Blackface in Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Frederick Douglass' Hometown Newspapers, 1847

Abstract

In the fall 1847, escaped-slave Frederick Douglass was making plans to begin his newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. At the same time, editors of the city's three morning dailies were publishing stories that made fun of African Americans. These stories adopted the style of the blackface minstrel routines that were immensely popular in the 1840s and contributed to coverage that gave readers only a narrow view of race, gender, and ethnicity. In showing that these editors not only appropriated routines from blackface shows but also extended the genre beyond racial coverage, the research offers support for both the traditional view of the blackface routines as racist degradation and for the more recent scholarship that sees the routines offering a safe masquerade with which to critique society.