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White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music and speaking ersatz black dialects.

Minstrel shows dominated popular show business in the U. S. from that time through into the 1890s, also enjoying massive popularity in the UK and in other parts of Europe.

As the minstrel show went into decline, blackface returned to its novelty act roots and became part of vaudeville.

Blackface featured prominently in film at least into the 1930s, and the " aural blackface " of the Amos ' n ' Andy radio show lasted into the 1950s.

Meanwhile, amateur blackface minstrel shows continued to be common at least into the 1950s.

In the UK, one such blackface popular in the 1950s was Ricardo Worley from Alston, Cumbria who toured around the North of England with a monkey called Bilbo.