Popular form of entertainment in the United States in which white entertainment singers (minstrels) performed musical parodies of the milieu of the Southern states and their plantation economy. Wearing black make-up on their faces and hands, they imitated African American slaves in their appearance, language, and behavior in a caricatural distortion. Blackface, whose area began in 1830, also allowed immigrants such as the Irish and later especially Jews access to the stage. After 1900, Jewish e…