Free Republic

IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...

TEHRAN, Nov. 12 (MNA) -- Discrimination against racial minorities in housing and the slowness in delivering relief after the destructive Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. South have inspired Iranian director Behruz Gharibpur to make plans to stage “Uncle Tom's Cabin” in Tehran in the upcoming year. Authored by American writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), “Uncle Tom's Cabin” (1852) is a forceful indictment of slavery and one of the most powerful novels of its kind in American literature. Gharibpur had dramatized “Uncle Tom's Cabin” before, and Qatreh Publications is to publish a book...