Short answer is, I don’t know. Honestly. If you were looking for an answer, there it is. I do hope you’ll bear with me here, though. Whether I did or not, my behavior was still despicable. I must have been about 16- I was an underclassmen in High School and graduated in 1983 so this is the same time frame as Northam and Herring. The play was “You Can’t Take it With You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. I played a character who had been written for a black actor.
About the only thing I remember is that my character was “on relief.” Something I said often, as I didn’t work. I wanted to be an actor, and I had a make up kit with pancake base chosen to approximate my natural skin tone. If I had put shoe polish on over it, I would have felt safe trying to remove it.
Now, as I said, I don’t recall whether or not I did use shoe polish. There were other things I did. One of the upperclassmen rolled up one pant leg. He said that’s how “they” wear it in Freeport pronounced “F’eepo”. I also changed my voice to sound black- Looking back, I don’t even know what that means, but I know I did it then.
So Maybe I didn’t put the face on, but I certainly wore “black” in the same manner, and with the full knowledge that for me, black was something I could always take off. Now, many of the diaries I have posted on this site deal with racial justice. I also quit a sketch comedy group in the ‘90’s over a skit they wanted to do that crossed my racial sensibility line. I still did what I did.
Confession over.