After which, you are to take some baby brushes and wipe off the dirt to give your hands a polish." Later, black artists also performed in blackface. This to be repeated until thoroughly blackened.
Then they must be cracked open and kept dry until you wet your hands and rub it on your face. According to a 1901 source: "Blackface is best prepared by burning an ordinary cork on some wood shavings for best texture, while storing it on some sheet iron to keep it clean.
Early white performers in blackface used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. In both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, which it both predated and outlasted. The Black and White Minstrel Show on television lasted until 1978.
It was practised in Britain as well, surviving longer than in the U.S. The Dreadnought hoaxers in Abyssinian costumeīlackface was a performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830.