The Blackface Minstrel Show in Mass Media

<p> The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form.</p><p> This book traces the often overlooked history of the modern minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.</p>