Black minstrels had to perform for white audiences who demanded blackface caricature

Evidence

There were certainly no substantial paying Black audiences. A Black minstrel worked in front of white audiences, in white concert halls, on white traveling shows. He would have had no choice but to try to figure out what white audiences wanted. As long as blackface was the country’s cultural juggernaut, who would pay money to see Negroes in their own skin? — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1119

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reframing thesis: antebellum entertainment economics forced Black performers into white-defined caricature, parallel to how slavery shaped other institutions.