Thursday, April 23, 2026

Two Historians Bring Blackface and Baseball to Vroman’s

The hidden legacy of minstrelsy and the cultural life of America’s pastime converge in a joint author event Thursday in Pasadena

A Princeton historian who spent 20 years tracking blackface minstrelsy through American attics, sealed archives and forgotten photo albums will share a stage Thursday night with a UC Berkeley professor who uses baseball as a lens on modern American culture. The pairing is no accident: the two authors blurbed each other’s books, and both treat popular entertainment as a window into the nation’s deeper history.

Rhae Lynn Barnes and David M. Henkin will discuss and sign their new books — “Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment” and “Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball” — at 7 p.m. April 23 at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. The event is free, and a book purchase from Vroman’s is appreciated, according to the bookstore’s event listing.

Barnes, an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton, grew up in Southern California. Her book, published March 24 by Liveright/W.W. Norton, traces nearly two centuries of amateur blackface performance — not just on professional stages but in Elks Clubs, churches, schools, military bases and even Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II. The New York Times Book Review featured it as a cover story, and Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review, calling it an important work on a disturbing legacy. The book was also named a best book of the month by the New York Times, TIME and Kirkus Reviews.

Barnes discussed the book on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross during her national tour. The Vroman’s appearance falls during a West Coast swing that includes stops at UC Santa Barbara and other venues.

Henkin, a professor of history at UC Berkeley, published “Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball” on March 16 through Oxford University Press. Rather than recounting iconic players and stats, the book examines baseball’s connections to urban life, imperial expansion, racial politics, labor disputes and the rise of mass media. A Berkeley News profile noted that Henkin described it as a cultural exploration that uses baseball as a window into broader changes in American life over time.

The two books intersect in unexpected ways. Barnes provided a jacket endorsement for Henkin’s book, writing that it reveals how the game’s history has unfolded far beyond the stadium, according to the book’s publisher page. Both scholars specialize in 19th-century American cultural history, and both argue that entertainment — whether minstrel shows or ballgames — carries political and racial meaning that outlasts any single performance.

For Pasadena readers, the event extends Vroman’s long tradition of hosting nationally prominent authors at the 132-year-old independent bookstore in the Playhouse Village. The store, founded in 1894, is the oldest independent bookstore in Southern California, according to the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

The event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and includes a book signing. For more information, contact Vroman’s at 626-449-5320.

Barnes spent two decades unearthing what she calls the architecture of American racial representation — work that began, she has said in interviews, with her childhood in Anaheim, growing up near Disneyland and wondering why the soundtrack on the rides didn’t match the California she inhabited.