A retired police officer who performed for decades as the 1920s blackface entertainer Al Jolson is seeking elected office in Maryland.
Bobby Berger, who finally stopped performing in blackface a decade ago after the intensifying public outcry, will appear on the ballot for the state House of Delegates as Bobby Al Jolson Berger, and said he still misses singing the entertainer’s century-old hits like “Mammy,” “Swanee” and “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody,” reported WYPR-FM.
“I stopped because the people that came to scream about it might hurt people that were inside when they left,” Berger said. It’s gotten to be a crazy world this time.”
Berger’s retirement of his Jolson impersonation act was covered in 2016 by The Washington Post, whose reporter and photographer attended his final performance at a suburban Baltimore ballroom.
“When I do the makeup, I look exactly like Al Jolson,” Berger told the paper at the time. “Which adds a whole lot to the performance. It’s just hard for me to believe that anybody that looks at it logically … Thousands, thousands of black people have seen this show. They had no problem with it.”
Berger also made national news in 2015, when he planned to perform as Jolson at a fundraiser for six Baltimore police officers charged in the killing of Freddie Gray, but critics argued his act was “racist and in poor taste.”
“I told him, ‘Your timing is very bad,’” Daryl Davis, a Black musician who plays with Berger, told The Post. “Baltimore was burning to the ground with riots over racism and you’re going to wear blackface? But he just wasn’t thinking in those terms.”
Davis, like Berger, agrees that Jolson was a significant ally to Black performers during his life and used his clout to help them get work on Broadway, which Davis said “opened doors” for Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and other musicians now considered legendary.
Berger was fired as a Baltimore police officer in the 1980s over his blackface performances, but he sued successfully and eventually got his job back.
“All they knew was the blackface,” he said. “That’s all they knew.”
He’s running his first-ever political campaign as a Republican for one of three House seats representing District 6 in June 23’s primary election, where he’ll face off against GOP incumbents Ric Metzgar, Bob Long and Robin Grammer.
“I’m just into people,” Berger said. “I want to help people if I can.”
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