The hidden history of blackface in America

This is Fresh Air. I am Terrier Gross. If you're a well-known public person, whether you're a performer or a politician, if someone uncovers that you've worn blackface at a party or on stage or in a college fraternity, you're going viral and it will be a scandal. But white people posing in a racist depiction of black people was much more popular than you might think. The new book Darkology uncovers the hidden history of blackface.

My guest is the author Rayland Barnes. In the late 1800s, as professional minstrel shows were becoming obsolete, amateur blackface shows became one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and that's where Barnes' focus is. Many groups like fraternal orders, clubs, PTAs, Police and firemen's associations and soldiers on military bases put on their own blackface shows. FDR was a fan of minstrel shows and even co-wrote a show to be performed by children who had polio like he did.

During his presidency, he created the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs to millions of people during the Great Depression, but also provided minstrel sheet music to schools and helped fund minstrel productions. There's lots of surprising and disturbing history and dargology. Rayland Barnes is an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University and a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. She grew up in Orange County, California, an area where blackface thrived. Rayland Barnes, welcome to Fresh Air.

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