You Ever Take Part in a Minstrel Show?

[Ron Green]

I have. Some of my first experiences playing music in public were on a stage with Bones, Tambo, and the "End Men" in blackface, playing in the annual Lions Club show in the high school auditorium. One of my earliest memories was of my own father putting on blackface for that show, some years before I was able to play. Although he used the "N" word casually, one of his greatest idols on this earth was Coleman Hawkins, the legendary tenor sax player.

Our county was 40% African American, but I never went to school with a Black kid. We had two high schools in my town, _________ High School from which I graduated in 1965, and ___________ Colored High School where 40% of the kids went. I always drank from public water fountains marked "White," used segregated restrooms, movie theaters and restaurants.

My first playmates were Black; they lived down the road from us, and while I could go in their house they could never come into mine. Although we were quite poor, a Black woman came to our house a few days a week and did cooking and cleaning, and indeed helped raise me, and my sister and brother. My mother treated this lovely woman very kindly, and surely saw her as a second-class person.

In the ensuing decades, understanding my white privilege has been for me a complicated process. My own experience fits so perfectly into the actual history of this country: Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynching, segregation, red-lining, mass incarceration, police execution - all things I've been protected from my whole life. At the same time, my schooling didn't give me the truth about any of these, even as they had happened, and still happened, all around me. Some of them happen today.

To hear people say "All lives matter" or to talk about "reverse racism" is to know that the lack of real education is widespread. The history I lived is recent, but the lies told to all Americans for hundreds of years are only now being uncovered.

[lagomorph777]

1. Eeeeewwwww. That would never have been remotely acceptable in my home town.

That was over 50 years ago, in an affluent white suburb in a pretty red area. But there were limits to bad behavior.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Mine either, but we sure as heck weren't free from racism, either.

I graduated from high school in the mid-'60s, like the OP. We lived in a suburb of a northern city where black people were pretty scarce; when I was a very little kid the only black people I'd ever seen were porters on passenger trains. We had no black neighbors (or Asian or Hispanic ones, for that matter). When I was about 10 or 11 I decided I wanted to take piano lessons, so my parents hired a piano teacher for me - a black jazz musician who also taught piano in people's homes. He was the only black person I actually had any direct contact with at that time. His name was Mr. Edwards (I don't think I ever knew his first name), and he was quite formal and a bit stern. I took lessons from him for several years. In my high school graduating class of more than 600 there was only one black kid. He seemed to be well-liked but I have no idea what he might have had to put up with outside of school.

I don't remember hearing the word "n*****" used in my family - we kids would have been shot down hard if we'd used it. But the racism of my time and place was a racism of ignorance. I was aware of the civil rights movement because we read about it in the paper and talked about it in school, but it was a remote thing that most of us didn't really get; we lived in a white bubble. It wasn't until I got to college that I had a chance to meet a lot of people my own age who weren't middle-class white people. I can't say that I became instantly enlightened; though. I doubt that I really am yet.

[Ron Green]

5. It's an interesting contrast.

You lived in a white bubble in the North, with very few Black people around, and I lived in a white bubble in the South, with almost half my fellow citizens as descendants of slaves. The racism of both our places was of ignorance, but a very different kind.

[milestogo]

2. I remember someone putting on blackface for halloween in my all white suburb.

This was like in 2nd grade. I think her costume was supposed to be a maid. It wasn't intentionally racist, although it seems really offensive now.

[kskiska]

4. I'm an amateur historian in my hometown (New England) Facebook group

and as such, I read through many, many hometown newspaper archives. Minstrel shows were very common and were performed by community groups, churches, charities, and even corporations. They didn't always involve blackface costumes, but many did. They sang old favorite folk songs and performed skits. I've never been to one, but up into the 60s they were prevalent in most communities.

[Ron Green]

7. Minstrelsy has a fascinating history.

Mostly it's to entertain whites at the expense of the humanity and dignity of Black people, but there's an element of envy and imitation involved as well. As I mentioned in the OP, my father respected, even idolized, Coleman Hawkins. Would he have invited him into our house? I don't know.

[maxsolomon]

6. Ron Green, how old are you?

I'm guessing you graduated HS prior to the Civil Rights Act's passage?

Thanks for the slice of the Real - I graduated in 1981 from an inner-city Arts High School. Seems like an alien planet to what I experienced.

[Ron Green]

8. I greaduated in '65, and it took a few years for the Civil Rights Act to take effect in my town.

I don't think the schools were integrated until about 1971.

I was working at the Dairy Queen the day the first Black folks came inside to dine (it had always been the walk-up window outside for their service.) Old Mrs. Lacy the manager made a big show of disinfecting the booth they'd occupied after they left.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Yes, I was 9 years only and was in a segregated white school in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. It was 1957.