Culture
Blackface's Lasting Legacy in America with Tyrone Howard
In this episode of American History Hotline, host Bob Crawford is joined by UCLA professor Tyrone Howard to explore the troubling legacy of blackface in America. They delve into its origins in 19th-ce...
Blackface's Lasting Legacy in America with Tyrone Howard
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Some of the same people who say that was an ugly part of our history,
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we should not have to talk about that.
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Or some of the same people who say we should remember the Civil War.
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So I always ask, why is it that we want to remember the Civil War,
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but we want to forget slavery?
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And I think you cannot talk about the history of this country
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and only picking shoes the parts that you want to tell.
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Part of what you have to do if you want to understand history and its totality,
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you have to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.
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The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky,
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went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist,
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and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
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Merk and y'all better work to hell up.
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Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
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Listen to Graves County on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And to binge the entire season, add free, subscribe to Laval for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
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I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight,
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and so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.
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A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old,
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and a centenarian rediscoveres a love lost 80 years ago.
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How can a 101 year old woman fall in love again?
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Listen to Heavyweight on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Introducing IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story,
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a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care.
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It grew like a tech startup,
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while Kind Body did help women start families,
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it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.
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You think you're finally like in the right hands?
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You're just not.
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Listen to IVF Disrupted, the Kind Body Story,
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on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast.
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I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only Cardi B.
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My marriage, I felt the love dying.
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I was crying every day.
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I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had.
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This **** was not given to me.
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I worked my ass off for me.
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Listen to on-purpose, with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app,
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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There's a viral sickness in Abustown.
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You must excise it.
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Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.
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From I Heart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke,
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this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast
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sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe,
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starring Jules State and Ray Wise.
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Listen to Havoc Town on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey there, American History Hotliners.
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Your host Bob Crawford here, happy to be joining you again
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for another episode of American History Hotline.
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Remember, send us your questions to American History Hotline at gmail.com.
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That's American History Hotline at gmail.com.
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Okay, now to today's question.
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It's about menstrual shows and blackface.
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Here to help me answer this question, today is Tyrone Howard.
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He's a professor in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA.
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Tyrone, thanks for joining me.
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Thank you for having me on today, Bob.
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Okay Tyrone, here's the question.
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We were hoping you could help us answer.
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It's from Lawrence in Tacoma, Washington.
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He writes, I hear a lot of people on TV and social media asking what the big deal is
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about a white person painting their face black.
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To me, this just viscerally feels wrong,
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but I don't actually know the history of blackface in America.
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Why is it so bad?
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Now Tyrone, we've got a little bit of time to dig into this question.
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So let's get back to the origins of blackface.
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Where does this first come from?
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Sure, so this is where we've got to be
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students of history to understand where blackface comes from and why it's deeply, deeply racist.
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Because the history of blackface goes back to the 1800s in this country.
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And it was really sort of rooted in this theatrical practice where white performers
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use this makeup and had these exaggerated features to essentially mock and dehumanize black people.
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And part of this is also rooted in the fact that when you go back to the 1800s,
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of course the United States is still for the most part of that century rooted in slavery,
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which is about dehumanization, which is about sort of seeing black people as inferior.
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Therefore, the imagery of black people is one that is rooted in their intellectual
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and superiority, being lazy, being sort of uneducated. And so these portrayals essentially
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reinforce black inferiority because what they did was they oftentimes had damaging stereotypes
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that were seen as ways to mock and laugh and make fun of black people
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that their grammar was improper. They couldn't think critically.
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Their communication skills were lacking. And so basically, it was a way to send this larger
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message to society that these people are not our equals. These people are not
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the serious in terms of being thinkers and doers and people who could solve problems.
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And so they're deeply troubling because it takes us to a time in this country where we mock
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and we ridicule and we dehumanize and we devalue black people. And it was all through the context
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of entertainment to make other white people laugh at how a subhuman or how unequal black people were.
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And in a country that claims to be centered around equality and claims to be centered around justice,
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these deeply, deeply racist portrayals of black people have done harm for many, many centuries
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in this country in any efforts to try to somehow explain away black faces, anything but racist fall
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woefully short in my opinion. People know Jim Crow as an era of American history marked by segregation
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and racial violence. But the origin of this caricature, Jim Crow, it comes from the menstrual shows.
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Who or what was Jim Crow?
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No, this is another good question that I think that warrants our investigation because we do
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associate Jim Crow laws tied to what happened in the 19, I mean the 1900s with regard to segregated
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facilities, segregated schools, segregated housing. But again, Jim Crow is a character that was
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created by someone named Thomas Daddy Rice, who was again a menstrual performer who used black
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face to characterize black people in the 1820s, 30s and 40s. And so this name became popular because
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it was again, it was a derogatory sort of depiction of black people that operated under the name
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Jim Crow. And so Jim Crow was seen as this stereotypical black person. And what you have to understand
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on this Bob is that part of the menstrual show was to offer these really just grossly
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sort of pronounced facial features to reinforce these stereotypes that black people were more
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animalistic. They weren't really human. And again, what's important to know about these depictions
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in Jim Crow in particular is that anytime you see a people as less than, then you are more
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okay with them being treated as less than. So when you think about the context and the time and
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historical place we were in the 1830s, this country was up to its ears in slavery. The economic
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foundation of this country was built on slavery. And so when you think about the brutal inhumane
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treatment that black people experience, one can say, how can we be okay with the treatment of
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any group of people in that way? But if you depict and you characterize and you put out an image of
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these people as less than, then you feel okay with their treatment because you see them as not
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being your equal. So Jim Crow is a big part of this sort of menstrual history that depicted like
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people as being less than. Okay, so you mentioned Tom Rice was it? Yes.
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Yes. The character of Jim Crow. Okay. So you just you just shocked me a little bit because you said
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1820s, 30s and 40s, I didn't realize menstrual shows went back that far. So first of all,
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you know, you've talked about the characteristics of the menstrual show in the the
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demeaning behavior of these actors and performers. So maybe like how did they interact with enslaved
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people? Like how did they how did they observe because some of them I've read before that some of
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the melodies were actually came from from enslaved people. So how did they observe enslaved people
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and and maybe in answering that question, I'm giving you a lot here, I apologize, but um
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define, you know, define menstrual at the same time. Yes, so menstrual is again a way in which you
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think about any group of people, but in this particular case, we're talking about black people
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who are seeing only through this entertainment lens. And I raised that because part of what I
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think is important for the audience to understand is that that historically when you think about
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racial depictions of black people, they are oftentimes sort of put forth as folks who are only
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worthy of being entertainers to white audiences, meaning that when whites wanted to be able to hear
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singing when whites wanted to hear dancing, you bring out black folk and you'd have them perform
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for you in ways that kind of sort of brought them joy, brought the the audience, white folks joy.
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And so there was there was singing and there was dancing. And part of the the the complexity of this
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Bob's we have to understand is that singing and dancing has has always been part of the black
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experience, not just here in the United States, but even in other parts of the world where black
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people are, be it the Caribbean, be it in South America, be it in Central America, be it in Africa.
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So that is part of the culture. But anytime someone's culture is mocked and sort of deemed as
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derogatory or seen as a way just to entertain only what it doesn't take into account is that those
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songs and those dancing oftentimes are rooted in a rich culture around resistance,
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a rich culture around recognizing ancestors, a rich culture around expression of different
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ways of being. And so there's a rich complex history and culture that's totally not understood when
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it comes to what menstrual shows are represent. So it's important to note that as we do our history
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and as we understand menstrual shows and Jim Crow that any way that D contextualizes it from the
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the primary purpose of what is set out to do, which was to dehumanize and to reinforce
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this ideal or this notion of black inferiority, anything less than that is incomplete.
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Sounds like what you're telling me here is that singing and dancing was like you said, it was
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rich part of the black experience, the black culture. And that by white people mocking it,
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for entertainment, it demeaned everything. First of all, you've demeaned these people by bringing
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them here and enslaving them. Yet they can still experience joy and express their faith through
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strong dance. And then you demean that too. Absolutely. And that's the to me, the really sad and
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unfortunate and one of the tragedies of this is that when we talk about black people in the United
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States, the horrific nature of what slavery did was it just dehumanized people, it sort of ripped
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away their culture, their religions, their beliefs, their structures. And so the resilience of black
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people was that we will still sort of recreate our own traditions, our own customs, even in the
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context of inhumane conditions such as slavery. And so if you try to take those behaviors,
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those rituals, those customs, and that gives you some similance of hope in the face of such brutal
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oppression, and then even that's taken to your point, Bob. And that's mocked. And that's where
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it acuted essentially trying to take away all elements of those characteristics that help people
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to be whole and human. So we talked about the popularity of these shits. So we have a basic
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understanding that is south, south slavery, south racism, north abolitionist. That's not in the
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19th century. That's not completely true, is it? No, because I think we tend to characterize
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the country in the 1800s, slavery is in the south only, but we know that while there were
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states in the north that did not sort of operate based on slavery, hence how the Civil War came to be,
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when one of the reasons why the Civil War came to be. But let's be clear, this is about attitudes and
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beliefs about black people. And some of those attitudes and beliefs about black people were just
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a stringent in the north where slavery did not exist as they were in the south where slavery did
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exist. So I think we have to push back on this notion that there was this really progressive way
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of thinking and being that was in the north about how folks viewed black people that wasn't the
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case in the south. This was about the ways in which black and theory was a staple in the first
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couple of centuries of this country that I think we're still seeing the remnants of folks trying to
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get out of today. Something that I've learned and correct me on this if I'm off base, but even a
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lot of the people who worked for anti-slavery in the north, the whites who were anti-slavery,
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they weren't for equality. Yeah, this is a good point and that's very true because part of what you
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have to recognize that there were lots of northerners and I need to be fair, there were probably
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southerners too, who saw the brutal nature of slavery and said that's wrong and saw the ways in
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which families were separated and the ways in which people were exploited for their labor and not
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compensated for their labor, they felt that this is not a just and humane thing to do.
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And so that is one set of beliefs. However, many of those saying people who thought that was wrong
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felt like yes, these people, black people should not be subjected to this. However, that doesn't mean
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that they're my equal because again, sort of baked into the fabric of this country from 1619 when
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some of the first enslaved Africans were bought here, is that these people are unequal to us. When I
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said unequal to us, I mean unequal to white people. So I can feel two things can be true at the same
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time. I can feel like this is wrong. This should not happen. This institution calls slavery. But at the
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same time, I don't think these people are equal to me either. I just don't think they should be
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subjected to this kind of harm and that type of thinking did exist in the north and to a
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to a to a degree as well in the south as well. So where were these shows more popular? The the
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white man like Tom Rice, who put on black face and he performed songs that were at least derivative
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of of songs that enslaved people would sing. So I had read before that in New York City, for example,
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like they people. Yeah. People like people would be falling out of there like they pack in to see
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these shows white people. And it would be like watching the Beatles in 1964. I mean people, I've read
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accounts of people going crazy for menstrual shows. So where were there any in the south and
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where were they most most popular? Yeah. So this is what we have to be mindful of that. When you think
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about menstrual shows, these were oftentimes put on for some of the elites at the time. These were
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put on for folks who had means. And just like folks might say today, I want to go see a concert of
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one of my favorite entertainers to hear them sing the songs that I really enjoy. That's how
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menstrual shows were seen back in the 1830s and 40s. Right? You had individuals who felt like we're
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going to go see this show that's that's comedic, but also rooted in again this this this sense that
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we're going to laugh at what these people are. We want to see white sort of mimic and sort of
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and really try to portray the inferiority of life people. And we don't we don't really sort of
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critique the fact that there were people who were like you said earlier so called progressive for
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the times in terms of thinking that slavery was wrong that there was no place for slavery,
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but who would still participate in the watching and and pay money to see these shows that were
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deeply deeply racist. And so part of what we have to kind of groups with is that even in this moment
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that we have to push people to think that just because you say you don't believe that the
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mistreatment of a group of people is is is is okay. But if you still in some way shape reform
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engage in the participation or the support of any kinds of representation of black inferiority
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or the inferiority of any group of people that the two don't coexist together. So at the time we
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saw large theaters would put on these shows of white actors. You know it would be featuring
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songs and dances and oftentimes have different kind of comedic routines associated with them.
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And so I think it's important to know that that this is not something that was done only in say poor
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rural communities at the time. Large cities like New York and Washington DC and in Boston you saw
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menstrual shows taking place. And that's why I think we have to talk about the complexity of this
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not just being something that happened in the South, but it happened throughout the the north as well.
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Were menstrual shows in essence a form of propaganda for Chattel slavery?
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Absolutely. I mean part of what part of what we have to understand is that that slavery while
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it was the economic foundation of this country in its formation it also had to be
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framed in a way that told everyday people this is okay. The mistreatment of these people
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is acceptable because they're not like us. They're inferior to us. They are not just intellectually
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inferior and I always find the whole depiction of enslaved Africans especially the notion of them
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being lazy as an interesting one because they were depicted at the time of being lazy yet they were
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the ones providing intense labor in the building of this country. So these were folks who worked 12,
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13, 14 hour days, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year for no compensation. So how can we say
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that they're lazy on the one hand but yet they are working tirelessly harder than any other group
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of people at the time? So I think in order for that sort of institution to thrive you had to be
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able to tell people that not only these people intellectually inferior, not only these people lazy
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but also in this is the important part as well. These people also can be violent and that's why they
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have to be controlled. That's why they have to be surveilled. That's why they have to be watched.
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That's why they have to be enslaved because these people will harm you if we don't control them. So
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the more you put out those messages, the more you put out these images, the more you put out these
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depictions, it's seeped into the minds of people every day people, every day white people who felt
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like these folks are to be watched, controlled, surveilled because they're intellectually not equal to us
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but also they can be violent as well. And here's where you think about something like W.D. Griffin,
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the birth of a nation. The birth of a nation which came out in the 1900s and was shown at the
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White House by Woodrow Wilson was a cinematic success because it also reinforced this idea,
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don't not through the menstrual sort of format, but it sort of reinforced this idea of black
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violence, of black brutality, of black intellectual inferiority, that if you don't watch these people,
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if you don't slay these people, black men, big sort of oversized black men will come and try to
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sort of do physical harm to our children and they will try to rape our women. And so all these
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images as much as we may not take them seriously, they really sent a powerful deeply embedded message
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that these people are not to be trusted, these people are not to be liked, these people are a threat,
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and therefore we have to meet them either with control by way of enslavement, and even after the
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13th Amendment ended in 1865, then it was okay, Jim Fault Laws that continue to keep these folks
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separate and apart, and then even you see racial violence by way of lynchings and the KKK,
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because they were still seen through the lens of what these menstrual shows depicted,
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black folks as being less than, violent, lazy, not to be trusted.
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All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie.
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For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County,
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Kentucky, went unsolved. Until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls
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came forward with a story. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people,
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and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve,
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this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Kerr.
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My name is Maggie Freeling, I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't
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be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her,
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were raped, were burned, or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say
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that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
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From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go
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in order to find someone to blame. Merger, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good
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people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley Feed on the I Heart Radio app,
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And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke and he got down and I remember feeling
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Listen to IVF disrupted the Kind Body story, starting September 19 on the I Heart Radio app,
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My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression
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take it from you so bad. Listen to on-purpose with Jay Chetty on the I Heart Radio app,
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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There's a viral sickness in Appestown. You must excite it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.
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The village is ravaged and tired families have been consumed.
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You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.
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Get back everyone's got guts.
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And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him,
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burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning.
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From I Heart Podcasts and Grimm & Mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast
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sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jules State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the
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I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Devil Walks in Appestown.
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This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford. Do you have a question about
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American History? If so, record yourself using the Voice Memo app on your phone and email it to
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AmericanHistoryHotline at gmail.com. That's AmericanHistoryHotline at gmail.com. Okay, back to the show.
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I'm talking with Tyrone Howard, Professor in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA.
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We're talking about the history of menstrual shows and Blackface in America.
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Can we talk about the Mami Stereotype? Is it part of the conversation about Blackface?
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Well, yes and no. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Again, the Mami Stereotype is one that
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is where racism and sexism come together. Racism and sexism come together because
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it depicts Black women. Now, let me be clear because there's a gender analysis to this that's
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menstrual shows by and large depicted Black men as being inferior. This being inferior intellectually
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and the like all the things we've been talking about. But the Mami Stereotype is one that depicted Black
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women who were typically enslaved, who were domestics, who had the responsibility of nursing for
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children. But it was this depiction of this large dark-skinned overweight Black woman who
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had these really, and this is the complexity of the character. These motherly characteristics,
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but at the same time was not seen as being on the same level as white women if that makes sense.
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Right? So they could cook, they could clean, they could take care of children, they could
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sort of help to manage the house. But they were also seen as being uneducated. They were also seen as
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being sort of not intellectually gifted, if you will. And so while not in the same sort of vein
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as the menstrual show, but there were some shows that were put on, now we're talking probably 20th
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centuries, that depicted Black women in these really sort of disproportionate sort of ways in terms
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of their physical features and body types that again were not really rooted in trying to help Black
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women be seen as equals, but to depict them in ways that was deeply troublesome. Now as with any
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stereotype, I want to be clear here about with any stereotype, what we know is that there's always
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a kernel of truth in certain stereotypes. But the problem with the stereotype is when we take that
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small kernel of truth and we use it to describe an entire group of people. And that's why the menstrual
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shows and even the mammist stereotypes are harmful because then when people who have limited
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interaction with any group of people see the stereotype of what might be the depiction of one or a
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small number of people and say that's how they all are, that's how we start to really really begin
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to sort of buy into harmful racist sexist stereotypes about the people. And we don't get to know who
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folks are on an individual level and to understand the variability across groups and within groups.
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There were these mammied dolls and they were very popular.
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Just to just to button this part of the conversation up, I mean the the mammic caricature cared for
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the wealthy white person's child from a very tender age. And there were, there were you know
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relationships between these children and and the domestic enslaved person who took care of them.
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So kind of build on that like were there were there bonds of kinship formed that broke as these
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children grew older and and saw the world you know in a different way or or or did these bonds real.
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Yeah, so this is this is a really good point I'm glad you're asking this because yes they were real
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for many of these black women because think about it from this standpoint. In many of the
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homes that you had wealthy white people most of whom were slave owners, black women were responsible for
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care taking responsibility for the children for some of them from the time of birth. So they would
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they would nurse these children. They would play a primary role in the region of these children.
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They were oftentimes seen as the emotional support for these children and these white children
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would grow up seeing this woman in their household as being a really caring, loving and important
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figure in their lives right. And so you cannot have that much of an impact on young people because
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there's so much research on human development and child development that says that early attachment
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matters because when young children have an early attachment to someone the bond typically
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strengthens over time because you come to see this person as a reliable and loving and consistent figure
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in my overall well being. So lots of black women and that's the part that oftentimes not talked about
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is the ways in which these black women who play these roles had to play the caregiving role for white
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children in addition to doing this for their own children as well. There's a phenomenal book by
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Melissa Harris Perry called Sister Citizen, Shane, stereotype and black women in America where she talks
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about you know, mammies were oftentimes placed in this unambible situation and not being able to
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be the protectors and defenders of their own children because they had to make sure they looked
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out for the white children that they had helped to raise as well. And what's really fascinating to
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me on this Bob is that you had these black women who played these motherly roles in the lives of
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white children and these white children especially those who were you know the the sons of slave owners
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they ultimately grew up to take on the role of the overseers or the owners of the plantation
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but yet they still maintain this brutal system of slavery and kept black women and men and some
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cases black children who they grew up with in this horrific system. So how do you have someone who
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cared for you who nursed you who nurtured you who loved you like you were one of their own and you
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grow up to become a grown adult but yet you still allow that system that sees those individuals as
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being second third class not even citizens just people and you don't call them the question
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sort of why that system is harmful. Now to be fair there were some protections and some provisions
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that some whites gave to those women who played their vital role in their lives but by and large
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they had individual protections or their families had protections but it did not take away from
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the entire system or the institution that they were caught up in that was called slavery.
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If we can let's talk about menstrual shows and their connection to American music.
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The 1619 project did an amazing podcast episode of this that I personally highly recommend.
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So in your own research and thought about this how did the music of African Americans
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and enslaved Americans get wrapped up in menstrual shows and make it make its way into the music we
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hear today even. Yeah so look music has been a has been at the core of so much of the black experience
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here in the United States and when you listen to for example old Negro spirituals these these
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these Negro spirituals were rooted in worship they were rooted in a spirituality they were
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rooted in hope and the possibility of better times so they had meaning and they gave people hope
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and they gave people purpose and they gave people a sense that one day a better day was coming
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and so when you take this sort of misrepresentation of black music and you begin to sort of
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strip away the core elements of what made it unique and what helped it to sustain a people
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then all of a sudden you kind of have this really bastardized sort of representation of the music
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that comes nowhere close to what its intentions were when it was initially created and how important
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it was to people survival if you will and so I think anytime you have people who are outside of a culture
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who come and try to take elements of a culture and try to somehow package it and sort of sort of
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portray it in a certain way you're going to get something that's very different from the original
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product and that's why you saw in these menstrual shows a really just just just just just unfair
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unauthentic and really just off base a counting of black music which ultimately stood the test of
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time and and and I think that when you see some of the the historical some of the folks who study the
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history of black music they begin to help us to understand the roots of of why black music in these
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United States was important how it's been adapted how it's been enhanced how it's been built upon
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or how it's been sort of torn apart and really made out to be something that it's not and so I
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think it's important to recognize just the the foundational roots that music has had and not just
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black culture but I think black culture and black music in particular has had an impact on mainstream
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culture across the board when it comes to music and it's important to understand those those origins
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because history would tell us that that that oftentimes mental shows tried to make mycariot
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of that music which is now an in current form billion dollar industry in this country and even
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worldwide when you think about it so like music film right you talked about birth of the nation
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like how did these racist tropes from the menstrual shows make their way because it wasn't I mean
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the menstrual shows evolvedville the beginning of film they were all that's all connected here right
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it's all they they won't bleed into the next so talk about how those racist tropes made their way into
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into film yeah because you know part of what well so powerful at the time is that you know
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this country we've always used different mediums to tell stories about whatever is is is going on
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at the time I mean newspapers for example talked about the news of the day you know entertainment
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was a way to kind of send messages about certain issues of certain people and film became a powerful
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medium to do that and so film was a way that you could put out a product and you could begin to really
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share that film with millions of people across the country and so yes there was a through line
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between law deal between the menstrual shows between you know the birth of a nation which was like
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I said earlier it was an epic film at the time I think it was 1915 that it was it was made because
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part of what people struggled with at the time and really to some degree even today the less we
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know about people the more we tend to make up and that's what ignorance is that's what prejudices
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when we judge before knowing and to be clear not all whites of the day owned black people right
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not not most whites enslaved black people you know it was only those whites who had means who owned
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of black people during slavery but what's important to note is that we were a country in the 1800s
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up until 1865 that was largely separate and unequal we know this right so many whites had very little
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interaction with black people because they didn't live in the same community they didn't live in the
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same neighborhood they didn't frequent the same you know store they didn't frequent the same schools
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because we were separate and equal a separate and unequal I should say but what happens is that when
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people don't have access to authentic people of any background you begin to like have that void
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field by different accounts that people share with you or by mass media of the time so film like I
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said becomes a powerful medium to tell the world to tell the country this is how they are and when I
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say the day this is black people they're seen as I mentioned earlier is unintelligent they're seen
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as sexy aggressive toward white women all the the harmful stereotypes that that that that we know
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really sort of lead to the ways in which black people see it and this was shown all across the
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country I mean this was shown in in large cities such as Chicago Denver Pittsburgh Detroit
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Minneapolis and you start to think about how it seeps into the conscious and subconscious of white
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but the time to say that black people are to be feared it says that the KKK is a good thing because
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they were the ones who come to the rescue to save white people from these violent blacks this is
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white supremacy at its finest and when you have its you know sanctioned at the highest levels of
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government when you have the president at the time who does a private screen of it at the white
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house with members of his cabinet with family members it sends a powerful message that basically
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endorses this message that endorses this imagery that endorses this notion of black inferiority so
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and and and you have to understand it even today in 2025 you still have people who subscribe to some
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of these tenants of black inferiority and it has its roots and all the things we've been talking about
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when I talk about birth of a nation being released in 1915 that was only 110 years ago this wasn't
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something that was that was released you know 300 years ago you know my my grandmother my grandmother
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who I have lots of memories with she was born in 1915 so you and you begin to understand that these
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are events that did not happen you know hundreds and thousands of years ago the ways in which you
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kind of shape of people's thinking as you consistently put out messages in different mediums that
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begin to become kind of the popular thinking of the time and people believe it if they have nothing
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to really contest it and to challenge it to not be true and and I just want to make a note Melissa
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Harris Perry I've had the pleasure of interviewing her in the past and we'll put a link to her book in
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the bio here um great when did black face minstrel shows fall out of popularity like the idea of
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entertainer painting their face black you know and and before like when did when did that kind of like
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just become unpopular we know it pops up now and again still yeah I was just gonna say that I was
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gonna say that it's it's not how do I frame this we still see today in in 2025 and 2020
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2020 you know in the 20 teams uh black face popping up and sadly it pops up on college campuses
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where young people in efforts to be funny to do some of the same things that was done you know in the
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1830s to try to get a laugh or to try to somehow sort of give a comedic skit will do black face
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so so while not as wildly popular as it was you know 200 years ago uh it still does occur sadly
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but I think what began to happen as we moved into the early 1900s I think you saw more massive
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resistance from black folk and some white folk who said this is not okay who said this is
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unacceptable uh why do we depict black people in ways that are not reflective of who they are
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now I have to say uh wow you know you still has shows that came out in the like the 1930s and
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40s the Amos and Andy shows that really were in some ways a derivative of what you saw with
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black face because it depicted black people in ways that some found comedic but others found
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deeply troubling I think this is where you had social organizations of the day uh different
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groups like the NAACP uh groups like the Urban League who said that this is not acceptable so when
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you get to the 1930s 40s and really it's the Harlem Renaissance that's really pivotal here because
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the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s you have lots of black artists lots of black filmmakers
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lots of lots of black authors who begin to offer a counter story to how black people have been depicted
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when it comes to Mitchell uh mistral shows and so I think it's important to note that you have
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resistance in the form of different portrayals I think you saw more blacks who had access to education
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before than before more blacks who had access to college and I think as you started to see some of
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the walls of of discrimination and racism coming down not all of them but some of them I think
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you began to see the pushback uh that may mistral shows less and less commonplace and to the point now
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when we see them what we hope to see is a as a as a as a strong repudiation of any depiction
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of that that era of our country's history for a lot of folks out there this is a hard conversation to
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have it's uncomfortable right for a lot of people is uncomfortable for a lot of white people is
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uncomfortable so given where we are right now um smisonian under attack the current president
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doesn't want to display all this slavery and how far we've come and all this kind of stuff
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um taking the taking down of pictures of enslaved people who were whipped and beaten from
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historic sites right some will say man we don't have slavery anymore we've come a long way we
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we had a black president like you know can we just all be equal and normal and and do we have to
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highlight this do we have to talk about this do we have to remember this ugly part of our history
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what do you say to that yeah i hear that a lot uh and and it troubles me and let me tell you why
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it troubles me because some of the same people who say uh that was an ugly part of our history
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we should not have to talk about that are some of the same people who say we should remember the
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civil war um because that's a part of our history um because people died in the civil war to this day
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it is the deadliest war in our country's history and we have you know remembrances around the civil war
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and what it was about people who fought for what they believed in and people will say we should
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never forget their statues erected around folks who fought for the Confederacy because they
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felt like they were standing for something that was principled so i always ask why is it that we
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want to remember the civil war but we want to forget slavery and i think you cannot talk about the
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history of this country and only picking shoes the parts that you want to tell part of what you have
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to do if you want to understand history in this totality you have to talk about the good the bad and
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the ugly and that means that if you understand the good bad and the ugly you can lift up the good
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you can talk about the promise of potential of what we are as a nation to try to become that perfect
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nation state but at the same time you have to understand the ugly parts of history because if you
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don't then that means you are bound to repeat it and so i know it's uncomfortable for some people
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i know it's it's it's it's not sort of convenient to hear and i always tell this to folks who say
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this to me in my classes if it's uncomfortable for you to talk about slavery how do you think it
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felt for people to live through it and so part of what we have to do in this country to get to a better
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place we have to be empathetic we have to try to put ourselves into the shoes of people who've
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gone through some horrific circumstances though we will never ever be able to experience that
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firsthand thankfully but just try to be empathetic what would it feel like to be able to to live
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at a time where you work 12 hours a day back breaking work no no compensation being physically
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assaulted and beaten if you didn't do things to the satisfaction of the overseer or the slave owner
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what would it feel like if you were taken away from your parents for no other reason because you
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were being so i think we have to talk about it because it's part of American history whether we like
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it or not it is part of our history and we can't talk about you know the good parts of the country's
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history but leave out the bad parts um because part of what we should be talking about is that even
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what we see today in 2025 has its remnants from what happened in slavery we had slavery existed in
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its country for 247 years 1619 to 1865 you think about it that way right we've had more years of
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slavery almost as we've had of being an independent nation when you think about it right so part of
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the issue becomes when you think about the economic wealth gap that existed that exists in this country
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roots that are tied to slavery you think about redlining and certain black folks not being able to buy
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homes and and wealthy to do areas has this roots in slavery when you think about issues such as
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sort of health inequalities and access to high quality medical care much of that has this roots
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in slavery in the aftermath of Jim Crow i could go on and on and on right yeah the the the the
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GI Bill and urban renewal there you go GI Bill is a great example because this was something
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you had men who fought for this country for to be the country that it is who couldn't get the same
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benefits that that their white uh compatriots got for being and and fighting in wars as well so I
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think part of why we cannot forget about it is because it happened and not that we have to stay
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rooted in the past but because it still has uh sort of ramifications in the current moment and
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until we find ways to address and redress those past uh wrongdoings we'll continue to see a
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significant set of disparities that play out in current days aside tyrone Howard this has been uh
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it's been great thank you so much for joining us today we hope we can call on you again sometime
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thank you for having me
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you've been listening to american history hotline a production of iHeart podcast and
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scratch track productions the show is executive producers James Morrison our executive producers
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from iHeart are Jordan Runtal and Jason English original music composed by me Bob Crawford
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please keep in touch our email is american history hotline at gmail.com if you like the show
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please tell your friends and leave us a review in apple podcasts i'm your host Bob Crawford
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feel free to hit me up on social media to ask a history question or to let me know what you think
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of the show you can find me at Bob Crawford base thanks so much for listening see you next week
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