Transcripts For CSPAN3 Blackface Minstrel Shows In 20th Century Media 20240713

Media, 20th century performances on radio, records, film, and television recently published by mcfarland. Among his many accomplishments is a grammy award which he received for a double cd and bro book titled lost sounds. 1890 to 1919. Tim will then be joined in a conversation by fellow historian bill dugget. Our program will conclude with tim and bill taking questions from you, our live audience. Now, please turn off the sounds of your phones, and join me in welcoming historian and author tim brooks. [ applause ] well, thank you. Later on as he mentioned, there will be time for questions. And i hope we have some good ones coming up at the end of this conversation and presentation. But i would like to start with a question for you, the audience. How many people have seen a minstrel show . A live minstrel show. Anybody . Interesting. How many have seen one on film prap . Remember, im talking about a whole minstrel show, not a clip from somewhere, but a full show. Anybody . Okay. If i had asked that question 100 years ago, every hand in the audience would have gone up. It was a basic part of American Culture at the time. Widely seen by everybody. There are reasons for that and just what it was that were seeing, but it was on radio, it was on television when television came along, it was in movies, it was on records. And while a lot has been written about the very little has been written about the later years and why it was not only a product of the 19th century, but it lasted well into, halfway through the 20th century as well. So, a lot of i want to explore, i wanted to explore with brook why it lasted more than a century here right into the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, how it changed over that time, and finally what brought about its downfall. Thats basically what the book is about and thats fairly new to studies of this field. Now, we have to start though with where they come from ins first place. In the 1830s there were individual entertainers, white men, always men, who would black up their faces and did dances and songs and so forth. This was in the 1830s. In 1843, four of these performers out of work at the time decided to get together and put on a show in which they interacted with each other. They called themselves the junior minute strels. This was an unexpected success. It was the talk of new york where it was launched. And it resulted, it attracted a lot of imitators, as you might imagine. What these shows did was to this was all in the northeast, by the way. And many of these were irish immigrants putting these on. The groups were small, usually four to eight men. This one is five men. This is the virginia serenaders. Their instrumentation, the instruments were simple. They had tambourines, bones for clicking cast net sound, a banjo, a fiddle. So its small. And they basically were doing parodies of every con seefbable group in society. Not just blacks, but other immigrant groups, all sort of rich, also politicians. It was parody. It is the middle and lower classes of america, basically making fun of pretension and the eccentricities of all kinds of groups, although they did it, as you can see, in black face. It was very populist. Thats important. It was kind of like i call it the saturday night live of its time. It was very populist and it was very american. You have to remember at this time in 1840s, what americans were used to were imports from britain. Almost all plays, many of the actors and comedians, drinking songs, all those things came from england. We were still culturally very much under the english umbrella at that time even though we were an independent country, and there was a populist movement to assert something more american. This is the jacksonian era, the area of changed politics as well. So, the minstrel show was the first really that grew out of that. It was very popular, as i say, and quickly began to evolve. The costumes, which were rough at the beginning, turned into their tuxedos or an exaggerated parody of text eid owes, which well see later on. Edwin christie, christies minstrels, was a promoter at the time. He developed what was essentially a threeact format for these shows as they grew in popularity. The first act, which was called the minstrel first part, which where all of them were on stage at once like the original crew. Acting with each other joking back and forth. The second was the olio, and that was a succession of individual acts on stage much like vaudeville later on, and many argue thats where vaudeville came from. And the third eact was an extended parody of a play or an opera, especially something pretentious to make fun of. So the three acts. Also, later on an interlock ter was added. An opposing man would sit in the middle of this group and serve as the emcee of it and go back and forth. A lot is said about the fact that he was the boss, the straw boss or something. Actually in the recordings you hear later, who might be that, he also might be one of the gang, just the person that organizes and keeps it going and he might not be in black face, or he might. A lot is said about minstrel songs and songs that came out of the minstrel show. Actually, the minstrel show, throughout history, was a reflection of whatever the popular music was of america at that time. In the 1840s and 1850s it was Stephen Foster because he was writing enormously popular songs of that time. Later on it became songs of the late 1800s or ragtime when that came in. Some of the late minstrel shows in the 1940s and 50s featured big band songs, even rock and roll. Whatever was popular at the time. Some songs were written for the minstrel show, but mostly a reflection of the current popular music. And very important part of it is that it was sold as clean entertainment. Entertainment for the family. That may sound strange considering what they are doing up here, but in fact there was never any window in minstrel shows. There was never sexual innuendo which appeared in other kinds of performances at the time, plays and things, and that means you could bring the family and kids. It was also very upbeat. Many of the songs were upbeat songs, a happy laughing thing. And it was a party like atmosphere, particularly in the opening minstrel first part where they were all together and it was like a party going on on stage that the audience felt they were part of. So that is what sold it originally. Now, just jumping ahead, this is very interesting picture of four or five, rather, black minstrels entertaining union troops during the civil war. During the 1860s, 50s and 60s, they continued to morph and get bigger, and black minstrels began to be seen. We will see more about those in a moment. And, in fact, during the late 1800s, kind of jumping to get to the media, the minstrel shows got much bigger and much more elaborate and they started using names like mega therriens and giantians to emphasize how many people were up there. It was a spectacle at that time. Some were integrated like this, primrose and west minstrels with white performers and black performs in the same show. Not interacting with each other, but alternating during the course of the show. A lot of black characters, of course. Okay. So, thats the late 1800s. These big troops, some as many as 100, drew big audiences, too. These big shows primrose and others traveled around the country. They were no longer in the northeast. They were appearing in cities big and small. They had tents sometimes, big theaters, and there auto wouwou hundreds, up to 1,000 people watching. It was a very prominent kind of entertainment in the late 1800s. It was also very significantly the time that black minstrel shows began to gain traction. Shows put on by africanamericans themselves. I alluded to that before. They were a few before the civil war. But after the civil war, troops of blacks putting on minstrel shows began to become popular with white audiences, and they produced their own stars like this gentleman here, billy crist. They are often called georgia minstrels. Thats one of the first black troops, was from georgia. But during the late 1800s, 1870s, 80s, 90s, alongside the white troops began to become bigger and much more prominent. That is significant because this was the first time, if you think about it, in American History that africanamericans nearly freed from slavery had an opportunity to bring their talents to a stage before a general audience. Naturally, they would tone down some of the racism of it and introduce some of the kind of music that they made and introduce america eventually to blues and to jazz and things that were enormously influential in this country in the 20th century. And this was an open door for them. And that was in the late 1800s. Usually, these troops were managed by whites, hirbut not a. Charles hicks was a pioneer, black minstrel manager who managed many troops and promoted these shows himself. Now, mass media of, the modern mass media came around in the early 1890s. 1890 was the year, actually, that the edison phonograph was the first of the new modern technological media, became well enough developed to be sold to the public. The man on the right there is named spencer. He was a performer who came up with the idea and really perfected the idea of making recreations of the minstrel first part on a record. So an audio version as true to life as possible of the minstrel show, which everybody was familiar with at that time. And to produce these things. It was a troop of four people, including himself. The man at the left was a member of that troop who was the most popular black recording artist of the 1890s. So it was an integrated troop. Three of the four, including spencer himself, had experience in stage minstrel shows at the time. So they knew what they were recreating. And these records of minstrel shows produced not only by spencers group, which he acall imperial minstrels, but others who came later became a very popular type of recording for the next 20 years, basically from the mid 1890s to the mid 1910s, and hundreds of them were made. They are found in collections of old records now. Not much has been written about them, but they countrecreate wh minstrel show sounded like at that time. They lasted about 20 years. This is an edison ad from 1904 showing the family, you know, an idealized family laughing and be dancing, kids dancing through the minstrel show coming out of edison phone graph that is on the righthand side there. It lasted into the lp era. These are some 1950s lps with the stars of that era. Bill cullen, milton borough, jack bennie, oldtimers who made comebacks like eddie foy maybe minstrel recordings in the 1950s, so it lasted quite a while on record. Now, what about radio . Well, radio came on the scene rather quickly as the as the audience saw it in the 1920s with the earliest stations, commercial stations, widelyheard stations launching in 21, 22, 23, that era, and from the start they started putting on minstrel shows. This man, dailey patrickmandail. He felt there was this veracious need to programming and he wanted more comedy, too. Which wasnt much of it on television. So he put together his own minstrel troupe in 1925 and had them get experienced with it on radio. And put on a weekly or biweekly show. That show from 1925 to 1928 was very popular. And was heard throughout the northeast because stations got a very wide range at that time. And it was in new york city based, although it was heard in the northeast, as i say. And the radio networks, which were just Getting Started at that time heard this and saw the success he was having with this permanent troupe of minstrels he had on his radio network. Abc and nbc as they were launching their networks said, well, maybe we should do some of that and formed their own minstrel troupes, particularly nbc, just starting to spread across the country in 1926 and slowly spread out. So they organized a Dutch Masters minstrel troupe, which was a networklevel production with a big orchestra and with writers and with the, you know, whole thing that a network could bring to it, and that show which ran from 1928 to 1932 on nbc was one of the early hits over radio. When it started on many of the artists who are in this troupe, by the way, were taken by the record industry. Al bernard who had recorded a lot in the 1920s was the star end man. Steve porter, who had been the interlocutor on many of those records that i talked about earlier on was the interlocutor. They raided the record industry for some of their talent. Interestingly, in the studio they wore minstrel costumes. As you can see. Particularly the two end men on the ends there, the two men in blackface, tambo and bones. It was radio. Nobody could see them out there, but it was felt it would be a more authentic performance if they formed a traditional minstrel troupe. So in their publicity shots they also, of course, wore that. By this time, there were no racial jokes. The networks censors saw to that, although they did wear blackface, as i say, especially in publicity. The jokes were about marriage. They were about insult humor. That kind of humor at that time. When Dutch Masters began to wind down in the early 1930s, nbc looked around for a replacement for the successful show and found that its chicago affiliate wenr was producing a very successful show of that type, so that became on the network the sinclair minstrel sponsored by the sinclair oil company, and that had a big studio audience. 500 people for a live broadcast. The minstrels are actually in the background here. Theyre kind of hard to see. The audience is turning around looking at the camera behind them. The minstrels are in full minstrel regalia up there for this live performance, which was broadcast over nbc. That show, the sinclair minstrels, was actually one of the most popular programs of the 1930s. Its not written about much. It was the there were some primitive audience measurements at that time. It was in the top five shows right up there with jack bennie and the big stars of the day, and the audience could accommodate 500 people. Nbc said it had 20,000 people on a waiting list to get tickets to see this. It ran from 1932 to 39 and was extremely successful. Also, many other shows featured minstrel segments in them, like the theyd devote an episode to it. This is the Maxwell House show boat which ran from 1932 to 37, i believe. On the two ends were pick and pat. They were two of the most popular blackface minstrel performers of the 1930s on radio and on film as well. Pick malone and pat pageant. They were also episodes of the jack bennie show. Episodes of the bing crosby show that were minstrel shows. Even perry como, who had a very suave, sophisticated musical show in the 1940s called the Chesterfield Supper Club put on a minstrel show and mr. Como was the interlocutor of all things. Its bizarre to hear today. And amos and andy which was not itself a minstrel show, it was a serialized comedy. They too staged a minstrel show. So it was heard on radio, the minstrel show, quite a bit, not only as a standalone but as part of all popular shows. Well, what about movies . Well move quickly through this. Movies were silent, originally, of course. How do you have a minstrel show on a silent film . Well, they tried. In 1913, edison introduced a primitive kind of sound system, and one of the movies he produced, a sixminute film, was called the edison minstrels and its recently been restored. It was lost for a long time, but its been restored, and you can see here the minstrel outfits of the two end men on the left and right, tambo and bones. The interlocutor in the middle looking rather stiff and everybody else is in whiteface and what appears to be 18th Century Court costumes from england, surgeomething like tha. Minstrel shows did perform differently, and some of them had that kind of performance as well in different kind of costumes like this. Kind of odd that the orchestra leader stands with his back to the camera in most of it. Thats movies in 1913, i guess. When sound came in, of course, the music, the minstrel show was too much to resist. This is 1930 with his minstrels behind him. And even little Shirley Temple got into the act and dimples in 1936. Shes singing and dancing and told a joke. Big stars were in minstrel shows. It wasnt just old folks either. Two of the most popular youthful stars of the 30s, hard to believe they were once young, but they were, Mickey Rooney and judy garland put on a fullfledged minstrel show in babes in arms in 1939. It was enormously successful at the time. So much so they made one on broadway. Garland here is in what was called brownface, which was the kind of subdued blackface that was often used for women in the later periods. There are also a lot of biographical movies. Maybe some of you remember this. In the 30s and 40s, including three different films about Stephen Foster, and they all dealt with his relationship with Edwin Christie who had hired him to write songs. In this one, joelson plays christie, really over the top, too. So you would see minstrel shows recreated in those. You would also see them in westerns. And this hasnt been recognized very widely, but, in fact, that was a plot device. I can get in later how they used this as a plot device, if you want, but they would stage a minstrel show. These would be smaller minstrel shows, smaller budgets for these movies, generally, and they would arrive in the mining camp or Something Like that. Thats actually what happened in the 1800s. So these were actually more realistic recreations of some of the more big elaborate things produced with the aerial shots and platoons of dancing girls. This is pretty much what minstrel shows were like. You see the costumes of the wide lapels and sort of exaggerated tuxedo kind of outfits that they had. And simpler instruments, too. Now, television arrived in the late 1940s. There were minstrel shows there as well. Even on the networks. On Cbs Television in 1950. He produced three minstrel shows on the Cbs Television network, believe it or not, between 1950 and 1953. His pennsylvanians, his chorus, as you see in the background in blackface, to me, looking a little uncomfortable, but who knows what they were thinking at the time. There were no jokes about song or race at this time. Everything was made proper in terms of the lyrics and the jokes and so forth, but they were still using blackface and to some extent die elect alect. Ed sullivan staged they also tried to make these authentic. They had academic experts advising them how a minstrel show was staged. Which wearing did a lot for different kind of music. In this case it looks bizarre to see it today. Ed sullivan also staged a minstrel show on cbs in 1953 for the 50th anniversary of the ford motor company, which was that year. Local stations also put on minstrel shows, usually with a professional troupe that they had within the station. This is from wlwt in cincinnati, not a very clear shot, but you can see and it was run on other stations in the midwest, too. Kind of a mini network they had. This was sponsored by dodge, which was bemoaning its products and oversized tamborines as you can see here. This was 1948 49. And here in l. A. , here in l. A. , it was a hotbed of minstrel shows. Its hard to believe, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the los angeles stations as they came on the air, ive traced at least three of them that put on minstrel shows. This is dixie showboat on ktla in 1950 to 53 and was syndicated across the country by paramount. So it was seen on about ten or 12 stations across the country, but it originated in l. A. The two men on the left and right are peanuts and popcorn. They were the two end men that did jokes. Notice they have a little different kind of costuming by then. The man in the middle is captain whatever his name was. Captain dick lane, who is the emcee and interlocutor. They did jokes back and forth. By this time there were blacks in the cast, scat man carruthers was part of the show. Jazz violinist ginger smock was in it. This is when the protests really started to amp up against these shows. There were protests against this show, but not for these two guys, but, rather, because the dixieland jazz band which provided the music for the show was in blackface in the first couple of episodes. So thats what they protested against. They took off the blackface makeup from the band and the show continued to three more years with these guys with no more protests. So thats a theme that runs through a lot of these shows. The protests werent very long. Ill get into that more. Now, how many minstrel shows were there, anyway . And what were the trends in them . Nothing really has been said or studied much about this, but what this is is the number of mentions of a minstrel show in a very large database of american newspapers organized by year. Now, i wont tell you for various reasons the number of minstrel shows, but it will tell you the trends of minstrel shows, and you notice its kind of steady through the teens and the 1920s. Notice the first is the surge in the 1930s where they almost double in mentions. Why is that . Well, they were doning up into radio listings a lot in the 30s because of the shows that i mentioned before. So there was a surge in minstrel exposure during the 30s. Then there is a deep dive during the world war ii years. Not surprisingly. The second surprise, for me at least, was how strongly they came back right after the war in the late 1940s, peaking in 1949 at about the same level they had been in the 1920s and going up. Not until 1949 1950, finally, did the blowback against them get Strong Enough that they then start to fall off abruptly in the 1950s. I go into some teat in the book just how that happened. In 1948, for example, nbc radio announced a show called the national minstrel show which drew fire. In 1949, Abc Television announced american minstrels of 1949, of all things, which attracted fire. And each of these cases, though, there were protests from various people, but the Africanamerican Community was very split, surprisingly enough. And in each of those cases, when there would be protests there would be counterprotests against it. Many blacks defending these shows at the time, and i go into the reasons for that. We get into the book and we can talk more about it in the q a if youd like. Perhaps the most dramatic example of that was in 1931 when amos and andy as at its peak. Just a new show and a sensation across the country. There were three major black newspapers that were distributed nationwide at the time. The pittsburgh currier started a petition drive. They wanted to get 1 million signatures on a petition to take this terrible insult to africanamericans off the air. The other two nationally distributed newspapers in chicago and new york, both came out explicitly again that, and the chicago defender, in particular, gave an award to the white creators of the show, and held a celebration for them in one of the parks in chicago. So, they couldnt even agree among themselves on it at that time. So because of this division in the community most affected by this, and because the public at large largely considered it a secondary or nonissue, the shows continued until finally in the early 50s the protests began to have an effect. Now, im going to wrap this up. The minstrel show that we consider abhorrent today, particularly for its use of blackface, was a major part of the american scene, as weve seen, for more than a century. And it lasted into the 50s. It was all media that were so familiar with, as youve seen. It was considered acceptable by practically everybody. Abraham lincoln went to the minstrel show. The leaders most sympathetic to black goals considered this okay and the black community was divide on it. And put on its defense. And put on their own minstrel shows, of course, that whole tradition of black minstrel shows. Not until the Civil Rights Era began to take hold finally in the 1950s did the protests get Strong Enough and the networks realized, you know, the kind of blowback that sponsors could get from this were they finally banned. And they continued and we can talk about this if youd like, too, on a local level in the 50s, 60s, even into the 70s, but they were off the media finally, by that time. So with that, i would like to thank you and have our little conversation with bill. [ applause ] thank you. Good to see you. Sure. I can leave this stuff thank you. Well, tim is my mic on . Oh, sorry. First let me introduce you. Jump right in there, right . Thats okay. A graduate of ucla. Bill is a historian and archivist of recorded music, lecturer on africanamerican performing arts history, a performing arts producer, and an authority on diversity and inclusion. Bills accomplishments included being commissioned in 2015 by the library of congress to produce a project on race and early sound recordings for the national jukebox, a program which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. And now a conversation. By bill doggett and tim brooks. [ applause ] well, thank you, raul, and of course, thank you, tim for the exceptional work and research and dedication to this subject, which is one that is of great interest, continuing interest and great timeliless topically. So its an amazing feat. I am so impressed and i want to really congratulate you on it. Thank you. Youre very welcome. I want to set the stage for our conversation with just a very brief scripted series of comments that i think really set the stage and also follow through with the topic area, the theme that tim was ending with. So were going to start in this way. So setting the stage, america postworld war ii, the atomic bomb, the age of anxiety caused by the moral and ethical issues of dropping the bomb, america bind for nostalgia, for america of a time before pearl harbor when life for many had an idyllic quality and for some a perfect order. The minstrel show had been, quote, a glorious american tradition. A grand tradition in american entertainment that called out for revival and new expression. For many americans, minstrelsy was as american as betsy ross and apple pie. A very wellknown entertainer by the name of noble sisal, an africanamerican singer and composer who was part of the writing team with the legendary stride pianists of the 1920s, ub blake, both of them were authors of the very important legendary landmark 1920s broadway allblack musical called shuffle along remarked in defense of abc tvs american minstrels of 1949 in this way. I quote, i have never yet got the thrill in a theater that minstrel show gives me how i could ever since childhood. Every church, club, ymca, school, north, south, east, west, australia, england and around the world love and imitated the American Negro minstrel. When Marianne Anderson and the world stopped singing negro spirituals then ill stop loving the minstrel. They both are excuse me. They are both sacred to me and so american, unquote. Note, however, that a year earlier in 1948, noble sisal had cohosted nbc radios national minstrel swing time at the savoy and lobby, the show aims to create a more intense minstrel show. Whats interesting about this. Here is an africanamerican of note, especially wellknown in entertainment, noble sisal and ub blake were famous, famous pair and still are legendary. But and this is 1948 49. And here we are speaking and talking in 2020 in los angeles, which had been since silent film in the 19 110s even through all the way to today as we have the oscars this weekend has been the center of american entertainment. What was it like in los angeles postworld war ii, particularly for africanamericans that were in los angeles . Black los angeles, i grew up here in what was called old black los angeles, was always an east side. It was limited for racial reasons. To the Central Avenue and adams and the east what was known as the east side. But by 1948, the Supreme Court had in california had struck down the racial cover againnanc limited africanamericans to the east side. And they began to migrate. Many of them were in the west adams area known as sugar hill. Also a very famous section of los angeles, the very elite section called Berkeley Square that was unfortunately lost to the freeway, the santa monica freeway that came in in the mid50s. But black los angeles was progressive. But yet the other los angeles, the entertainment los angeles still bipined and did not think about or have an idea that something was wrong with the idea of these minstrel shows, so as tim mentioned ktla, kttv and abc tv and, of course, al joelson who is famously known for his blackface minstrels. He was planning to do a new minstrel show that would air on tv, and of course, he died before it could happen. So the question so this begs the question, how is it possible and this is the question i want to ask first ask to tim as well as you can consider in the audience in the q a. How is it possible for there to have been such a cultural and perceptional divide, not just nationally between white and black, but also here in los angeles . Because los angeles was the centerpiece of the west. The pioneering west. A progressive place. California had always been progressive comparatively speaking to the midwest and certainly to the sim crow south. So thats my first question. Okay, well, there are many books written interpreting what this means. I choose to present you with what happened and let you make up your own minds about it. I dont tell you what to think about things. And i think that part of this was when youre born into an era when something is taken for granted, not only, you know, by people generally, but by cultural leaders, like the president , like roosevelt, like abraham lincoln, for crying out loud, and in later years when its seen all over the media and nobody seems to have a problem with it, are you going to be the one that questions it . Most people dont, you know . And i think thats a lesson for our own times. Not only in what we like the crowdtype of approach to things, group think as i sometimes call it, beware of group think. Beware of an environment that is seemingly making you feel comfortable because thats what everybody does now. And that works both ways. The things they tell you you shouldnt like, question it. The things they tell you you should like, question it. I mean, you need to know, a, what actually happened, not some Cartoon Version of what happened, picking out the parts that, you know, support you, but what actually happened. Like these protests back and forth. Nobody writes about the other two black newspapers in the amos and andy case, for example. Nobody. They like the currier because that agrees with them, but they dont talk about the fact that the defender, chicago defender opposed it, or certainly not the new york paper. So question things, i think is the first part of it. And its hard to imagine what they did then and why they didnt see what we see. But they werent living in our times. They were living in their times, and within their times, some of them were quite progressive and gradually, not fast enough, but gradually reducing these barriers and some of them were pulling back and trying to keep the old way. A lot of them were in the middle. Were in that kind of timeeverybodys in that kind of time. I think part of it is the group think. Id finally mention something i mentioned in the introduction to the book that i think needs to be more recognized, and youve probably heard this elsewhere, not to get too academic. There is something called presentism and historicism. You look at the past and what people did against our values. Historicism says you look at them in their time and were they progressive or not in their own time . I think you have to look at both of those things. I think if you go exclusively to either one of those, you dont want to be all historicist and all that. Hopefully we made moral progress. You dont want to be totally the other way either. So i think if youre looking for an answer to that, its try to imagine yourself in that world with that kind of leadership and that kind of media and that kind of social leaders and president s, i mean, even Frederick Douglas said after a while, well, maybe theres something here that could be good for the black community. Then i think that gets to that kind of group think. Very true. Im curious to ask this. What is what is it about putting on black shellack that was comical or made one feel that there was a lightness and an ability to become something . The we both have worked in this in research in this area. Im referencing famously to w. E. Dubois iconic souls of black folk when he talks about the mask and the mask of double consciousness. Was blackface for many people, especially for the early irish minstrels, a way of putting on a mask to be able to act out in a greater way their inner character or to make fun of those who they were mocking . Was that the device, if you will, for that that comedic or or or political comedic kind of vehicle, if you will . Yeah, dubois was writing in the early 1900s, of course, and in the 1830s when this began, africanamericans largely enslaved that that time were an exotic part of society for most white americans. Northeast particularly where this started. Theyd never met any. They didnt know any. They didnt socialize with any. There might be a few around in their community, depending on the community, but it was exotic basically. Could they be made fun of . Sure. As i said, they were making fun of everybody, but to use that as the as its called the minstrel mask, as it was served as a mask, like a clowns mask, but to use that particular mask was a way of bringing some exoticism. How do you explain the fact that the british picked up on this, the minstrel show the same time the americans did . The american troops went over there. Britain which hardly had any black population at all, certainly not the old south and that kind of thing. They adopted it, too, because it was exotic to them. More so than here. So it was a mask. And it certainly was, in our view, and even in the view of some then, demeaning to those people, but they were slaves at that time and they were the other as it were. Irish americans were just beginning to assimilate into america, and this was a way of them saying were one of you, you know . To white america. And contrasting themselves with this exotic. But i think the minstrel mask had a lot to do with it, which served two purposes, which separated the performer from the material he was using. So it was like a cartoon or a clown who can say and do things that would look strange if a person in ordinary garb did them. For some of them, williams wrote about this, was a way to kind of release their inner self if they were a little selfconscious about that. Now theyre behind they mask. They can do things and say things that they wouldnt otherwise. So i think it was that dynamic. Sure. And as we know from both of our shared research, there were white entertainers who used blackface famously like docstetter who then used this minstrel mask in a way to become something way more than the actual person that he might have been parodying. How did that work . Yeah, lou docstetter who was the minstrel coining for the turn of the century got to be a portly man, so he imitated Teddy Roosevelt and other politicians, too. He wasnt doing racial material. Help was doing mockery of politicians basically, but he always wore blackface. What did that have to do with Theodore Roosevelt . Nothing. It was that was the minstrel convention. People understood the mask and all that sort of thing. So even while he was doing material that was totally nonminstrel show related, in his minstrel show, he was still wearing this blackface, but he did other things. The black minstrels often did that, too. Some of them wore blackface as well. Not all of them, but some of them did, and particularly for the end men. You see a lot of things like that in 1913 that i showed you, the movie, where only the two end men. Thats the one constant. And even in the 40s when there were guide books how to put on your local minstrel shows and so forth, they would tell you the two end men were most appropriately in the costumes in the blackface. The rest of them didnt have to be and often werent. They would be normal. And there would be women in the troupes, too, they would really open it up. That was really the marker of the prince terrell shminstrel i the end would wear the makeup and the dialect as well. The dialect is quite interesting with the donna record with lynn spencer and billy golden and then forward to collins. And others. And ive always wondered how that translated how the it was very to your point, what edison and other victor and columbia were doing were signing the best artists of their era to put into wax these great their greatest hits essentially from the various shows. But the power of the minstrel show in recorded sound then for some because of the ability im thinking of in particular a very, you know, what, a huge, you know, team. They were really, really talented at black voicing. Yeah. And the black voicing gave the impression of the blackface in the recording. And im just wondering how that in your opinion and your research, how you feel that translated and messaged out to those who are consuming or purchasing these photographs and the recordings that were available to play on these new machines, how that translated and might have what would i say. How they how did that come across . Ill just make that simple. How did that come across to them . Was it just something that was just simple recreation of the minstrel show or did it have a different kind of messaging because of the intensity of some of the voicing . Well, for records and also for radio early on, you cant see the performers when youre listening to either of those media. So the so theres no blackface marker of a minstrel show in an audioonly medium. You can imagine it but its not there. The dialect is the marketer. Right. The dialect is the cue, the oral cue of what you might, in fact, be seeing if you could see them. So i think it was used to that. The dialect has a very interesting history because some very prominent black poets and creators of the 19th century used dialect literally to recreate the speech patterns mmhmm. Of real people and how they actually spoke. Paul lawrence dounbar. Im sorry . Paul lawrence dunbar. Yeah, absolutely. It becomes offensive when its used to mock or demean, particularly when combined with the suggestion that the person isnt educated and theyre mangling words and stuff like that. Dialect itself isnt necessarily like that, but if you take it to that level, it can be. So i think it was the audio marker. You cant look inside their heads to know what they were thinking at that time, but it was the audio marker. There was pushback and ive seen this in guide books at the time not to overdo it just for purposes of int interesting. Interesting. So, we go forward out from the recorded sound and from radio into film. Of the wellknown jazz pianist and later 1950s jazz organist big doggett, when he went to work with lucky millanders band, they were making films more about entertainment, and in his first film from 1939, paradise in harlem, there is an imbedded minstrel show that africanamerican entertainers that there was a normative expectations, if you will, in entertainment even in the black community that was not necessarily black face minstrelsy, but it was the foundation of the minstrel show that became translated or transferred, if you will, into a black commodic routine, and in this particular film they were putting on blackface. I just found it very interesting, and that speaks to the dissonance that was in the black Community Even at that time, the 30s, 40s, 50s, where some felt that that was not offensive, that that was just standard. And then you have actors who essentially became famous for comedic routines that were essentially transferred minstrel routines into blackness, if you will, like moreland in particular. He was and eddie rochester, anderson, that some of that the sourcing of that black comedic tradition is actually out of minstrelsy, which i thought was interesting. What do you think . Well, minstrelsy led to many things. I alluded briefly to the platform that it gave to real africanamerican talent at a time when that was absent completely from the stage. And let some people some of these actors become quite rich and become more influential. And sometimes, like Burt Williams and his partner, walker, George Walker, sometimes they had to kind of kowtow to the expectations at the beginning of the career just as they were Getting Started and write songs that were demeaning and watermelons and the kind of things that were expected of them. But as soon as they got traction and they got clout and white producers and theater owners wanted them because they brought in the crowds, they started to tone down the material. And walker, George Walker was a very bright man. Unfortunately died quite young. Wrote about this rather explicitly. I quote him in the book somewhere. And the williams, Burt Williams who went on to star in movies and lasted until the 1920s was quite explicit about it. That was their way of Getting Started, getting the economic power to be able to tone down, and by later in his career he was singing songs and writing songs that were about the human condition. They werent about race. They were about things that anybody could relate to. So once it was sometimes a way of getting in the door. Mmhmm. And then once you got in the door, not all of them, but some of them were able to turn that to their advantage. I think thats what Frederick Douglas was referring to way, way back, that maybe there is something here we can get on the stage and have an impact with our culture and, boy, did they, blues and jazz and so forth. Absolutely. So were here in hollywood, in an extension of hollywood. Were in North Hollywood. Noho, right . Noho, exactly, and in 2020. So its interesting to look back at tv, and im thinking having grown up in l. A. I was fortunate to be a little boy when the iconic nbc building was on hollywood and vine. And that was the era of, you know, early tv. So i want to talk to you, i want to ask you about the power of al joelson. We know that we know about his he was iconic, but after the war, he continued to have a to register in a very important way, you know, joelson sings again, the joelson story, et cetera. Was did he have an unsung power kind of backroom power to helping the revival of minstrelsy to go from film and now into tv . At the dawn of tv. Yes, he was certainly one of the ones that kept it alive and so prominent. He certainly wasnt the only one. In fact, he was considered old hat by a lot of younger america later in his career with his sentimental songs and sonny boy and all this tearjerker stuff, but, yes, he was he was famous for it. Its interesting, some of the most prominent blackface entertainers of that era, eddie cantor is another, were jewish, and they made a point of the similarities in some ways of the experience that jews had had, the terrible experience theyd had over the years with the not to equate them, but we kind of understand you. And the blacks responded in kind. It was a very interesting interview with eddie cantor in the new york age about that. He had just produced a film and he featured a couple of young black dancers in it. What are the names . The nicholas brothers. Yes. And they were so proud of that. These were very, very talented youngsters. Youve probably seen the nicholas brothers. This is in 1936 or something. He features them in his show, preposterous plot, but he features them in his show. They were proud of that and they welcomed him with open arms, wrote this long interview with him and that sort of thing, and he talked about that, how he wanted to help, you know, africanamericans with their struggles just as his people had to struggle, too, so i think there was that kind of sympatico between many of the not all but many of the blackface entertainers, there were a lot of jewish entertainers who did this and africanamericans. But how did jewish entertainers, specifically eddie cantor, we know they are progressive and we know they were engaged supporters of racial equality, essentially. But how do they reconcile a career made with blackface and by extension blackface mockery . Whether they wanted to see it that way or not. It how did they reconcile . Ive always wondered that. Im just curious. Its a very good question, very interesting question, why did they do that . Then you get back to the presentism historicism, the world they were in, not getting pushback from the very people who were being mocked and, in fact, many of them were saying, you know, thank you for being this. Amos and andy being given awards for representing africanamericans on the radio. I mean, come on. But they did. And faced with that and that kind of acceptance from that very group, i think is one of the things that made it happen. What would have happened if the protesters started earlier . What if even in the 1840s there had been push baback against th . And particularly the people being mocked right. Maybe we would not have had 100plus years of it. Again, youve got this group thing. Right. As we were talking about earlier, i think part of the issue for africanamericans post right at the end of the well, actually right at the end of world war ii was distraction. We were distracted many, you know, there was this whole intense challenge of africanamericans both men and women who had fought to liberate hitlers europe who came back and were forced into, especially in the south, into this box of jim crow and segregation, and even, you know, threats of violence. But yet they managed to have other things to think about. I would have to say. Where this wasnt the big deal. The bigger deal was, am i going to be able to get a job . Am i, you know, going to be able to feed my family . Am i going to be able to do other things . Which i think is what happened. But something happened by 1953. Can you speak to that . Well, think about the other things that were on the table at that time. Livin lynching. Of course. Actual violence. If youre prioritizing what youre fighting, what are you going to fight against first . Lobby congress and really, really push against. Its going to be that kind of thing. Also Economic Sustainability that youre talking about. Right, exactly. Sharecropping and so forth. And minstrel shows are like, okay, we dont like that either but we got bigger fish to fry. I think thats very true. Im so i would say im getting clues. Getting clues. Yes, this has been wonderful. Im grateful that we are all having the opportunity to know much more about this story and this topic that is right here in front of us. And certainly in the era that were living, the topic of race and race history and issues around this could not be better focused than in my opinion than having an opportunity to read about that history that you so brilliantly write about. Sours s. O. Tha so thank you very much, tim. Okay. I would just put a period on that by saying history, the value of it is what we learn in our times, of course. Part of it is group think. Part of it is always question. Always question. No matter if the person who is telling you what to think agrees with you, question them, too. Think for yourself basically. Because if people had thought for themselves, maybe we wouldnt have had this 100year history. So, thank you. Indeed. [ applause ] now, i think for questions were going to ask people to step to the microphone there because were being recorded. You can go ahead. Please go ahead. I want to address this to mr. Docket, right . Yes, hi. When you gave that Opening Statement about the influential blacks moving up and how did they take that this was still going on . It was a good answer. It was a good question. But thats for me no different than tyler perry, how were taking that presently. When he started out with madea. Its not different than how were taking people still using the n word. So weve often took things, no matter what era it was. So i just wanted to say that. But my real question is, i wonder what research you have found on was there ever people doing whiteface and what would have happened if they would have done whiteface . I dont know a lot tim probably can we can both answer it, i guess. I dont know a lot about that. Other than more recently done, for example, a Ralph Ellison play, the invisible man, someone who has reinterpreted Ralph Ellison or richard wright. These are progressive and perhaps controversial black authors that are known for their, you know, cuttingedge material. I believe that thats the case. Actually, it just occurred to me. Yes, there was someone who did who is black that did whiteface and his name was france fernad, a black french author in the 50s very famous for these political things, but not involved with mass media or american commercial tv, to my knowledge. Thank you. Sure. Thank you so much for the excellent presentation. This is a great book, obviously. I wanted to make a point about the irish playing with black masks in the minstrel shows. We have to have in mind that the irish were the blacks of europe, especially of great britain, and that the racist ideologies were first developed, incorporated on the experiences of the irish in the in great britain. So it is very understandable why why coming to the united states, the irish immigrants will play those kind of roles and be in black masks. But i want also to point that the early status of the cinema, we have exchange between the races. And the racism was limited 1934 act when made obscene the communication between the races and made certain things unacceptable, like women working outside with the family and being divorced, businesswomen and so forth, and that also determined gays and lesbians as being obscene. In cinema. In this regard, i think it is really very important when were talking about minstrel shows also to look at what else was going on in society, not only to look into black and white relationships, but what was going on in the womens communities and lgbt, immigrant and so forth. In this regard, id like to know why it is predominately male type of show and were there any women . And if there were no women, why there were no women who were in blackface in those minstrel shows . Yeah, when the minstrel show began, it was all male, as i said, in the 1840s. There were some attempts after the civil war in 1965 66 to launch minstrel troupes. They did not really take off. The black minstrel shows by africanamericans did, but not the ones with win. There were womens roles, usually nannies on wenches or Something Like that. They were always men in drag in those periods. You got into the 20th century and the principal part of this book is about the media in the 20th century and how it brought in minstrelsy. Then you started to get women as part of the cast, too, and by the 1920s, 30s, 40s, you were seeing quite a few women, actually. In local production, it will be full of women. Sometimes singers. Sometimes like judy garland they would be in brownface as opposed to full blackface. So over time women became a part of this. Not at the beginning, but later on became a part of it. If that answers your question. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for a really interesting discussion. Im edward lee goldstein. I wrote books about forgiveness, Human Behavior and living with love. My wife was africanamerican. We were married at a time when interracial couples werent that common, so we went through some stuff, but it was interesting when Whoopi Goldberg and ted de anza, there was a big uproar about the whiteface and the blackface. So my wife and i were talked about that, shes passed away, so she has some insights and said that, again, not all of these minstrel shows were necessarily insulting of the black culture. In some ways she said this is a way for some of the black culture to get out there to the white, you know, communities because africanamericans were not allowed to perform or be in certain situations. So it actually in some ways could enhance black culture if its seen in that light. The other thing is that she said that its possible some of the resentment africanamericans had about these minstrel shows is that it was like stealing their culture, you know . And so they werent really given the credit, but at the time you had so much racism, like all the stereotypes in the movies that africanamericans could only play, again, the nannies and so on and so forth. But it was interesting, my stepdaughter who is black and was in her teenage years in the mid80s, she would be watching these shows like whats happening . And some other shows that i thought were really degrading to africanamericans, and but she also enjoyed watching Threes Company which really made buffoons out of whites as well. So thats kind of what my comment is. Do you have something to add possibly that there is a disconnect operah. There seems to be a disconnect with a lot of people that would really be racist but can love an oprah or africanamerican music which they danced to and, again, stole from the black community. So do you have some comments about that . Yeah, its an interesting whats the difference between stealing from and honoring or stealing from and celebrating . Thin line. Two of the same in many ways. Bill mentioned noble sisal, a big name in the Africanamerican Community. Very honored about what he said about it. Another thing blacks said about this was that they really liked amos and andy because they could hear their own. I mean literally it wasnt their own, but they could hear their own and their own culture on the radio finally when Everything Else was lily white at the time. I dont know if you ever listened to amos and andy or not, it was a really sophisticated writing of the show and really sensitive. There were buffoons. Amos was the schemer and andy was the more sensible one. You got variations if you listened carefully to that. So it was this feeling that no matter who was putting it on, you know, they were being recognized at last and some understanding of the humanity at last overrode any kind of outrage they might have had for, you know, being demeans by him. Thank you very much. Par appreciate that. Gentlemen, truly enjoyed this hour. Its very enlightening. Mr. Doggett, you said something that resonated with me. When you poised the question, if how do you how do you reconcile the fact that a performer like al joelson, a jewish performer, could be exploiting a people at the same time doing perhaps something that we can interpret as being humanitarian . And my sense is sometimes good things result from bad things. Listening to you and thinking about listening to you both and thinking about if i had been present in in the 1860s or 1870s and exposed to the minstrel show, of course, i wouldnt come to it with the liberal, progressive perspective that i have now. But how how do i make it acceptable . And my sense is and my sense is its part of cultural evolution. It was going to have to have to happen, that society would have to at some point have to start to acknowledge disparity and the racism that so overwhelmingly prevailed, and this is the first step. We put people in blackface. We expose them a little bit to africanAmerican Culture, but we know they can wash it off. So we sit back and we watch them, and then we relax. We dont feel threatened because theyre not really black. They are offering us perhaps an exposure into into black life in some regard. Generally negative, but its still its not threatening because they can wash it off afterwards. And thats the sense people must have been sitting there and why they were able to enjoy it and not feel threatened and not feel i think somebody said these exotic people they didnt really know, the black community. Because they know its when they left the stage and when they left the theater, they didnt have that sense of threat that they had to deal with, that they were exposed to something that was going to overwhelm them. And thats a tiny step. Its a very tiny step, but its the first one in the sense its the first one that happens. Certainly in terms of the theatrical world. Does that make sense to you . Yeah, sure it does. Theres been actually quite a bit written on more i know the say dissertational doctoral the issue of white not only the exotic issue but the idea of blackface as the minstrel mask or have an experience of what blackness must be like but not have to own it and be able to remove it but to somehow experience it as an out of body or something that isnt permanent. And for example tim and i had mentioned spike lee uses it in his bamboozle. There is an amazing sequence sorry. Spike lee uses it in bamboozle, a movie that looks and requires us to reevaluate it. His editor whoever the people he was working with found all of the most amazingly stereotypical sequences in cartoons and in film in the past, you know, from essentially 1900 to 1950, and he ju je juxtaposed them. And one is putting on blackface and hes being assisted by an africanamerican assistant or waiter, if you will, that has the blackface canister, et cetera. And whats really telling that speaks to your point is eddy says, you know, this is really hard to put on and take off. And he says, you know, youre lucky, you dont have to do this at all. And the guy was at first smiling and the africanamerican assistant began to frown because, yes, he eddy canter does not have to go out in the world, in the city whatever. He can go out in mobile, alabama, or he can go out in atlanta, georgia, in 1930, 1940 and walk into the finest hotel or restaurant and not have to be escorted to the back or we dont serve colored here. So its an interesting yeah, its an interesting dynamic and dissonance, if you will. Yeah, thank you for your point. I appreciate it. Im glad you noticed that. Thank you. It seems that blackface has been a part of minstrelsy from the beginning and you touched on it in a couple of comments in which there could be an interesting discussion about that. But im curious about that. Youve described the minstrel shows as basically what sound to me like general comedy, music and entertainment and banter and parodying all sorts of groups. What im wondering that i didnt get from the presentation is when did the material turn towards the racial mockery that is characterized as today, and when you have the black minstrels in black minstrel shows who were prominent performers and recognized as successful in the field, were they using the same material or did they have different material they were using . After the civil war when the black minstrel shows put on my blacks began to really take off and attract mass audiences, they used material about blacks, but they toned it down somewhat from what had been before. The white minstrel shows veered off into these spectaculars and they would do shows that had nothing to do with africanamerican. They might use the makeup but it was about sinking of the battleship maine or chinese immigrants, so they went in Different Directions in a way. And there were changes over a period. I described how the minstrel show began and how it was kind of like saturday night live mocking everybodyf its period. During the 1850s which was a period of intense debate over slavery in this country and real divisions. We have divisions now, boy did we have divisions then. The minstrel shows basically took the side of proslavery and they became more political into the civil war. And then afterwards as i say they kind of split apart again. So minstrel shows changed over time. And i would mention one other thing that hasnt been brought up, which is when youre close to something, very close. Its happening tonight and tomorrow and its all your life, and you see it up close you notice changes in it that we might not see from a distance. So if youre looking at the minstrel show in the 1900s or 1890s or Something Like that, year not seeing the 1840s version of it. And when you get into television and radio they say the sensors took out all the racially explicit stuff, so it looks like its getting less and less racial over time. Looking back from our perspective you say no, its still racial. But when youre up close to it sometimes you dont see the big changes. And ive seen a lot in the literature that indicates at the time with what they saw, they saw changes for the better in their view, and therefore, okay, its, you know, thats how theyll get away with it or ed sullivan or somebody like that. So being up close as opposed to stepping back and looking at the Bigger Picture is part of what sustained us over that long period of time, too. Id like to just address this question just a little bit. I agree completely, but i think what he was also where he was going was talking about the era of the minstrel show where songs were really prominent and that period would say would be 1880s to 1910. These very derogatory songs, they really took off in the 1880s specifically, and in the mid1890s they got married up with what was then new ragtime music, which was for the time was like rock and roll or something coming on, very up beat, very syncopated music. So the two of them went together. The lyrics were racist and these songs were these upbeat happy songs. As i mentioned the minstrel show basically reflected the Popular Culture of its time so they were all the minstrel shows. But ill tell you from the recordings that ive studied quite a bit, some of the songs in the minstrel shows were those kinds of racially derogatory songs, and some of them were ill take you home again kathleen, and songs that had nothing to do with it. It was like the whole pathway of what popular music was. So, yes, those were in the minstrel shows and so were other things. When they finally and i would say thankfully passed largely from the scene just before world war ii, that era they passed. So they were a reflection of a kind of music, and we can get into a whole discussion, and we did in that article about why those songs came about in general. But as far as the minstrel shows were concerned they were reflecting the music of that time. Of course the fact they were upbeat and ragtime fit perfectly with the minstrel show. So it was a part of that reflection basically of that period. And that period also had a political, social and cultural element to it that was then, you know, postreconstruction, was the era of black clothes and jim crow by the way, i should mention that ive also worked on a cd reissue of many of those early recordings thats coming out next month, so you can actually hear what these records sounded like. And youll hear ill take you home kathleen and some of these more offensive songs from that period. Well, the jim crow period the period immediately after the civil war was kind of a liberating period and there were many blacks elected to office and so forth. That was rolled back gradually and the 90s plessy vs. Ferguson. And the minstrel show did reflect what saturday night live reflects during that period that began 1880s, 1890s kind of thing. And jim crow really continued through the 40s, up until the 50s when it finally started to get eroded. And i think part of the roll back finally the minstrel show was a roll back of jim crow. Were going to conclude our program with two last questions. Thank you for the material presented. Its very informative. I wish i were as optimistic as this gentleman here in terms of society seeing the things we see around racism. And this gentleman up here who cited the nword being used. For me when i see a show on television such as filmed out of the jet Propulsion Lab and all those jobs are white, i find that highly offensive, highly. And i did want to ask you questions about the film. That monday night on pbs they had a film on the moneys that go to emergency preparedness. So they talked about in chicago the 1995 heat deaths and how those deaths were in the black community, the poor black community of chicago. And then it showed chicago in those areas in the 30s and now that area has all been flattened because of red lining. And then i wanted to ask you when it showed the performance that was so popular in chicago where they they were, you know, always sold out of tickets, yeah it was very hard to get tickets. So there was no black people in that crowd, so i presumed that was why because of the racism then, thats one question. And then the second question was when they traveled you had i think it was 4,000 whites and 3,000 blacks, so the blacks im assuming they stayed inhousing that would have been known to the people. Because in other words because blacks had such a hard time, you know, getting into hotels. And just the last thing is i noticed oh, the third thing, the christy minstrels they had an album and i presume that was from the 60s and they had a blackface something on it. And so i was wondering if there was any commentary about that when that came out. And the last thing i cant remember but ill remember it by the time you can address what i just asked. I hope i can remember all these three of those. Yes, that album was an attempt to exploit the popularity of the new christy minstrels which was a very popular folk group, all white folk group. Since they used the name i guess as a tribute randy sparks i think organized that. As christy minstrels and somebody had this album, this music they put it out as a tribute. Well, i think it was exploitation. The audience turning around to the camera there, the 500 people in the audience all white. And most audiences in that time were either separated like theyd have one show for blacks or segregated. And part of the theater was reserved for fwlaks and part for whites. That kind of thing. But it was clearly the whites dominating in that shot of the show. One last question. Gentlemen, thank you for your work on this. You spoke about different kinds of mediums. Youve talked about radio, television, film, vaudeville. Did you discover any evidence of minstrelsy on the broadway stage . Did it make it all the way to broadway . And if it did to use an oddly ironic term can you enlighten us as to whether it follows the pattern of the peaks and valleys of your graph there as to representation of the great white wave . The great white wave was never, you know, a home base for minstrel shows. They played new york. They played all around new york, and they had their own theaters and things like that. They were sometimes incorporated into broadway shows, particularly in the 20s when it was a nostalgia thing to look back on. And there was a broadway show in 1926 that had this big minstrel finales a tip of the hat to the minstrel shows, and there were a couple of others. There were some broadway shows, yes, that incorporated minstrel routines. Everybody on stage at once. And the broadway stage evolved into plays and musicals that had their own ever changing kind of structures, too. So they were really two different worlds. Maybe attended by the same people but two different worlds. But one of the things people will mistakenly scholars will mistakenly say the minstrel shows died out by the 1880s. It actually shared the stage with them. It wasnt the dominant stage before but it was still prominent. Broadway shows and plays more generally became much more prominent and theres a whole history of that, of course. So they were kind of parallel entertainments, i would say. There was one show of note that used minstrelsy in contemporary times, and it was used for as ironic metaphor, and thats the scotsborough boys, this redo. When i saw that in San Francisco at the american observatory theater i was floored. But it was used as a metaphor and as a deep irony. But other than that, i have not seen minstrelsy in our times. The friends of the North Hollywood library believe the Public Library in america is a place of learning where everyone in the community is welcome. We hope you have felt welcome here tonight and leave having learned something important, maybe something disturbing about American History and culture. Please join me now in a round of applause for two historians who have shared their professional knowledge and their personal perspectives, tim brooks and bill dockett. Thanks also to cspan for taking this program live for later broadcast on American History tv. Good night from the North Hollywood Amelia Airhart original branch of the Public Library. Weeknights this week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight we focus on d. C. Museums which include the smithsonian institution. Open free to the public nearly every day of the year. Recently the smithsonian announced its museums and zoo would be closing this past saturday due to the coronavirus outbreak. Historian Doug Bradburn joins us from Mount Vernons museum and education center. And stook questions about the battle of iwo jima. And took questions about the Long Campaign to win women the right to vote. American history tv tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Ryan mcgrady from wiki education talks about how wikipedia has changed. He works with academics to improve site content. This interview was recorded at the annual American Historical Association meeting in new york city. Joining us from our studios in new york, ryan mcgrady. He runs the scholars and Scientists Program as the manager for wiki education, which means what . Which means that i run a program that brings subject Matter Experts to wikipedia. How did wikipedia start out . Whats its etymology and genesis . Well, wikipedia is a combination of wiki and encyclopedia. Wiki is the kind of software it uses which is that easy to edit, easy to collaborate sort of bare text and images software. Wiki is not the same as wikipedia, but they kind of merged the two together. It began in 2001 as a kind of side project, it was a drafting space for that more traditional encyclopedia, but it kind of took off and very quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of articles. So who writes and edits for wikipedia, and how do you doublecheck hat the information is 100 accura