least a class of workers who thought of themselves as white and thus superior to everyone else. In the American West, for example, there was also redface which targeted Native Americans.

While professional blackface minstrelsy largely died out by 1900, amateur blackface continued to grow and spread for many decades. The list of famous American entertainers who performed in blackface is very long. It includes Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, who were Jewish, James Cagney, Patsy Cline, Helen Hayes, Betty Grable, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Shirley Temple, Doris Day, Jimmie Rodgers, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Durante, and Frank Sinatra. Even Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Oscar (in the racist film, “Gone with the Wind“) and Sammy Davis, Jr. performed in blackface. John Lennon’s grandfather toured Ireland and the United States in a blackface minstrel show in the 1890s, and John’s first instrument was his grandfather’s banjo used in those shows.

Part One focuses on the Elks whose growth into a large and powerful organization was fueled by their promotion and sponsorship of blackface minstrelsy. Blackface began when most African-Americans were enslaved, but it began this new phase in order to keep the emancipated in their place. The next chapter is about the Five Points section of southern Manhattan, a slum which later became known as the Bowery. It was also a center of blackface minstrelsy. However, in 1862, New York state passed the Anti-Concert Saloon Reform Bill, which, among many other things, prohibited “negro minstrelsy.” Christy’s Minstrels moved to a theater uptown, and that helped to preserve blackface minstrelsy by transforming it and making it more palatable as family entertainment. Next comes “Jolly Corks.” In 1866, New York passed blue laws which prohibited the sale of liquor on Sundays, which was when minstrels networked to find more work. That need for a place to meet led to the creation of the Jolly Corks and then the Elks. Thus the original membership of the Elks were almost entirely blackface minstrel performers. This chapter also documents the rapid expansion of the Elks to cities across the country. New York was lodge number 1. San Francisco was number 3. Benevolent Blackface discusses the many benefits the Elks held to amass funds used to help members in need and to finance the expansion to new cities. In 1894, the Hartford, Connecticut lodge began to admit amateur blackface performers, a practice which spread throughout the organization. Note that minstrel shows often featured performers in drag. BPOE and Political Power covers the growing influence of the Elks. By the 1940s, the Elks had members in all political parties, the Supreme court, and army generals. Presidents Harding, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Ford were Elks. So were Barry Goldwater and Chief Justice Earl Warren. In 1957, Elks Magazine reported that 203 Elks were members of Congress and 55 were US senators. The Elks were also active in local police departments.

Part Two is entitled Booked, and it covers the vast array of publications and products which promoted blackface minstrelsy. T. S. Denison & Company of Chicago, which eclipsed the first big blackface publisher, M. Witmark & Sons of New York, mailed their catalog, “Everything for Your Minstrel Show,” to teachers around the United States from 1900 to 1965. One of the Witmarks founded ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which still exists today. The materials they distributed were not only guides to creating minstrel shows, they were filled with the most racist portrayals of African-Americans imaginable. Barnes coins a phrase to describing the burgeoning sales of this material, Blackface Capitalism. The programs for blackface minstrel shows contained ads for local businesses. Attendees used these to decide which ones to give their business to. White churches presented minstrel shows which mocked the practices of black churches.

Part Three is Uncle Sam and the Business of Blackface. It begins with the effect of the Great Depression on blackface performance, which continued everywhere, even in the labor camps of California. The migration of millions of African-Americans to the North and West was met with blackface minstrel shows to impose segregation on the newcomers. One of the programs of the federal government promoted blackface performances. Remember that FDR was an Elk, as were 299 members of the House of Representatives. The Bureau of Indian Affairs even supplied minstrel kits to Native American children in boarding schools. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the US military produced original blackface shows. The Federal Theater Project commissioned 56 new blackface scripts. Irving Berlin wrote “This is the Army” to entertain new recruits. He wanted the first act to be a blackface minstrel show, but the logistics of applying blackface to a huge cast prevented that. However, it ended with a tune performed in blackface. The US military had been using minstrelsy to entertain its troops for a very long time. They also revived Stephen Foster songs which promoted the same ideology as blackface. After the war, many veterans, both black and white, protested minstrel shows in veterans’ hospitals. In Columbia, South Carolina they walked out together, and the minstrel shows stopped.

There are several chapters about blackface minstrel shows held in the concentration camps where Japanese people were held in the United States during World War II and on US Navy blackface minstrel shows in Japan itself beginning in the 19th century. The reasons for these travesties are too complex to summarize here but are explained at great length in the book. However, it is worth noting that the background music for the Japanese radio broadcast of the emperor’s surrender in World War II was “Way Down upon the Swanee River.” There is a chapter about FDR’s death in which we learn that he spent the final week of his life working on a blackface minstrel show performed by polio patients near his Warm Springs Georgia retreat. This takes the book into a long survey of medical minstrel shows. That leads to a discussion of African-American blackface minstrel performers. “Carve Dat Possum,” for example, which appears on a contemporary old-time music CD, was written and performed by one such performer. Many such minstrels were lynched, and W. C. Handy actually performed in blackface to hide the fact that he was black. Then there is a chapter on Redaction which discusses how this long history of blackface minstrelsy was effectively written out of history, beginning with FDR’s death. For example, it was eventually revealed that his mistress was with him, but any mention of the Polio Minstrel Show he had been planning was carefully excised.

Part Six is about “Anti-Blackface Movements in American Suburbia.” Anti-blackface protests and lawsuits proliferated between 1940 and 1970, especially in California. The NAACP was instrumental in these protests which were also supported by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the National Association of Colored Women, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Urban League. Swedish economy Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 book, An American Dilemma, discussed the harmful effects of blackface minstrel shows. The NAACP had actually begun its fight against blackface in 1915 when it organized pickets of the racist film W. C. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” which includes white actors wearing blackface and depicts violent and brutish African-Americans. However, it was not until 1951 that the NAACP began to contemplate legal measures against blackface minstrelsy. One of the campaigners against blackface was C. L. Dellums, who was president of the NAACP in Alameda County, where I live. His son, Ron Dellums, represented us in Congress for many years. Another was Emmitt Dollarhyde of San Jose. Dollarhyde wanted to request a court injunction to prevent San Jose from “allowing private parties and racially segregated organizations, such as the Elks, to host minstrel shows on school or municipal properties.” The request cited a San Jose ordinance “prohibiting the use of city property for subversive or racially discriminatory purposes.” However, Thurgood Marshall, then the leader of the NAACP’s legal arm, opposed it because of a fear that such an approach could also be used against the NAACP.

Nevertheless, the fight against blackface minstrelsy spread in the grassroots with pickets and demonstrations everywhere. Another activist against blackface was Betty Reid Soskin, who was also known as the oldest US park ranger. Ms. Soskin was outraged by a blackface minstrelsy show presented at her son’s school in 1952. This book provides a detailed history of her life. Betty and her first husband, Mel Reid, had a record store in the East Bay which promoted all kinds of African-American music and even managed performers such as Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. The Reids bought land in an unincorporated East Bay suburb and enrolled their son, Rick, as the first African-American child in the local school. Then a neighbor knocked on her door with a flyer advertising a blackface minstrel show at Rick’s school.

A court dismissed the Dollarhyde case in 1954. However, the Compton, California Board of Education voted unanimously to ban minstrel shows in 1950. Compton’s students were 88 percent white. in 1954, the Stockton Board of Education did the same. Finally in 1959, the California Attorney General Stanley Mosk ruled that blackface minstrel shows in public buildings were unequivocally illegal, and the number of shows dropped tremendously.

Next is a discussion of a University of Vermont Kake Walk blackface minstrel show. I must question Barnes’ characterization of the origin of the cake walk. In fact, an article by Phil Jamison in the Old Time Herald (Vol. 3, no. 6, 1992-1993) revealed that enslaved African-Americans began the cake walk in order to make fun of the stiff and somewhat ridiculous way in which their white owners danced, i.e., it was an act of resistance. However, not realizing that, slave owners did appropriate it as their own, which is where Barnes’ discussion begins. This observation does not at all conflict with Barnes’ discussion of forced dancing. And the greater irony is that the blackface minstrels converted and refined this stylized way of dancing (blacks poking fun at the dancing of whites) into their racist portrayal of African-American dancing. The University of Vermont had the longest-standing black minstrel show in the country from 1893 to 1969. In a city which later elected Bernie Sanders as mayor and in a state which had a negligibly small number of African-American residents and which abolished slavery in 1777, the UVM Kake Walk helped inculcate students with the prevailing racist sentiments of the nation for seventy six  years.

Then we learn that President Gerald Ford had a long association with blackface minstrel shows, including when he became president. Ford also posthumously pardoned Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1975. The profoundly racist Woodrow Wilson also was involved with blackface. Other presidents with a history of blackface minstrel shows included Harding, Hoover, and Kennedy.

Blackface minstrel shows were finally expunged from most public venues in the 1970s. The Elks removed the white-only membership rule in 1974, though they did it more to save their money-making liquor licenses than because they had seen the light of social justice. Blackface still existed in extremist white supremacy organizations, but it was no longer the hugely popular phenomenon that it had been previously. Still, myriad reminders of its former ascendancy exist in building and street names, monuments, and many other places.

The book has two sections of photos and illustrations of blackface minstrel materials. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote “In Darkology, Rhae Lynn Barnes shines an unsparing spotlight on blackface…. Through fastidious research and the painstaking pursuit of archives and documents hidden from historians for decades, Barnes has written nothing short of an exposé of the structural racism that undergirds the very foundations on which America is built.” You will never look at Stephen Foster the same way again.

This book reveals an essential and influential piece of American history that the current powers that be do not want discussed and that they do not want you to know. If you wonder why white supremacy and racism have survived, and thrived, for so long, this book supplies a large part of the answer. If you want to understand how American society came to be the way it is, Barnes’ thorough and detailed study should be required reading.

Darkology was published by Liverlight (WWNorton) on March 24, 2026. To purchase the book, go here.