Black Performance: Minstrelsy to Ragtime

"In Harlem, men and women of color forgot their troubles and danced and reveled to the music of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. This was a music that was theirs and no one else's." (-Coalhouse Walker, Jr.; Prologue)

Music, dance, and performance have always been sources of survival for African-Americans. During slavery, African-Americans relied on negro spirituals to express their pain, experiences, and faith. "The African-American experience resonates within and all through them." (Negro Spirituals).  They were also used as a way to feel a sense of connection and community among their fellow enslaved people.

The first exposure of African-Americans in the public domain were through black-face minstrel shows, a form of entertainment introduced by whites. A minstrel show was composed of three different sections; the opening walk-around, the middle section, and the concluding section. Learn more about minstrel shows. 

Thomas D. Rice created black-face minstrelsy after an encounter in an alleyway with a homeless black man dressed in ragged clothes. After hearing the homeless black man singing "Jump Jim Crow", a song and dance developed by slaves, Rice named his first black-face minstrel character "Jim Crow".

In black-face minstrelsy, white performers assumed their idea of a black person by wearing ragged clothes, making specific speech choices, embodying their movement and actions, and covering their face with burnt cork. As these white performers assumed a black character on stage, they were able to claim and manipulate the identity of blacks, and present it to the public as authentic. (The Jim Crow Encyclopedia, Vol. 2)

As white performers manipulated black identity, several stereotypes were born: the mammy, the zip coon, the sambo, and the brute negro, among others. Ethnic Notions explores these stereotypes.

Eventually, blacks also began to participate in black-face minstrelsy. One of the most famous trios was Burt Williams, George Walker, and Aida Overton Walker. Slowly, blacks tried to gain control the discourse surrounding black identity through performance, "...African American minstrels accessed the popular entertainment stage, [and] they eventually changed the words, jokes, and look of minstrelsy, but they also maintained its premises of performing color and performing gender for the amusement and nostalgia of their audiences," (African American Performance and Theater History).

From minstrelsy evolved vaudeville, which "featured almost a dozen different artists...performing all kinds of material-- songs, comedy routines, magic..."(Vaudeville and Broadway).

The Cakewalk was a step Blacks took towards owning their art and identity. The Cakewalk was a parody of the stylized, social dances of whites. As a inverted form of minstrelsy, blacks would exaggerate and imitate the stiff carriage, lively walk, and erect spine seen in white social dances, such as the Quadrille. When whites observed blacks dancing the cakewalk, they did not realize they were the  inspiration of such an absurdly animated dance. They believed it to be authentic black dance, so they incorporated it into their performance.



"Ragtime was created and popularized by itinerant African-American musicians, many of whom did not read or write music." Ragtime music was born as a playing practice from African-American musicians improvising in brothels, saloons, and bars, but slowly began to evolve as a genre as it entered the entertainment setting of vaudeville and musical theater. It is distinguished by it's syncopation and polyrhythms. Scott Joplin is considered the "King of Ragtime". Many are familiar with his compositions "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag".

Evelyn Nesbit: Vaudeville and Performance

"Yes, that's right. He put me on a velvet swing...

Harry's in trouble, Stanny's in heaven, and Evelyn is in Vaudeville!

And it's the crime of the century, making the world go 'whee!' Evelyn gets publicity... you love the girl on the swing."

(From "Crime of the Century")

"In Vaudeville, there is always something for everybody, just as in every state and city in every country and town in our democratic country, there is opportunity for everybody, a chance for all."

(E.F Albee; Variety in 1923)

Evelyn and Vaudeville

From The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville by Anthony Slide (on Evelyn Nesbit):

"Evelyn Nesbit Thaw became more than a mere vaudevillian; she was the "freak" act of all time, proving Willie Hamerstein's claim that vaudeville audiences would pay good money to see newspaper headlines, particularly when sex and violence were involved."

Nesbit was once offered $3000 a week for involvement in Vaudeville, but she declined stating, "I will not consider the Vaudeville stage under any circumstance." By 1913, that changed as Harry Thaw's mother was determined that Nesbit "return to the gutter from which she was sure she had come" and Nesbit was also having financial problems. William Hammerstein booked her in the Victoria Theatre in New York at a start rate of $1,500. For a four week run, her publicity earned the company $100,000 in profit, establishing Nesbit as the single biggest drawing card in Vaudeville theatre.

Her vaudeville act was her first appearance on Broadway in ten years and consisted of three dances, her performing in a "yellow, ankle-length dress, with her hair hanging down her back." In her final dance, she hung around the neck of another company member, Clifford, while he swung her - "shades of that red velvet swing."

As per the murder of Stanford White: "Stanny White was killed but my fate was worse. I lived." 

(Evelyn Nesbit Thaw once reported; The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville)

Google book preview on The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville

Florodora and the Chorus Girl

Florodora was a popular show at the Casino Theatre on Broadway in New York, in which Evelyn Nesbit started her career as a chorus girl. Known as a "Floradora Girl", she was billed as Florence Evelyn - her full name being Florence Evelyn Nesbit - and was nicknamed Flossie the Fuss by the other girls, which displeased her. It was then that she declared to further be known as simply Evelyn Nesbit. 

The show itself is a musical comedy considered one the first successful comedies of the 20th century. The New York production ran for 552 performances, and a synopsis of the musical comedy can be read here.

Tell me Pretty Maiden from Florodora (1930)