Dear Son.

{Letter to Jackie, never sent, from his Father following Jackie’s return and a discovery by his father that he performs in Blackface. This letter seeks to imagine the reaction he might have to the fact that he not only sang jazz, but did so in Blackface.}

Dear young Jackie,

I write you this letter, as I fear the anger inside me might boil over if I were to confront you right now. It has come to my attention that you are back to singing that devil music so popularly called jazz, and what’s worse you do so while made to look like a Black person. This is not how I raised you, nor how your mother envisioned your future. I am writing to let you know that if you continue we will be forced to disown you.

I have racked my mind to understand how performing with a blackened face could be productive or even exciting. Do you find pleasure in masquerading as the lesser of us all? Do you think it amusing to tap and dance like they do up in Harlem? I simply cannot understand where this comes from or how you can live with yourself. Look in the mirror. You are not black. You were once a good Jewish boy, now you whistle and carry on as if you were raised without morality. I am truly distraught and enraged that you would abandon your home, your mother and your people. You truly should be ashamed.

Do you wish to be Black? Do you wish to live the life of exclusion, ostracization, and marginalization? 

We Jews have it hard enough, I can only marvel at your recklessness to abandon the frying pan for the fire as it were. Your donning of a blackened face does no small injustice to your family and to your people and I as a leader of the community have no choice but to give you a formal warning. You must choose: either return to your life as a cantor or be viewed as what you paint your face to be, an outcast.

I do not want to be forced you disown you, but if you turn your back on the community again, and ever wear a blackened face I must. I gave you another chance, you continue to sing jazz and now you do this. You can never be white, and will never be black. You are a good Jewish boy, come back home and act like it.

With love,

Your father.

This image is meant to show the duality of identity that is central to Jackie's conflict and to the intent of his father's imagined letter above.