Fact #84463
When:
Short story:
In his UK tv show On The Braden Beat, presenter Bernard Braden attacks the BBC's Black And White Minstrel Show for depicting black people in an offensive and patronising way.Full article:
Les Want (Black and White Minstrels performer) : All these people who jumped on the bandwagon, they seemed to think that minstrel shows started when The Black And White Minstrel Show started. But they go back to 1750. Originally the performers were black. They were field workers who sang round campfires and wrote comical songs about their white bosses. Eventually they turned professional and went on the river boats, up the Mississippi.
The white vaudeville entertainers heard about these black performers and went see these fantastic shows. They stole the songs, went back to vaudeville, blacked up their skins and performed the minstrel shows they'd seen down South. So, right from the beginning, it was only an impersonation of the original black shows. It was nothing to do with ridiculing them.
Not one of us ever gave a thought to racism. I was putting on what I thought was a theatrical make-up, to impersonate minstrel shows from the late 1700s. We didn't connect it with black people, because the original shows were white people blacked up. It never felt offensive.
(Source : not known)
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The white vaudeville entertainers heard about these black performers and went see these fantastic shows. They stole the songs, went back to vaudeville, blacked up their skins and performed the minstrel shows they'd seen down South. So, right from the beginning, it was only an impersonation of the original black shows. It was nothing to do with ridiculing them.
Not one of us ever gave a thought to racism. I was putting on what I thought was a theatrical make-up, to impersonate minstrel shows from the late 1700s. We didn't connect it with black people, because the original shows were white people blacked up. It never felt offensive.
(Source : not known)