Blackface is the practice of performers, typically non-black performers, using burnt cork or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment.
In the United States, the practice became a popular entertainment during the 19th century into the 20th. It contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes such as "Jim Crow", the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation", and "Zip Coon" also known as the "dandifiedcoon".[1][2][3] By the middle of the 19th century, blackface minstrel shows had become a distinctive American artform, translating formal works such as opera into popular terms for a general audience.[4]
Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the minstrel show and became a form of entertainment in its own right,[5] including Tom Shows, parodying abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the United States, blackface declined in popularity from the 1940s, with performances dotting the cultural landscape into the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.[6] It was generally considered highly offensive, disrespectful, and racist by the late 20th century,[7] but the practice (or similar-looking ones) was exported to other countries.[8][9]
^For the "darky"/"coon" distinction see, for example, note 34 on p. 167 of Edward Marx and Laura E. Franey's annotated edition of Yone Noguchi, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, Temple University Press, 2007, ISBN1592135552. See also Lewis A. Erenberg (1984), Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930, University of Chicago Press, p. 73, ISBN0226215156. For more on the "darky" stereotype, see J. Ronald Green (2000), Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux, Indiana University Press, pp. 134, 206, ISBN0253337534; p. 151 of the same work also alludes to the specific "coon" archetype.