"My family had a fife and drum band when I was a kid, so I was born into the Mummers," 40-year-old Michael Passio recalled. He dressed up for years, participating in the Mummers Parade.
But five years ago, he said, he got a divorce and began traveling the world and studying the history behind the 120-year-old tradition.
"Something just didn't sit right with me," he said, "and every year with the blackface."
The parade's record of racist parody emerged again this year when a couple of Mummers from the Froggy Carr brigade in the wenches division were seen wearing blackface.
The club chose a Gritty theme this year, for which many of the marchers wore variations of face paint in the Flyers' colors of black, orange and white. But the two men cited appeared to have just blackface.
The men, Kevin Kinkel and Mike Tomaszewski, defended their decision and said it wasn't racist.
Kinkel told NBC10 that he wore blackface as a tribute to a friend who died who used to do the same.
“I talk to black people. They told me, 'What are you talking about? You can wear whatever you want. That ain’t discriminating me. That ain’t racist to me,' ” he said. “That’s what they tell me.”
Tomaszewski said he wore blackface because he likes it.
"It's immature, it's embarrassing, it's old — it shouldn’t be done," he said.
He noted, however, that there are many good, hardworking people who participate in the Mummers Parade, but more education needs to take place so that instances of blackface are stopped completely.
Although Passio has lost friends for his opinions, he hopes he’ll gain some new ones, as more parade participants put the emphasis on the satire — minus the racism.
"People should be educated to the history of it, and I think things should be changed," he said.
That same history is why entrepreneur and Little Giant Creative founder Tayyib Smith wrote an op-ed titled "The Mummers Can't Be Saved," arguing that given the racist history of the tradition, the city should end it altogether.
"The Mummers are not in alliance with where the city needs to be," Smith said. "It's an international embarrassment and a stain on the contemporary reputation of the city."
He said the only solution is the "death of the Mummers Parade," and he's calling for a citywide vote on whether the Mummers Parade should continue.
A former police officer, Mikhail Harrison of Vote Reparations, is planning a protest against the Mummers on Friday.
Their focus is on sponsors of the event.
"We really want to go to them and ask do they really want to support a racist parade," he said.
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