White men would darken their faces to create caricatures of black people, including large mouths, lips and eyes, woolly hair and coal-black skin. The performances would stereotype black men and women as ignorant, hypersexual, superstitious, lazy people who were prone to thievery and cowardice.

The practice took hold in New York City in the 1830s and became immensely popular among post-Civil War whites.

…Blackface performances were condemned as offensive from the beginning.

In 1848, after watching a blackface act, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass called the performers “the filthy scum of white society” in The North Star newspaper.

…A letter to the editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1946 called a blackface performance “grotesque” and said it attacked “by ridicule and cheap buffoonery the self-respect of every American Negro.”

…Early black actors, singers and vaudevillians were forced to don blackface as well if they wished to perform for more lucrative white audiences.

For example, William Henry “Master Juba” Lane is considered the single most influential performer in 19th century dance and is credited with inventing tap. It was only after his fame reached international proportions that he was allowed to tour with an all-white minstrel troupe and to perform without blackface.

AP Explains: Racist history of blackface began in the 1830s

hmmm