minstrelsy

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  5/4/2021
  

  Tensions Boil at UT-Austin over "The Eyes of Texas"

  "Kendall Walker, a UT-Austin senior who is part of the student strike in the admissions office, said she thinks administrators wrongly assumed the issue would die down after the school formed a committee this past year to study the song’s origins."

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  3/17/2021
  

  The South's Jim Crow Barriers to Voting Rights are Going National

  Columnist Hayes Brown says that it's only fitting that new Jim Crow-style voting restrictions are a national phenomenon; Thomas Rice, the minstrelsy performer who invented the Jim Crow character was a New Yorker who successfully peddled anti-Black caricature across the nation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Monthly
  3/7/2021
  

  A University of Texas Report Will Find That ‘The Eyes of Texas’ Has “No Racist Intent”

  A University of Texas Commission's report will likely serve as reinforcement for the administration's decision to keep the tradition of playing "The Eyes of Texas" after football games, pleasing many rich donors and angering student activists. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/6/2021
  

  Conservative Donors Have Their Own Cancel Culture

  "In 1903, the two students premiered their song at an annual campus minstrel show, where white musicians performed it in blackface. It became a tradition at subsequent minstrel shows and was soon embedded in the university’s culture. Some people apparently want to keep it there forever."

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  8/14/2020
  

  An Ice Cream Truck Jingle's Racist History Has Caught Up To It

  The Good Humor ice cream company joined forces with RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan to replace a standard jingle with roots in racist minstrel shows. 

• 
• SOURCE: KXAN
  6/15/2020
  

  Calls to End ‘Eyes of Texas’ Draw Focus to Professor’s Lessons on UT’s Racial History

  UT Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies Edmund T. Gordon explains how the university's spirit song is tied to Robert E. Lee.

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Gazette
  2-12-15
  

  Harvard exhibition unearths fresh insights by shining light on song style with deeply racist roots

  It’s a difficult exhibition to explore, but one that its organizers hope will promote a deeper understanding of America’s brutal history of slavery, segregation, and racism, and their legacy.