Darkology: The Hidden History of Amateur Blackface Minstrelsy and the Making of Modern America, 1860-1970

Abstract

Darkology: The Hidden History of Amateur Blackface Minstrelsy and the Making of Modern America, 1860-1970 develops a critical bibliography and uses material culture to uncover the pervasive world of amateur blackface minstrelsy that took hold in most cities in the United States North and West between 1860 and 1970. Previously lost to history, amateur minstrelsy was integral to domestic and international imperialism. This dissertation aims to understand the cultural origins and consequences of amateur blackface minstrelsy, to map its political geography, and recapture the significance of its print culture. Despite an abundant body of evidence, the print culture of amateur blackface had remained unstudied. Darkology discloses the relationship between racially exclusive fraternal orders and the U.S. Government, and the immense body of blackface print that they created for public use. Darkology reveals the lost history of amateur blackface by providing the first bibliographic study of amateur blackface print, extends the chronology of theatrical blackface minstrelsy by seventy years through 1970, expands the geography of blackface in amateur form to the West, and reveals legal campaigns waged by the NAACP to ban blackface during the Civil Rights Movement.