Glad I wasn't imagining that I had read about morris going back further than the 1960's.

Nearly every side, border or otherwise, create new dances in the style of what was collected, just as folk musicians create new songs in the style of older music (indeed just as much modern world music contains the essence of its native music), so it's going to come as little suprise to any morris dancer that their dances haven't passed through time unchanged. Likewise, when many sides strike up they base their dress etc on published sources but also give it a new spin, some adding a gothic or spooky gloss, all of which is part of the entertainment. Don't quite know where the great revelation is in any of that.

However, the accuracy of the revival & so forth is largely irrelevant to the discussion, which should surely centre on the black-face (something that is documented) and whether it is (or ever was) intended as racist & whether it causes significant offence, and I have yet to see evidence of either of these things.