Megyn Kelley’s recent offensive Blackface remarks questioning wearing blackface on Halloween ended up getting her fired. Sunday Morning contributor and WCBS anchor Maurice DuBois looks at the long and complex history of white (and even black) performers painting their faces black.
For more than 100 years, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment on stage and film, reducing an entire race of people to stereotypes. DuBois speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson, and with Eric Lott, cultural historian and professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about the complicated history of a racist theatrical form.
Blackface: A cultural history of a racist art form