A History Of Blackface and Anti-Black Propaganda in American Cinema and Television

by Gabrielle Gorman

Although modern America declares to manifest itself in a state of reinvention, stripping it’s body of corrupt proceedings in history and embracing a fabricated legacy of “The Land of the Free,” there is an irrefutable existence of the conflicted relationship between White and Black Americans and the perpetual abuse of the African diaspora. In this essay, I will focus essentially on the history of the stereotyping of Black Americans through popular media.

In the rise of minstrel shows within the 19th century, Black Americans were a notably targeted race and most if not all of the inauthentic and humiliating misrepresentations of Black culture established through Blackface in theater and later on film, have shaped modern stereotypes.. When I was younger, I was taught about Blackface as though it were almost positive.. My teacher, struggling with White guilt, said something along the lines of… “Well you see, African Americans couldn’t appear in films and so White actors would paint their faces Black so that they could include Black characters.” If you’ve been told the same twisted falsity, allow me to introduce the truth through a quote by Frederick Douglass as he explains that blackface performers are “…the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.” Blackface performers were the initiators and perpetrators of the most popular caricatures such as Mammy, Uncle Tom, and Jim Crow. You can find Mammy in some of the highest grossing motion pictures in America such as Gone With The Wind (1939), which romanticizes the south and portrays Mammy, along with the other slaves, as subservient and incompetent in the absence of her White slave masters. Mammy is played by Hattie McDaniel who, from this role, became the first Black American to win an Academy Award. You will also find Mammy in Al Jolson’s most critically acclaimed film, The Jazz Singer (1927), in which Al Jolson wears blackface and sings “My Mammy.” He liked to perform this song in many of his films. Like Jolson, dozens of actors and comedians like Cotton Watts, Bud Davis, Lew Dockstader, and even Judy Garland, found success at the expense of Black people by covering their faces in burn cork, greasepaint, or shoe polish, exaggerating their lips with white paint, and wearing woolly wigs.

Another film in which you’ll find blackface is at the height of every list of the most racist films in history, The Birth Of A Nation (1915). The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan can partially be attributed to this film because of its glorification of confederacy and its barbarization of Black men. Many of the “Black men” were White men in blackface that characterized Black men as inhumane sexual predators that couldn’t keep their hands off of White woman (It’s ironic that White men would want to create this stereotype when they were the ones that mercilessly raped their Black female slaves, sometimes in even in front of their husband or children). The film was actually the highest-grossing movie in America until Gone With The Wind. How interesting that the two most successful films at the box-office are two of the most racist films in the nation. A side note which is just as ironic is that the highest paid Black American actor of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was Bert Williams who made his career off of performing in blackface. I’m still a little uncertain as to whether he was doing it to make a penny, send a different message, or just appeal to White America. But nonetheless, it is an unsettling fact.

When television arrived, Blackface moved from the big screens to the living rooms. From 1958–1978, BBC Television aired a show entitled The Black and White Minstrel Show. The show had over eighteen million views a week, making it one of the most acknowledged television shows of its time. Although it was a British entertainment show, it presented traditional American minstrel. You’ll find Mickey Mouse himself wearing blackface in the 1993 animation Mickey’s Mellerdrammer in which Mickey and his friends put on a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mickey wears blackface. You can also find a little blond haired White boy dancing around in Blackface in the original 1933 production of The Night Before Christmas. And as if your childhood memories couldn’t get anymore shattered, we haven’t even gotten to Looney Tunes yet! Looney Tunes, created by Warner Brothers Pictures, was additionally a principal producer of anti-Black propaganda. Some of their shorts include Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, Jungle Jitters, and Uncle Tom’s Bungalow, all of which are a part of The “Censored Eleven.” The “Censored Eleven” is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies which have never been broadcasted on American television due to their cringe-inducing illustrations of Black Americans. Looney Tunes was also a capital sustainer of anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1940’s, by creating a series of episodes acting as anti-Japanese propaganda. I realize this may come as a horrid shock or disillusionment to all you Space Jam lovers, but Looney Tunes has historically acted in favor of cultural intolerance.

In the mid 20th century we begin to see a transformation in the representation of Black America. Footage and photographs of children being hosed down, houses and churches being bombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, and civil rights activists conducting boycotts and demonstrations begin circulating throughout the nation which forces Americans to engage in important dialogue and creative protest.

Meanwhile we begin to see movies like A Raisin In The Sun and later, television shows like Star Trek which was one of the first American shows to feature a character of African descent in a non-degrading role.

Now don’t go jumping up for joy, we haven’t reached the promised land of inclusion and unity yet. But it’s writers like Shonda Rhimes and directors like Ava DuVernay and Spike Lee, that through their creativity, enlighten our world of ignorance and exclusivity. It is people like them along with the understanding of the history of film and it’s formulation of American culture, which drives me to be a filmmaker. Because when my kids ask me what I was doing when people of color were being shot in the streets and innocent people were being thrown in jail, I want to be able to say that I was doing everything in my power to end it. And I did that by doing the only thing I knew how to do, I was making films.

Read more of my work at: schoolofdoodle.com/gabriellegorman