The cheerful melody of “Jingle Bells” is an indelible part of the modern holiday soundscape, synonymous with winter wonder ...

There is no simple way to interpret the recent return of minstrelsy in American art, with its portrayal of exaggerated black stereotypes by both black and white artists and performers, writes ...

Before the 1830s, when blackface minstrelsy begins formally, African Americans, people whom we today would call African Americans, have been involved in local entertainment. They are the fiddlers at ...

Minstrel shows emerged in the first half of the 19th century, but their influence in the United States wasn’t just confined to the stage. According to film scholar Allyson Nadia Field, those same ...

We don’t often recommend movies featuring blackface, but this 1927 talkie, which follows a cantor’s son as he becomes a minstrel, is one of the ultimate, protomythic American stories. Al Jolson’s ...

The American minstrel show at once humanized and stereotyped African-Americans. By the early 20th century, the form had become racist and objectionable. Jason Christophe White's "The Dance: The ...

Minstrelsy should be vociferously condemned but its centrality in American culture cannot be denied. “Jim Crow,” the name associated with the laws and practices of racial segregation, comes from a ...

As co-authors Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen explore in their exhaustively researched book, Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to Hip-Hop, the once hugely popular form of entertainment has a ...

Tyler Perry is the most successful black filmmaker in the history of the world. He recently said that fellow filmmaker Spike Lee, perhaps best known for shooting off his mouth, could “go straight to ...