In the first years of the 20th century, despite the humiliating constraints of
social segregation, thousands of African Americans made a living in show
business. In Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Manhattan's Harlem,
there were top-tier vaudeville houses that headlined Black acts for Black
audiences, and the Theaters Owners Booking Association signed up Black acts
for almost 100 smaller venues around the country that catered to Black
audiences. There were night spots like the Cotton Club in Harlem that for
White audiences mounted lavish all-Black musical revues and Harlem theaters
for full-scale Black musicals.
But the pinnacle was Broadway. As early as 1900, there were all-Black musicals
there, but the concept really took off after the Eubie Blake–Nobel Sissle
musical Shuffle Along opened in 1921 and ran an astonishing
504 performances. Producers sensed that the high stepping and raucous humor
associated with Black performers were a money maker, and over the next decade
22 more all-Black shows opened on Broadway. These shows slotted the Black
performers into stereotypical roles of shuffling gait and slurred speech, but
they also opened the door for dozens of performers to have lifelong careers
that eventually allowed them more dignity.
The money woes of the Great Depression of the 1930s made it tough to find
backers for any Broadway shows, and the Shuffle Along type minstrelsy all-
Black show virtually disappeared. But by then, two important corners had been
turned: top-billed performers such as Paul Robson and Ethel Waters had moved
out of the racial show business ghetto to earn star billing in otherwise White
shows, and the classic American operas Porgy and Bess and Four Saints in
Three Acts had opened on Broadway, giving African Americans roles as complex
three-dimensional human beings.
Ada
Overton Walker was the first Black female star of Broadway musicals, creating
a sensation singing Miss Hannah from Savannah in Sons of Ham in 1900.
Primarily known for dancing, she brought a grace to the cakewalk dance that
had been a derivative of slave culture and turned it into a fad among elite
White society. Singer Bert Williams and dancer George Walker joined
forces in 1893 and became a hot commodity in vaudeville. They made their
Broadway debut in 1899. Light-skinned Williams had to appear darkened with
cork, but he became America's first Black superstar. 
Ethel Waters projected two persona in her 1920s
and 1930s Broadway performances: the resilient warm-hearted Mammy and the sexy
exotic from the Tropics. She carved out a 60-year career that included a best
actress award from the New York Drama Critics and nominations for an Oscar and
an Emmy. The New York Public Library, Photographic Services & Permissions,
Room 103, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018; 212-930-0091, fax:
212-930-0533, email: permissions@nypl.org. Using an image from The New York
Public Library for publication without payment of use fees and official
written permission is strictly prohibited. Composer Eubie Blake and lyricist Noble Sissle's 1921
musical Shuffle Along raised the bar artistically and financially for Black
musicals. Both men appeared in the show that included the first Broadway love
song sung by a Black couple. 
Adelaide Hall made her Broadway debut at 12 as a
bridesmaid in 1913's My Little Friend. Her 1927 wordless recording of Duke
Ellington's Creole Love Song was the beginning of scat singing. She moved to
Europe in 1934 after opposition to her purchase of a home in all-White
Larchmont, N.Y. 
The 1921 cast of Runnin' Wild,
including Elisabeth Welch, center. Welch appeared in dozens of London's West
End musicals from 1933 until Pippin in 1973, and did much television in the
1950s and 1960s. 
Valaida Snow broke into public acclaim in the
1924 Blake–Sissle show Chocolate Dandies. She sang and danced, but her
distinctive talent was playing a hot trumpet. Her greatest triumphs were
abroad, touring the Far East and Europe fronting an all-girl jazz band.
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Josephine Baker parlayed an unmatched talent for
self-promotion into lasting fame as the personification of Jazz Age Parisian
hedonism. Her rhythmic dancing won her paying gigs in her home town of St.
Louis while still a preteen, and at 13 she ran away and joined a Black girls'
troupe. She fought racial discrimination and renounced her U.S. citizenship.
She received the Croix de Guerre for her wartime spy efforts collecting
information on German activities. 
A selection of playbills
for Black Broadway shows. Called "the most ambitious effort yet attempted by a
colored company," Shoo-Fly Regiment took the real story of a regiment of
Tuskegee Institute students who fought in the Spanish-American War and turned
it into a farce based in the Philippines. 
The only Broadway appearance for pianist
Thomas "Fats" Waller was 1928's Keep Shufflin', but it opened new avenues for
him. His most lasting legacy: composing such songs as Áin't Misbehavin' and
Honeysuckle Rose. Elisabeth Welch introduced The Charleston in a 1923
musical. She garnered a Tony nomination at age 82 when she returned to
Broadway in 1986. 
Louis Armstrong's trumpet
solo in Hot Chocolates was so galvanizing that the producers had him come up
and perform on stage and add a gravelly vocal rendition. By the 1950s, he was
a widely loved musical icon and kept performing until his health gave out in
1968. Bert
Williams was booked by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in the 1910 edition of his
annual Follies extravaganzas over the objections of the other performers, as
Whites had never before shared a Broadway stage with an African American. When
Williams died in 1922, he had sold more records than any other Black artist.
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson tap-danced his way to more
than $2 million in earnings. With Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel in
1935, he became the first African American to appear in the movies dancing
with a White partner. But styles changed, and he died penniless in 1949.
In 1976,
Alberta Hunter was 81 when she signed on for a two-week appearance singing
blues at a Greenwich Village night club. She stayed six years, cut three
albums for Columbia, and had a command appearance at the White House. It was
her second tour in the spotlight. From her start in Chicago, she inched up to
appearances in Europe and then a Broadway debut in 1930. She toured for the
USO in World War II and the Korean War. In 1957 she quit abruptly and went
into nursing. She returned to show business only after a hospital declared her
too old to work. Edith
Wilson was one of the first African Americans to cut records for a major
label, Columbia. She then became a vocalist with big bands, and wowed a crowd
at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980, a year before her death at 81. Loretta Mary Aiken had been raped and had borne two
children by age 14. She ran away from her North Carolina home and played in
vaudeville under the name Jackie "Moms" Mabley. White audiences caught on to
her raucous humor, and by the late 1960s she had played Carnegie Hall and was
showcased on top TV variety shows. 
Mae Barnes' swinging singing was a 1940s and 1950s fixture of
the chic boites around Manhattan. The 1929 cast of Hot Chocolates. Fats Waller wrote
the score. 
Ford Lee Washington
(left) and John William Sublett's Buck & Bubbles act played the Palace in
Manhattan while in their teens. Washington was the first Black guest on the
Tonight Show. Mantan
Moreland parlayed a bug-eyed, always-scared Black man parody—today seen as a
demeaning caricature—into a lucrative career. He moved from Broadway to
Hollywood, appearing in 133 films.
This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of American History magazine.
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