minstrel

As I think about the 2024 election, I keep hearing the lyrics of Irish poet Thomas Moore’s song “The Minstrel Boy”:

His father, who died when Marshall was 10, occasionally sang in a minstrel act and Marshall’s sister, actor Joanne Dru, worked as a showgirl at the Copa Club.

The practice of blackface traces back to racist minstrel shows in the early 19th century where non-Black actors darkened their skin with makeup to portray caricatures of Black people — who were widely shut out from mainstream entertainment spaces.

At the newly popular and lavish Hotel del Coronado, minstrel shows featured white performers in blackface.

However, the banjo's creation eventually became a blending between West African and European traditions mostly due to minstrel shows in the 1800s.