Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/02/24

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Subject: [Leica] Babes in blackface
From: pswango at att.net (Phil Swango)
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:39:46 -0700

John Edwin Mason wrote:
About a week ago, I was rummaging through the Farm Security Administration
online archive (at the Library of Congress) and came across an eerie Marion
Post Wolcott photo of a group of white schoolkids in blackface makeup,
preparing for a school festival.

Not surprisingly, that got me rummaging some more.  Turns out that there is
quite a bit of blackface in the archive.

http://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2010/02/fsa-blackface-minstrels.html
=============================================================================

John -- Thanks for posting. Your blog is fascinating.  I've read some
history of blackface and minstrelsy (one of my degrees is in American
Studies) and I agree that it's a somewhat complex and layered phenomenon
that tends to get oversimplified because it seems so impossibly wrong to
modern eyes.  I can remember as a white child in Louisiana participating in
blackface productions at school and church in the 1940s.  Shocking to think
about today but it's true.  That Wolcott photo was just a year before I was
born.  As you put it so well in your blog, it's important to remember some
things we would prefer to forget.

-- 
Phil Swango
307 Aliso Dr SE
Albuquerque, NM 87108
505-262-4085


Replies: Reply from passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro) ([Leica] Babes in blackface)