Minstrel Shows and Josephine Baker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agTF2E83AUY&feature=youtu.be

These documentaries, covering what it was like to be a black entertainer in the early 20th century, were fascinating.  In a society now, we can tend to forget what life was like for people who were not the majority. It is a shame that people got looked over, or under appreciated just because their skin was a different color. While I am well aware that discrimination of all kinds still is ongoing today, the abundance of it in popular culture into the 1960s still kind of amazes me. The fact that black face was used for so long is just crazy! While I understand makeup used to cover up and change one's appearance (I have done alot of theatrical performances) that kind of "mocking" and extreme stereotyping is very shocking, especially to society as it is today (being concerned with so called political correctness). I find it fascinating that Josephine Baker had to go to France to find super-stardom. Other women, such as Bessie Coleman, the first female African-american pilot, had also escaped to France to do what they loved. It is interesting to note that the "land of freedom," The United States of America, was so far behind many other countries, and in many ways, still is today.