Yearbooks Aren’t the Only Place to Find Blackface on Campus
There has been a rush to examine yearbooks for examples of racist histories that are modern realities.
Purdue University. The University of North Dakota. Auburn University. The University of Oregon. Brigham Young University. Xavier University. Oklahoma State University. These are just a handful of the schools in America that have had blackface scandals—not, as one might presume, in the long-distant past, but in the past two decades.
This blackface resurgence dates to late 2001, when Alabama’s Auburn University in the throes of a crisis that made national news. One fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi, had cast out two, another fraternity on campus, Beta Theta Pi, suspended 13 of its members who had been photographed at a party wearing blackface and wigs.
