Black and white minstrels episodes

In the two decades of its existence, it’s hard to dispute the sheer popularity of The Black and White Minstrel Show – in numerical terms at least.

In the 1960s, it was getting audiences of 16 million. Its stage-show spin-offs were breaking box-office records. At one point, it was even something of a critical success: in 1961, it won the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux.

What’s harder to fathom is why, in an era in which tens of thousands of black people had long been settled in Britain or were trying to make it their home, a BBC which had already managed to reflect something of the reality of black British life in documentaries such as 1955’s Has Britain a Colour Bar? and dramas such as 1956’s A Man from the Sun, took so little account of the offence caused by white performers blacking-up their faces on a peak-time TV show.

The traditional defence, namely that it was ‘of its time’, does not quite wash.

Even when it launched as a regular series in 1958, old-time American ‘minstrel’ song-and-dance routines were hardly innocent – as this

the black and white minstrel show 1978

the black and white minstrel show lp