THE JUBA PROJECT
Featured Performers and Documents
Blackface Minstrelsy in Context

'Blacking up' the face as a part of a performance has been a feature of many cultures for a very long time.  As a representation of the plantation slave of the southern United States, the image became firmly entrenched in commercial entertainment in the mid-19th century, was disseminated to colonial and immigrant cultures around the world, and has had extraordinary persistence.  Despite the absence of the blackface image from the mass media since the beginning of the American civil rights movement in the late 1950s, it has not disappeared.  The Juba Project takes a close look at one small corner of the history of blackface minstrelsy.  We believe it is a significant corner, a time when the form first established itself as a popular and viable means of expression and entertainment, a good source of parody and humour as well as repression.  This is when the form as we still experience it in some measure took hold in Western culture.  A better understanding of the complexities of that first phenomenon is important in any understanding of its legacy.

These pages provide some basic information for further reading on blackface and on minstrelsy, compiled from various sources.  It will be added to from time to time, as more work appears.