The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

Lasting Remnants

Even though blackface disappeared as law in the late 1920s, as late as the 1960s, black entertainers (such as Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis, Jr.) still had to go in the back door of theatrical establishments, bars, etc.; by law!

They couldn’t rent a hotel room in Las Vegas or Miami Beach – even while being the headline act.

Ben Vereen’s 1981 Presidential Inauguration performance for Ronald Reagan presented this country’s turn-of-the-century Blackface/Jim Crow laws in a great story, about black comic genius Bert Williams (circa 1890 to 1920).

Vereen had been invited to perform for the Reagan Inauguration and had accepted only on the condition that he could tell the entire “Blackface” story – but the whole first half of Vereen’s show, depicting Bern Williams and blackface, was censored by Reagan’s people on ABC TV, contrary to the special agreement Vereen had with them.