Tyler Perry is the most successful black filmmaker in the history of the world. He recently said that fellow filmmaker Spike Lee, perhaps best known for shooting off his mouth, could “go straight to ...

Before the 1830s, when blackface minstrelsy begins formally, African Americans, people whom we today would call African Americans, have been involved in local entertainment. They are the fiddlers at ...

This drawing of a performance of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus has given scholars an understanding of how blackface was used in Elizabethan England. Collection at Longleat House (Marquess of Bath) ...

Blackface, dark makeup worn by a performer in a caricature of the appearance of a Black person, is now widely considered unacceptable in mainstream American culture — but that wasn't always the case.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Minstrelsy should be vociferously condemned but its centrality in American culture cannot be denied. “Jim Crow,” the name ...

“There have been two ways to look at things like minstrelsy. One way is to say: ‘Let’s forget it and look forward,’ and the other way is to say: ‘We will never forget,’” Louis Chude-Sokei said at the ...

To fully appreciate its legacy, we must look beyond the jingly chorus and confront the uncomfortable context of its creation and initial reception. Originally titled “One Horse Open Sleigh,” the song ...

Minstrel shows emerged in the first half of the 19th century, but their influence in the United States wasn’t just confined to the stage. According to film scholar Allyson Nadia Field, those same ...