One of my grandsons is astounded that I was born in the 1940s. Actually, 1949, which is almost the '50s. Doesn't matter to him—it's still the decade of '40s, same decade as World War II. I remember the same phenomenon when I was his age; I could not believe my grandparents were born in the 1870s, only ten years after the Civil War.
From time to time, I'll impart some nugget that astounds him, like, "I remember when we got our first colored TV." I'll say it as he tries to decide what program to watch from a thousand-item menu of shows on a dozen different apps.
Sometimes a particular memory from those days comes back and hits me square in the face, which was the case recently, when I read a review of a book in the New York Times. 'Darkology,' it is called, with the subtitle of 'Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment: A Social History of Minstrel Shows.' In Mays Landing, New Jersey, the town where I grew up, we had an annual minstrel show, held in the school auditorium. It lasted, as far as I can remember, into the early 1960s. I mean a classic minstrel show, ladies and gentlemen, with white men in blackface—they were called N Men—led on by a gentleman who sat between them called Mr. Interlocketer.
Mr. Interlocketer was a white man dressed in formal clothes, thus signaling his superiority over the N Men. The white man ran the show. In the Mays Landing version, Mr. Interlocketer was played every year by a man who was absolutely the first citizen of Mays Landing; smart, respected, funny, educated, a close friend of my dad's. Jack McCallum, Sr., fortunately, possessed no musical talent, nor any desire to be on stage, but my mother was an active member of the chorus that supported the banter between Mr. Interlocketer and the joking N Men.
Now, this would be easily explained had Mays Landing been a haven for racism. Though I'm looking at this from the perspective of a white middle-class kid, Mays Landing seemed fairly tolerant. Its public education had been integrated since the 1940s. I went to school with plenty of African American kids, played sports with them, had them over to my house, and remain friends with several of them today. People like my father and several of the men who wore blackface in the minstrel show made sure that the Black kids—most of whom lived on the outskirts of town, to be sure—were included in all events sponsored by the Mays Landing Athletic Association (which, by the way, also sponsored the minstrel show).
Now, this wasn't just a Mays Landing, New Jersey, thing, of course. Minstrel shows were endemic to American culture. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of the liberals, was a blackface enthusiast. In fact, the Federal Writers Project of the New Deal was a massive distributor of publications that explained how to put on minstrel shows.
I bring this up now in the context of efforts to erase our history; to promote the idea that only the good parts of our shared experience should be shown. I don't believe that's true. When I talk about the past with my grandson, I try to make the point that good and bad can reside in the same place; that you learn from the mistakes of the past, that good people do bad things, that culture evolves, that times change, that people change, and you should change with them.
I asked one of my African American friends from Mays Landing school days if he remembers the minstrel shows. "Absolutely no memory," he says.
"Probably for the best," I told him.
"It's kind of amazing," he went on, "because I always thought of Mays Landing as being racially equitable."
That makes me feel better but only marginally so. I wish I could tell you that I found the minstrel shows distasteful back then, but I don't think that was the case. Live and learn. That "learn" part is important.
