I can think of non-KKK reasons why a person might feel motivated to delete any reference to blackface from Al Jolson’s wikipedia page. If you’re USian, I bet you can picture the guy. Not a racist bone in his body™, just got a lot of joy from that man’s body of work and can’t stand to see that one thing overshadow his legacy. Right? But still, KKK reasons outweigh the non-KKK by a damn sight (ironic because yes, he was jewish). This has made his wikipedia page* a long-running battleground.
For a time the page made no mention of blackface, and now that it does, that’s footnoted to hell with “this was totally fine,” “no it wasn’t,” “yes it was,” “no it wasn’t,” in the wikipedia-rules-acceptable version of quotes and references to what other people have said (citation needed). The end result of all of this: The Number One Historic Guy Associated with Blackface has a wikipedia page longer than Napoleon Bonaparte, which mostly consists of hagiography.
Not that the big little emperor deserves shit, but he might be slightly more notable than the minstrel act, right? Wikipedia’s struggles to define the limits of “notability” have had some odd results. A massively influential musician might be a red link while every boy in every soccer team since the dawn of time is listed. This odd result, I’d argue, is more embarrassing than most.
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*I wanted to get a snapshot of where it’s at right now on the wayback machine but the most current one on there has nothing but apologia in the blackface section. By the time you read this article, will all the “this kinda sucks” notes have been deleted again? As white people, I feel a lil uncomfortable when people throw hate at us in a broad and unqualified way, but this wikipedia page kinda makes me wanna smash the delete all white people button.
memo to self: i’m bad needs more sweets, what if ll repped the lollipop guild
How was Jolson associated with the KKK?
you were alive for more of that than i was. perpetuating the farcical gollywog type image of black people, he entertained and motivated racism, of which the kkk were just the most violent end. it ain’t deep. of course he wouldn’t love the kkk. he was jewish, he had black colleagues, etc etc, as the glowing bazillion word wikipedia page makes clear. but that doesn’t mean people editing his page or downloading mammy didn’t harbor those sympathies.
For a similar controversy (resolved by creating a separate article on the controvery)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface_and_Morris_dancing
Also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer%27s_Day
(The article doesn’t mention the claim that Darkie Day is a corruption of Darking Day, meaning midwinter.)
Jolson’s final blackface performance was in 1945. Jolson died in 1950.
I was born in 1955.
This was on TV here in Oz when I was a lad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show
Wholesome family entertainment!
thx for the additional info y’all. sorry for my display of innumeracy chigau, but in fairness to me, the shadow of mammy was so long it reached into the 90s. my first niece, whose mom is biracial, saw some amount of that kkk-ass 1941 cartoon where bugs bunny clowns on a “sambo.” it wasn’t syndicated to tv, part of a short list of soft-banned WB cartoons, but it was put on a VHS compilation innocently obtained from the local blockbuster.