This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. If you're a well-known public person, whether you're a performer or a politician,

if someone uncovers that you've worn blackface at a party or on stage or in a college fraternity,

you're going viral, and it will be a scandal. But white people posing in a racist depiction of

black people was much more popular than you might think.

The new book Darkology uncovers the hidden history of blackface.

My guest is the author Rayland Barnes.

In the late 1800s, as professional minstrel shows were becoming obsolete,

amateur blackface shows became one of the most popular

forms of entertainment, and that's where Barnes' focus is. Many groups like fraternal orders,

clubs, PTAs, police and firemen's associations, and soldiers on military bases put on their

own blackface shows. FDR was a fan of minstrel shows and even

co-wrote a show to be performed by children who had polio like he did. During his presidency,

he created the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs to millions of people

during the Great Depression,

but also provided minstrel sheet music to schools and helped fund minstrel productions.

There's lots of surprising and disturbing history in darkology.

Raylan Barnes as an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University and a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African

and African American research at Harvard. She grew up in Orange County, California, an area where

blackface thrived. Ralen Barnes, welcome to Fresh Air, your book is really fascinating. Why is this

history of amateur blackface so hidden?

Thank you so much for having me. So I think there's a few reasons that the history of blackface is so hidden.

Ironically, it's a huge success of the civil rights movement. Civil rights activists protested against blackface and tried

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