The fifth episode of the second season of Underground, “Whiteface” opens on a startling note. A room full of affluent white people have come to see a minstrel show, but instead, something else is amiss. Rather than being painted in blackface, the performers are covered in whiteface. They begin making fun of white people much to the horror of the audience. As the crowd rushes out, we soon realize that Cato or C. Powell as he’s calling himself these days is responsible for it all. Though many of us might have been shocked at the site of whiteface, Underground’s writers and creators did not pull that out of thin air. Whiteface became fairly popular during the 19th century. Initially, it was one of the many ways the Irish were mocked, and moving forward it was seen in the 20th century when actor Canada Lee, an incredibly talented performer in the 1940's donned whiteface for his role in the Duchess of Malfi. He used whiteface because his role was originally slated for a white actor. Needless to say, critics were none-to-pleased. More recently, whiteface has been seen in films like The Wayans’ Brothers White Chicks, Chappelle’s Show, and even in rapper Chamillionaire’s music video, “Hip Hop Police.”
Now a member of the Black elite in Philadelphia, Cato has used his money to assert his influence. Typically during the 19th century in Philadelphia, members of the Black elite were native Philadelphians, West-Indians, or fair complexion, freeborn Southerners. Much of the wealth in the Black community during the time period stemmed from caterers. For example, entrepreneur Robert Bogle was the first of many African-American caterers who served nineteenth-century Philadelphia's white elite, and he became extremely wealthy as a result.
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If you exist outside of the Greek world, and certainly if you attended a predominantly white university as a student of color, Greek life swirls around you.
"Contraband," the first episode of the second season of Underground, opens with Beyoncé’s “Freedom” blaring as a roll of thunder awakens an enslaved man on the Fellow Plantation in 1858. The man arises before sundown, and we watch him toil all day, sculpting a statue before handing his money over to his Master at sundown. Soon, a montage of his workdays reveals what he's really up to, stealing news clippings from around the plantation to teach himself how to read. “Soldier” is the first word he learns.
On February 1st, artist and entertainer Beyoncé Knowles announced her pregnancy with a grand Instagram post. Though her announcement and her subsequent performance at the Grammys was met with glee, excitement, and congratulations across the globe; white female writers at alarming rates attacked the Lemonade singer for expressing her joy over the impending birth of her twins.
The first season of Underground opened in 1857 on the Macon Plantation in Georgia. The plantation’s Master, Tom Macon is in the midst of running for Senate while trying to manage his pregnant wife, Suzanna, their large cotton plantation and many slaves. In the twenty years that Tom has been the Master of the plantation, he hasn't had a single runway.
On May 15, 2010, sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder, a Bronx, New York resident was arrested while walking home from a party for allegedly stealing a backpack. Though he was never convicted of the crime, Browder would spend over the next one thousand days of his life locked away on Rikers Island, being beaten, starved and tortured. Browder spent eight hundred of those days in solitary confinement before he was finally released, with all charges dismissed, over three years later.