November 13, 1998
The Thorny Roles of Race in North American Theater
The image of the entertainer in blackface is central to the iconography of North American popular culture. From the 19th-century minstrel shows, through vaudeville and burlesque, to countless films featuring Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby, and others, entertainers in blackface were a fixture on the cultural landscape.
Yet the great African-American actor Ira Aldridge (1807-67) chose to live in Europe --
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