I would also like a shot at this answer.

Not all of the characters on the blackface stage were ignorant or childlike. Many characters were quite clever and got the better of either white characters of wealth characters. This did not change until after the Civil War

Also, in songs like "Nelly was a Lady", "Lucy Neal" and "My Darling Nelly Grey", the black characters were given the very high minded emotions most closely held by Victorian Society: love, loss and heartbreak. All of these tunes portray the loss of love due to the evil of slavery. This may be the first time in American theater that these emotions were allowed to be portrayed by black characters.

The question must be, did these emotions have an effect on the audience or the players? This is hard to know, but as the Civil War came closer, the songs of this sort stopped being popular because they hit too close to home. I think that it had enough of an effect on the audience to make the minstrels change tunes so that they and the audience did not have to deal with such heavy matters.

As to the question of blacking up, yes black minstrels also blacked up so as to keep the image. It needs to be noted that in the early days, the white around the lips was not used. This, like so many other ills, came later.

I do have to agree with Lonesome to an extent, the cork was part of a minstrel mask in the Greek sense. I have done it, and felt totally liberated on stage by the mask. Dale Cockrell does a very good job of explaining this in his book. That said, there is also a two way exchange of music and images that can not be denied. Images totally forign to white culture does find it's way into minstrel tunes like'"Black Cat, White Cat". These images show us that culture, although shallow, was passed from one group to another. Also, the popularity of " The Blue Tail Fly" on the plantations of Georgia show us that some of this culture flowed in both directions. I think that is may be too easy to miss this exchange.

Minstelsy is complicated. It can not be opened fully here, for that matter, scholarship is just beginning to open this world to us. We can talk for many years (and hopefully will!) but it will be a long time before we truly understand this part of American culture and it's influence on the world.

Butch