{"product_id":"darkology-blackface-and-the-american-way-of-entertainment","title":"Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment","description":"\u003cp\u003eA groundbreaking history, decades in the making, that chronicles how blackface dominated American society culturally, financially, and racially for nearly two centuries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNever before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. With Darkology, Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes meticulously unravels the complex, subterranean, and all-too-often expunged history of “Darkology”―the insidious study, commodification, and dehumanization of Black life, through which performers caricatured the enslaved and formerly enslaved for their supposed subservience and happy demeanor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven the extraordinary research reflected in Darkology, it’s not surprising that Barnes spent twenty years tracking down “fading photographs, old movies, bureaucratic detritus, moldy scripts, and living witnesses, assembling an impressive archive that allowed her to demonstrate the astonishingly broad reach of blackface minstrelsy” (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich). Painstakingly piecing together these scattered shards of evidence, Barnes reveals the shocking extent to which blackface took center stage in every era of American history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was not a fringe activity. By 1830, as political resistance to slavery grew, blackface exploded from a niche performance into a venomous national export. Within a decade, hardly a theater in the country didn’t put on minstrel shows. Following the Civil War, this grotesque entertainment soared, seeping from professional theaters into everyday amateur shows, print, and advertisements. It was everywhere: Elks Clubs, religious institutions, battlefields, universities, and schools. It wasn’t just in the Jim Crow era; it defined it. The very name “Jim Crow” derives from minstrelsy’s founding character.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDarkology dismantles the myth that blackface was a fleeting, post–Civil War phenomenon. Even in eras known for liberal progressivism, it flourished. Barnes unearths the startling fact that four-term president Franklin D. Roosevelt was a devotee who died hours before a blackface show he had commissioned at Warm Springs. It permeated U.S. military bases and was even used in World War II Japanese American concentration camps and German POW camps as a bizarre tool of “Americanization.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter WWII, the tide began to turn as Black veterans and mothers in places like suburban California protested the practice in schools. Still, blackface performances proved resilient, surfacing as late as 1969 at the University of Vermont. Even as the Civil Rights movement fought for equality, blackface remained present in American politics and white supremacist organizing through the Nixon and Ford administrations, its legacy still percolating in variable forms today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy tracing minstrelsy’s evolution through oral histories, material culture, and a wide range of multimedia sources, Barnes’s “masterpiece” (David Blight) forces us to reckon with the myriad ways the American Dream wore blackface. Recasting this American story with “vivid and engaging storytelling” (Howard French), Darkology is a landmark work that peers beneath the boulders deliberately obscuring our past―illuminating a path toward a more just and equal society in America’s future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor: \u003c\/strong\u003eRhae Lynn Barnes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Liveright\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 528pp\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 6.5 x 9.5 x 1.75\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNotes:\u003c\/strong\u003e b\/w, hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRelease Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e April 7, 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 978-1631496349\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Liveright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48606639128832,"sku":"9781631496349","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0053\/3902\/files\/darkology.jpg?v=1776313510","url":"https:\/\/atomicbooks.com\/products\/darkology-blackface-and-the-american-way-of-entertainment","provider":"Atomic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}