Editing Blackface (section)

==== 20th century ====
With the rise of vaudeville, [[The Bahamas|Bahamian]]-born actor and comedian [[Bert Williams]] became [[Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.|Florenz Ziegfeld]]'s highest-paid star and only African American star.<ref name="autogenerated3" /><ref>{{cite news|author-link=Margo Jefferson|first=Margo|last=Jefferson|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/arts/music/13vaud.html |title=Blackface Master Echoes in Hip-Hop|newspaper=The New York Times|date= October 13, 2004|access-date= February 2, 2008}}</ref>

In the [[Theatre Owners Booking Association|Theater Owners Booking Association]] (TOBA), an all-black vaudeville circuit organized in 1909, blackface acts were a popular staple. Called "Toby" for short, performers also nicknamed it "Tough on Black Actors" (or, variously, "Artists" or "Asses"), because earnings were so meager. Still, TOBA headliners like [[Tim Moore (comedian)|Tim Moore]] and Johnny Hudgins could make a very good living, and even for lesser players, TOBA provided fairly steady, more desirable work than generally was available elsewhere. Blackface served as a springboard for hundreds of artists and entertainers&nbsp;– black and white&nbsp;– many of whom later would go on to find work in other performance traditions. For example, one of the most famous stars of Haverly's European Minstrels was Sam Lucas, who became known as the "Grand Old Man of the [[Negro]] Stage".<ref>Johnson (1968). ''Black Manhattan'', p. 90. Quoted in {{Harvnb|Toll|1974|p=218}}.</ref> Lucas later played the title role in the 1914 cinematic production of [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.

From the early 1930s to the late 1940s, New York City's famous [[Apollo Theater]] in [[Harlem]] featured skits in which almost all black male performers wore the blackface makeup and huge white painted lips, despite protests that it was degrading from the NAACP. The comics said they felt "naked" without it.<ref name=fox />{{rp|4, 1983 ed.}}

The minstrel show was appropriated by the black performer from the original white shows, but only in its general form. Black people took over the form and made it their own. The professionalism of performance came from black theater. Some argue that the black minstrels gave the shows vitality and humor that the white shows never had. As the black social critic [[Amiri Baraka|LeRoi Jones]] has written:

{{blockquote|It is essential to realize that ... the idea of white men imitating, or caricaturing, what they consider certain generic characteristics of the black man's life in America is important if only because of the Negro's reaction to it. (And it is the Negro's ''reaction'' to America, first white and then black and white America, that I consider to have made him such a unique member of this society.)<ref name=leroy /> }}

The black minstrel performer was not only poking fun at himself but in a more profound way, he was poking fun at the white man. The [[cakewalk]] is caricaturing white customs, while white theater companies attempted to satirize the cakewalk as a black dance. Again, as LeRoi Jones notes:

{{blockquote|If the cakewalk is a Negro dance caricaturing certain white customs, what is that dance when, say, a white theater company attempts to satirize it as a Negro dance? I find the idea of white minstrels in blackface satirizing a dance satirizing themselves a remarkable kind of irony&nbsp;– which, I suppose is the whole point of minstrel shows.<ref name=leroy>{{cite book|first= Leroy|last= Jones|title= Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed from It|publisher= TMorrow Quill Paperbacks|year= 1963|location= NY|pages= [https://archive.org/details/bluespeoplenegroexp00bara/page/85 85–86]|isbn= 978-0-688-18474-2|url= https://archive.org/details/bluespeoplenegroexp00bara/page/85}}</ref> }}