When my father was President of the Easton Town while Walter Barnes was Mayor, the Easton Elks Club put on a minstrel show at the Easton Armory.
That would probably have been 1950 or 1951.
I figure as a leading politician some Elk must have seen Dad as an easy target.
During the show, there was a white man pretending to be black.
It struck me as very strange.
Easton then had segregated schools.
As I walked to school on South Aurora Street I could see a black neighborhood about a block east.
Bringing this to mind is the post by former MSNBC host Joy Reid.claiming beloved Christmas anthem “Jingle Bells” was written “to make fun of black people.”
The song was written in 1850 by a man who became a Confederate soldier.
The New York Post story about Reid’s post includes this image. Not that it dos not reference the song.
Showing this does not refer to Jingle Bells are the lyrics: “Dashing through the snow, In a one-horse open sleigh, O’er the fields we go, Laughing all the way…”
“The origin of the claim for the song’s allegedly racist roots stems from a 2017 academic article by Boston University professor Kyna Hamill,” the Post reports.
Not the Bee has this story.
