Governor Lied About Blackface, Missouri GOP Says

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Republicans alleged Tuesday that Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan lied about the number of times he wore blackface for small-town minstrel shows almost four decades ago.

Carnahan replied that he never definitely claimed to have appeared only one time and said that he was relying on distant memories. The 65-year-old governor renewed his apologies for ever having worn blackface.

Carnahan is challenging Republican Sen. John Ashcroft for his Senate seat in 2000.

The state GOP released photographs of Carnahan in blackface while singing at a 1961 minstrel show sponsored by the Rolla Kiwanis Club and watching onstage without makeup as others performed in blackface in 1962.

The GOP said the photos show that Carnahan was trying to be deceptive Monday when he said he recalled appearing in blackface for a 1960 show in Rolla, his hometown.

John Hancock, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, provided the Associated Press with 1961 and ’62 clippings from the Rolla Daily News. The GOP also issued a news release headlined: “Carnahan Lied in his ‘Apology.’ ”

In April 1961, Carnahan was elected municipal judge in Rolla. Hancock said the young judge’s apparent “tolerance of mockery” of black people raised questions about his fairness on the bench.

The AP’s tape of Monday’s news conference shows that when Carnahan was asked when the Kiwanis Club had stopped sanctioning fund-raising minstrel shows, he replied:

“In the early ‘60s--I don’t know whether it was ’60 or ’61. There may have been one other. I do not know. I have not had the benefit of all the research my opponents have had.”

A reporter then asked whether he had performed at any other time with a Kiwanis barbershop quartet while wearing blackface. “I don’t think so,” Carnahan replied.