Blacking Up

The most popular entertainment form of the nineteenth century featured white men masquerading as blacks? What does this say about America?

"Robert Toll has worked through a vast array of primary material about minstrel shows: posters, programmes, playbills, jokebooks, sheet music, song-books, and reviews. In Black Up he has coded their various themes, relating them to the years in which they were used, where, and by which troupes. Toll's guiding principle is that minstrelsy both reflected and helped shape popular thought, and it leads him to an interpretation that is so sociological and neatly rounded as to surprise even a sociologist. Toll's is a notable achievement." -- Michael Banton in The Times Literary Supplement (London).