Blacks in Blackface

  Bert Williams 1874-1922 "I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient -- in America." "A black face, run-down shoes and elbow-out make-up give me a place to hide. The real Bert Williams is crouched deep down inside the coon who sings the songs and tells the stories." Born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1875, Egbert Austin Williams moved to New York and then California with his family as a boy. Forced to abandon his college study of civil engineering at Stanford to earn a living, he turned his self-taught musical skills and gift for comic mimicry into a lifelong career. Bert first entered show business as a barker for medicine shows in the Riverside area. At the time, medicine shows traveled the small towns and villages throughout the country ...

  Spencer Williams, Jr. 1893-1969 "Andy Brown"   Spencer Williams, Jr. who would become known to White TV audiences as Andy Brown in The Amos 'N' Andy Show in the early 1950s, produced, directed, and acted in numerous race movies through the 1930s and 1940s. He also wrote, produced, directed and costarred in a few of the most charming films of the genre, including The Blood of Jesus (1941), Go Down, Death! (1944), and The Girl in Room 20 (1946). Williams entered the film business at a time when "race movies" were being made alongside the Hollywood versions. Race movies were low-budgeted and mostly aimed at black audiences in segregated movie-houses of the South and where large city black populations lived in the North.   Spencer Williams, Jr. as Andy Brown in The Amos 'N' Andy Show ...

  About This Blog This blog is an updated copy (2024) of my web site at: https://black-face.com/ that began in 2009. Sources The following books were my primary sources and are recommended for further reading: African American Films Through 1959 -- Larry Richards  Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America -- Robert C. Toll Black Film/White Money -- Jesse Algeron Rhines  Black Like Me -- John Strausbaugh  Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films -- Henry T. Sampson Blacks in Blackface: A Source Book on Early Black Musical Shows -- Henry T. Sampson Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, The Story of Black Hollywood -- Donald Bogle  Channeling Blackness -- Darnell M. Hunt  Darkest America, Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop -- Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen Inside the Minst...