NEWBURYPORT — Newburyport Black History Initiative co-organizer Geordie Vining will make a presentation on Wednesday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. about “blackface minstrel shows” frequently seen on stage in Newburyport and surrounding towns for more than a century, as well as the work of local resident Helen M. Hunt in the late 1950s to end blackface stereotyping.
The lecture and slide presentation, titled “Blackface Minstrel Shows in Newburyport – and Helen M. Hunt’s Advocacy to End Them,” will take place in Newburyport Public Library’s program room. It is free and open to the public.
Vining’s lecture will be illustrated by historical photographs, contemporaneous articles from The Daily News of Newburyport archives and other materials. While all but forgotten today, these minstrel shows embedded images deep into the culture and their influence lives on.
The presentation will outline the prevalence of blackface minstrel shows in Newburyport from before the Civil War to the civil rights era. It will also highlight Hunt’s public appeal in 1958-59 in front of Newburyport’s School Committee and the Moose fraternal organization against performers blackening their faces and imitating Black people because they were “harmful to the children.” Subsequent editorials in The Daily News expressed indignation about Hunt’s work to end the shows.
Hunt was a photographer and very engaged in civic and community affairs in Newburyport. She was a Girl Scout leader and fundraiser for various events. The lifelong Newburyporter and member of the Cousins family died in 1991.
Vining’s presentation leads up to the annual William Lloyd Garrison Lecture on Sunday, Dec. 14, at 3 p.m. at Old South Church on Federal Street. Boston Globe columnist and op-ed page associate editor Renée Graham is the featured speaker with the theme “To Resist is to Exist” in a conversation moderated by Sophie Godley, a clinical associate professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. The event is also free and open to the public.
For more information about the Dec. 10 presentation, contact Vining at gvining@newburyportma.gov.