Week 3 - Al Jolson Blackface Minstrel Show

The film takes place on a riverboat stage with a large group of men singing well known Americana songs, like Oh Susanna and Suwanee River in black face. The entertainers were dressed in nice, flashing clothing. Some of the outfits were silk and others had sequins . The audience is completely white, and towards the end they stand up and sing with the performers. At the very end there is a shot of a black man picking cotton on a plantation. What I took away from the film was that it was a commentary on African American's role in U.S. society at the time. Black people were solely used by white people for labor or entertainment. A black person could be an performer, entertaining wealthy white people, or a laborer, picking the fields for white cotton plantation owners. Either way African Americans were used by white people or one purpose or another, and were certainly not equal to white Americans.