In the wake of the Met’s overdue announcement that they won’t be staging Verdi’s Otello in blackface, Alison Kinney on hyperallergic has an excellent run-down of the history of blackface in opera:
Opera’s blackface tradition spans two centuries, linking it with Bobby Deen, Al Jolson, minstrelsy—and the KKK, who, in their Reconstruction-era, pre-hood days, used to “black up” with burnt cork, then accuse Black people of having committed their own crimes.