Hezakya Newz & Films

(1917) Blackface At Great Lakes Naval Training Center

Naval apprentices giving a minstrel show at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, text on the image reads: Jackie Minstrel Show, Chicago, Illinois, 1917.

(Photo by Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)

Established in 1911 on 165 acres of Lake Michigan shoreline, the Great Lakes Naval Training Station (now Naval Station Great Lakes) was conceived as a modest Midwest boot camp to train up to 1,500 apprentice seamen, far from the East Coast's congested facilities.

By early 1917, however, the station was a sleepy outpost with just 39 brick buildings and a peacetime staff. That all changed on April 6, 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany, thrusting America into World War I.

Overnight, Great Lakes transformed into the Navy's primary induction and training hub for the Midwest, swelling to over 50,000 recruits by war's end. Tents sprouted across the grounds to house the influx, and hasty construction added barracks, drill fields, and support structures.

Recruits were mostly young men from farms, factories, and cities across the heartland—underwent rigorous 8- to 12-week programs in seamanship, gunnery, signaling, and drill.

But amid the discipline, morale-boosting entertainment was essential.

The Navy, like the Army, encouraged amateur theatricals to combat boredom and homesickness. Great Lakes boasted a theater seating 2,000, where shows ranged from lectures to films.

The YMCA, embedded on base, organized many events, including musical revues. In this environment, the "Jackie Minstrel Show" emerged as a grassroots production, likely staged by recruits themselves under officer supervision, to entertain fellow sailors during off-hours.

Today, this image is a jarring artifact of systemic racism embedded in American institutions.

Blackface minstrelsy wasn't mere "entertainment"—it dehumanized Black people, perpetuating tropes that justified segregation, lynching, and disenfranchisement.

During World War I, the U.S. military was segregated; Black sailors like those in the 12th Regiment (formed at Great Lakes in 1917 for public works) were barred from combat roles and confined to menial labor.

White recruits performing these caricatures reinforced white supremacy, even as the war abroad fought for democracy.

President Woodrow Wilson, a segregationist, infamously screened Birth of a Nation (a blackface epic glorifying the Ku Klux Klan) at the White House in 1915 and enjoyed a minstrel show aboard the USS George Washington post-Armistice in 1919.

At Great Lakes, the irony deepened: the station trained Black stewards and messmen, yet shows like this excluded or mocked them.

Post-war, minstrelsy lingered in the Navy—into the 1920s on ships like the USS *Bridgeport*—before fading amid civil rights pressures.

By World War II, it resurfaced in some units but faced growing backlash.

It underscores how entertainment masked prejudice, which traces minstrelsy's roots in white fascination and fear of Black culture.

Today, Naval Station Great Lakes—still the Navy's sole boot camp—emphasizes diversity, with Recruit Training Command integrating anti-bias education.

Yet artifacts like this remind us: progress demands confronting the past, bayonets and all.

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(1910) BLACKFACE BASEBALL GAME

PULLMAN, WASHINGTON

(Original Caption) In Pullman, Washington, a most incorrect game of baseball is in progress with University of Washington seniors playing their professors in blackface.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)

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(1940s) American Students writing.

Creator: Unknown.

(Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

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(1940s) Elderly Lady Who Lives On Lamont Street
Washington, D.C. Elderly lady who lives on Lamont Street, N.W..

Artist Gordon Parks.

(Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images/via Getty Images)

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(1915) Sorority girls group shot

College age women pose for a group shot, some in black face.

(Photo by Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis via Getty Images)

Ero Alphian was the original name of the Beta Theta chapter of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority at Michigan State University.

Key facts about the Ero Alphian Literary Society:

Founding:

It was established on May 15, 1904, by 14 women at Michigan Agricultural College, which is now Michigan State University.

Mission:

The founders sought to develop well-rounded individuals by combining literary and technical education with social cooperation and friendship.

Transformation: In October 1934, the Ero Alphian Literary Society became the Beta Theta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta.

Legacy: It was one of the first three sororities formed at Michigan State.

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(1950) Baseball Fans at Ebbets Field

(Original Caption) Dodgers vs. Phillies. Ebbets Field.

Brooklyn, New York

Standing room only, but still happy.

October 1, 1950.

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(1950s) Portrait of an unidentified woman as she stands, arms crossed, behind the counter of a soda fountain.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

(Photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images)

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(1950s) As a man reads behind a desk, a woman sits beside him, a writing pad in her hands, and smiles at the camera.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

(Photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images)

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(1960s) Assualt On A Montgomery Street Corner

During a violent confrontation on a street corner, two white men, one with a bat, assault two Black American women.

Montgomery, Alabama, late 1950s or early 1960s.

(Photo by Charles Moore/Getty Images)

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MacKenzie Scott gives $40M to help preserve Black history

Oct. 15, 2025

By RONDA KAYSEN

The New York Times

MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire philanthropist, on Wednesday donated $40 million to a program dedicated to the preservation of African American history, culture and activism.

The gift is her second contribution to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a division of the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In 2021, Scott, who has pledged to divest her Amazon fortune, valued at $41.2 billion, according to Bloomberg, donated $20 million to the fund, which was used to support a range of projects and operations. The fund will use this latest donation to grow its endowment and invest in new and existing programs.

“The gift will not only support hundreds of critical preservation projects across the nation, but will also help financially secure the action fund’s future and our ability to continue protecting and expanding the American story,” said Brent Leggs, the executive director of the fund.

The action fund, started in 2017, is the largest privately funded resource in the United States dedicated to preserving historically significant African American heritage sites, including churches, museums, homes and architecture. To date, the fund has raised nearly $200 million, supporting more than 378 preservation projects.


Places of historical significance to African American culture have often been overlooked among preservationists. Only 2% of the 95,000 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places focus on the Black experience, according to the fund

The fund aims to correct that, infusing money into significant markers of Black culture and history.

In recent years, the fund has invested in historic Black churches, like the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, commissioned in 1961 by Aretha Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, which received $500,000 in 2025 to install a new roof and repair water damage.

It has also supported the restoration of the first Black cemetery in Houston, which dates back to 1875.

Jazz saxophonist Ravi Coltrane credits the fund’s support for the preservation and restoration of his family’s homes: a Philadelphia row home where his father John Coltrane lived in the 1950s, and the Dix Hills house in Long Island, New York, where the jazz musician later lived with his second wife, musician Alice Coltrane, and their children.

Alice Coltrane recorded her music in the basement of the Dix Hills home, which also doubled as the children’s playroom. “She was doing serious work in there, and we were running around playing tag and getting into trouble,” Ravi Coltrane said.

With repeated support from the action fund, Ravi Coltrane, who, with his siblings oversees his parents’ estate, has been better able to apply for other grants and has begun converting the homes into immersive, community spaces for the public.

Scott’s donation “is going to help preserve a lot of incredible African African homes,” Ravi Coltrane said. “The African American story is an American story, and it definitely needs to be preserved and supported.”

This new infusion of cash comes at a critical time for historic preservation, as the Trump administration has taken aim at cultural institutions trying to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” President Donald Trump wrote in a March executive order.

In recent months, the action fund has seen a marked rise in grant applications, particularly for its Black churches program, Leggs said. This year, 833 organizations applied — “a significant increase from last year’s numbers,” he said.

“It’s just an affirmation that there’s really an overwhelming need of resources to sustain preservation and communities across the country.”

This story was originally published at nytimes.com

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