Northam’s Ugly Yearbook Photo and the Racist Origins of Blackface
The image of a man in blackface standing beside a figure in Klan robes has deep roots in American history
By Michael Brice-Saddler, Jessica Contrera, and DeNeen L. Brown
The racism was present the moment he took the stage.
Using something black to darken his face, Thomas Dartmouth Rice didn’t hold back in his singsong performances, which date to the 1830s. The white man danced like a buffoon and spoke with an exaggerated imitation of black slave vernacular to entertain his audiences.
His fictional character also had a name: “Jim Crow.”
David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum in Michigan, noted how Jim Crow and other performances featuring white men in blackface captivated white crowds up until the mid-20th century.
Now blackface is back in the spotlight after a photograph emerged Friday from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page. It shows one man in blackface standing beside another figure in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
The governor, a Democrat, apologized for the photograph on his yearbook page that is “clearly racist and offensive.” But a flood of prominent Democrats and Republicans began…
