Blacks on Stage and Screen

Fannie Clay was born in Ripley, Tennessee in 1891, the daughter of former slaves Elen Gilliland Clay and Hugh Clay. In 1910 she graduated from Lauderdale County Training School and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee with her family. She eventually relocated to Chicago, where she studied to become a pharmacist. While working at a drug store to pay for her education she met the man who would become her husband of twenty-one years. Fannie Clay and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were married January 27, 1922, (she was his 2nd wife). No longer focusing on her career she worked as her husband's secretary and business manager. She's credited as playing a significant role in his success by working behind the scenes. They divorced June 25, 1943 due to his gambling, womanizing, and Fannie’s desire to have him slow down due to his heart condition. When they divorced Fannie is quoted as having said they “agreed to disagree" but remained the best of friends. The couple never had children. In the 2001 movie “Bojangles” Gregory Hines played the lead and Fannie's character was portrayed by Kimberly Elise. Photo: National Vaudeville Artists Fund (1929) Source: blackripley.com

Lottie Grady (1887-1970), as she appeared on sheet music for The Merry Widower, 1907. She appeared as one of the lead characters in what's credited as being the first all black cast in a film company started by a black man, William Foster (stage name Juli Jones). The Railroad Porter came out in 1912. Lottie Grady was born on September 8, 1887 in Chicago, Illinois. She was a well known stage actress in the early 20th century. Originally from the south side of Chicago, she was a talented singer, dancer, and actress. She performed on stage with the likes of Bert Williams (1904's show "Lode of Kole"), Jesse Shipp and S. H. Dudley ("The Smart Set") before returning to her hometown and becoming the leading lady of the Pekin Theatre Stock Company, a collection of actors and actresses who produced and performed in plays and other dramatic presentations, many written by African Americans, or adapted to appeal to a predominately African American audience. She would then join with William Foster and, with other members of the Pekin Theatre stock company, like Charles Gilpin, Abbie Mitchell and others, would act in his "photoplays." It was reported in contemporary newspapers that Grady would appear at showings of the films and while the reels were changed, would entertain the audience by singing. She retired from performing in 1919, when she married Charles Roxborough (1887-1963), he served one term in the State Senate of Michigan (1931-1933) thus becoming the first black man elected to that chamber. The couple had two sons, Charles Anthony and John Walter. The couple divorced in 1939. After her divorce Lottie moved to the resort town of Idlewild, Michigan, where for almost thirty years she owned and operated (along with the help of her oldest son), a popular restaurant called The Rosana Tavern. She passed away on February 20, 1970 in Idlewild, Michigan. [imdb.com, by Jane Margaret Laight]

Dancer Ida Forsyne as "Topsy," with Abbie Mitchell's Tennessee Students in London, England. Ida Forsyne, jazz dancer who was named by poet Langston Hughes as one of the twelve best dancers of all time, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother became a domestic servant when she was two years old, after the disappearance of her father. At the age of ten, she was dancing and singing for small sums of money at the local candy store and house-rent parties, and she cakewalked for twenty-five cents a day at the Chicago World's Fair, traveling through the festival site in a wagon with a ragtime band to drum up trade. Many shows originated in Chicago at the time, and so Forsynes haunted the Alhambra Theater, watching rehearsals of such shows as Coontown 400 and The South before the War. At age fourteen Forsyne ran away with a tab show, The Black Bostonians, in which everyone did their own specialties. She sang "My Hannah Lady" and also performed a Buck Dance in her inimitable eccentric style that includes rhythmic stepping and legomania. The finale of the show was a plantation scene that included the entire cast. When the show broke up in Bute, Montana, Forsyne adopted a five-year-old boy as a "prop" and sang her way back home to Chicago by walking down the aisles of the railroad coaches, hand-in-hand with him, harmonizing "On the Banks of the Wabash" as she passed the child's hat and collected enough money to pay fare and little more. In 1898 the fifteen-year-old joined Sisseretta Jones' Black Patti Troubadours. "A girl in the show was sick, so I went down and did my number, ‘My Hannah Lady,' and got the job at $15 a week," Forsyne told Marshall Stearns. "I was the only young girl in the company of twenty-six. For my specialty, I pushed a baby carriage across the stage and sang a lullaby, ‘You're Just a Little Nigger but You're Mine All Mine,' and no one thought of objecting in those day." The show had a cakewalking contest at every performance and Forsyne and partner won it seven nights straight in a row by adding legomania and tumbling in the breaks. Forsyne had the ability to perform any step she saw. In 1899, on her sixteenth birthday, Forsyne and the Black Patti troupe arrived in San Francisco, and remembers that they stayed at a fine white hotel and ate together at a long table, and that "everyone was so nice to us." Returning to New York, she easily got jobs working in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Coney Island, working in minstrel-styled shows such as Henderson's Big Theater (at Coney Island) with famous acts like Eddie Cantor. It was at Coney Island that Forsyne lost her voice in an "all song-and-dance" format in which performers would sing a verse of the song, then a chorus, and then dance a chorus. "I was like a coon shouter until my voice gave out," she said about her voice which was in a strong alto-range. She thereafter learned how to put a song across by "sort of talking it." In 1902, Forsyne joined the original Smart Set, an all- colored show by the white producer Gus Hill and featuring Ernest Hogan, Billy McClain, and the Hun Brothers, and in which she talked the song, "Moana" and performed a solo jazz dance. She then joined Will Marion Cook's The Southerners on the New York Roof Garden, with a mixed cast of thirty-five performers. In 1905 she went abroad with The Tennessee Students, a troupe of seventeen performers (including Abbie Mitchell, comedy dancer Ernest Hogan, and sand dancer Henry Williams), many of whom played stringed instruments and sang in a transitional style between ragtime and jazz. When the show opened at the Palace Theater in London in 1906, Forsyne (her picture on the front cover of the program) was the billing star, singing "Topsy, the Famous Negro Dancer." With her radiating personality and facial expression, she was immediately noticed. Wrote the Daily Telegraph: "If Topsy is not soon the talk of the town we are very much mistaken." For the succeeding nine years. Forsyne toured Europe under the management of the Marinelli Agency, the largest in Europe, in what would be the peak of her career. The entire first year she played the Moulin Rouge in Paris, singing and dancing her fast mixture of eccentric steps. She was then booked throughout England where for the first time she saw Bill Robinson and Ralph Cooper. At the Alhambra Theatre in London, she introduced her Sack dance to special music with a ballet company. A stagehand carried her onstage in a big potato sack; she threw one leg out, then an arm, and so on until, dumped in the middle of the stage, she danced before a backup chorus line of ballet dancers who were paid extra to appear in blackface. While the performance was considered "arty," Forsyne was improvising jazz steps. She quickly rose to such fame that she gave a command performance for the Royal family. In 1911, in the middle of her Moscow dance program, tiny Forsyne (she wore a size two shoe) suddenly inserted a series of improvised kazotsky kicks into her routine and brought the house down; she was immediately hailed as the "greatest Russian dancer of then all." She thereafter closed her act with kazotsky kicks-- which began from a squat, arms folded at the chest, and legs kicking out, first one leg and then another. Though Russian dancers usually stood up between steps, Forsyne could not wait. She changed steps and traveled across the stage in a crouch, working out new combinations. She flung both legs out in front of her and touched her toes with her hands before coming down in time with the music. She also mixed down-steps with up-steps, and cross-ankle steps, and as a finale, would kazotsky all the way across the stage, and return backwards. European theaters booked Forsyne for nine years without a break. Forsyne popularized Russian dancing in the United States, after pioneering that style abroad. But she was, above and beyond, a jazz dancer. She remembered many early jazz tap steps, among them "Going to the World's Fair," which was strut in which one put both feet together and moved forward on the toes. Another step was "Scratchin' the Gravel," or the "Sooey," a short sliding motion alternately on each foot; Forsyne described it as a two-step with a dip. In 1914, Forsyne returned to New York from touring abroad and performed at the Lincoln and Lafayette theaters. High class society people went to the Lafayette and the management didn't present of-color blues singers, comedians and Shake dancers from T.O.B.A., as did at the Lincoln." In 1916, Forsyne saw Darktown Follies and remembers that it was the talk of the town. "Eddie Retor was featured in his smooth military routine, and Toots Davis was doing his Over the Top and Through the Trenches, and they were new steps then," she told Marshall Stearns. For two years (from 1920 to 1922), Forsyne worked as a personal maid, onstage and off, to Sophie Tucker, earning $50 a week. Onstage, Tucker sang thirteen songs, accompanied by pianist Al Seeger, and wanted a dancer to help whip up applause at the end of the show—and Forsyne filled that position. The act broke up in Washington, D.C. where, on the Keith circuit, new rules disallowed black performers to appear onstage with a white performer unless they wore blackface. Furthermore, no performer of color working backstage was permitted to watch the show. Tucker refused to have Forsyne don blackface, and while Forsyne was banned from the show, she was permitted to watch the show from the wings. By 1924, Forsyne was back on the T.O.B.A. black vaudeville circuit as one of six dancing girls with blues singer Mamie Smith's act. After touring the South with the late version of The Smart Set, Forsyne returned to New York where Harlem nightclubs were thriving. Refused after auditioning at the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and the Nest, because of the preference for light-skinned and scantily-clad chorus girls, Forsyne was promised a job at Small's Paradise, which never panned out. As did a job working at the New World Club in Atlantic City in 1927, which was recommended to her by Jack "Legs" Diamond. Forsyne was apparently rejected for not approving of the abbreviated costumes which were de rigeur for female jazz dancers. Back on T.O.B.A., Forsyne earned $35 a week working with Bessie Smith, a show that allowed her to reprise her Russian specialty. She left Smith's company in 1928, vowing she would never tour the South again. After working three-and-a-half years as a domestic, and then as an elevator girl, Forsyne quit dancing. In 1963, however, she played the part of Mrs. Noah in Green Pastures. That same year, she appeared with Rex Ingraham in The Emperor Jones. As late as 1951, Forsyne assisted Ruthanna Boris for the choreography for the New York City Ballet's "The Cakewalk," choreographed by George Balanchine. In 1962, at the age of seventy-nine, Forsyne could still perform a cartwheel. She devoted most of her spare time to visiting various hospitals where she entertained and cheered up sick friends. By 1966 she herself retired to the Concord Baptist Nursing Home in Brooklyn, where she died in 1983, at the age of 100. Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Vol I. (2004); Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows (Vol 1, 2nd ed.) by Henry T Sampson

1. Bessie Vaughn 2. Ida Day 3. 'Tiny' Jones 4. Charles Moore 5. Kate Jones 6. ? 7. Jessie Ellis 8. Maggie Davis 9. Hattie Hopkins 10.Bert Williams 11.? Harris 12.George Walker 13.Hattie McIntosh 14.? 15.Renie Norris 16.? 17.Daisy Tapley 18.Lottie Williams (Bert Williams' wife) 19.? Tuck 20.Aida Overton Walker (George Walker's wife) 21.Ella Anderson 22.Lizzie Avery 23.Lavina Rogers 24.Jim Vaughn 25.William C. Elkins 26.Walter Richardson 27.Richard Conners 28.? Barker 29.Will Accoe 30.George Catlin 31.Chip Ruff? 32.Jimmie ? 33.John Lubrie Hill 34.Henri Green Tapley (Daisy Tapley's husband) 35.Henry Troy 36.Marshall Craig 37.Theodore Pankey 38.Harry Stafford 39.Charles L. Saulsbury? 40.Alex C. Rogers In Dahomey was the first full-length musical written and played by an entirely Black cast to be performed on Broadway. The play was based on a libretto by Jesse A. Shipp, with music by Will Marion Cook and lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alex Rogers. Cook’s music would become to be considered by many as the ‘turning point for African American representation’. Source: Robert Kimball Archives More information can be found here: www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/in-dahomey.html

January 1950 advert in Our World featuring the great Sarah Vaughan. Our World Magazine, was published by African American businessman, John Preston Davis (1905 - 1973). It was a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. Its first issue, with singer and actress Lena Horne on the cover, arrived on the nation's newsstands in April 1946. Our World was a premier publication for African American men and women covering contemporary topics from black history to sports and entertainment with regular articles on health, fashion, politics and social awareness, was headquartered out of New York City. Our World portrayed Black America as no other national publication had ever done. The magazine had a run of eleven years before folding. [The John P Davis Collection]

Photo: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library He was born in Manhattan, NY in 1807. His family belonged to the world of the “quasi-free,” to take a phrase from the historian John Hope Franklin. Slavery was gradually being abolished in New York, but the black population was hemmed in by Jim Crow-like restrictions—notably, drastic limits on voting rights. Aldridge’s father, Daniel, worked as a street vender and served as a lay preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; his mother, of whom almost nothing is known, was named Luranah. Aldridge’s early education took place at the African Free School, a network of schools set up by antislavery advocates to educate “the descendants of an injured race.” Daniel Aldridge wanted his son to be a minister, but Ira fell in love with the theatre. "The New Yorker" by Alex Ross LONDON — The story is gripping. It is the mid-1820s, and a young black American actor improbably moves to London while still a teenager, tours the provinces and gets his big break a few years later, when he is asked at the last minute to replace Edmund Kean as Othello at Covent Garden in 1833. Can he overcome the innate prejudice of his fellow actors, the public and the critics? Will he succeed? His name was Ira Aldridge, and when the British actor Adrian Lester was asked, way back in 1998, to do an informal reading of some writings about Aldridge, he was astonished by the story. Aldridge was an anomaly in theater history: a Black actor — and an American — who achieved mainstream success in grand Shakespearean roles at a time when no black actor had ever been seen on the stage of a major London theater, and who went on to win considerable renown in Europe, honored with titles and medals by crowned heads of state. Aldridge’s Covent Garden debut in 1833 coincided with the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and the heightened debate over the decision. His performances in “Othello,” well received by the audiences, were vilified by critics; after two shows, the management closed the theater, and Aldridge never appeared again on a mainstream London stage. Until he died at 60, in the Polish town of Lodz in 1867, he toured Europe relentlessly, becoming something of a celebrity in Eastern Europe and Russia. Memorials in this country are few, but in Stratford, a plaque for him is on the back of one of the seats in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. When Aldridge died, he was on the cusp of a lengthy United States tour, beginning in Brooklyn at the new Academy of Music. [ NY Times, Roslyn Sulcasmarch ]

Photo: E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Detroit Public Library Florence Mills (1896 - 1927), was never captured on film and her voice was never recorded. Just two of the factors why, with each successive generation, Florence Mills always remains on the verge of being forgotten. Yet, there's something in the collective consciousness of African Americans that refuses to totally forget her. In the 1920's, she was the biggest star, period. She was the first Black woman to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Her voice was high and birdlike. She was a small, petite woman with a winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Known as The Little Blackbird, she was most effervescent on stage with her high-kickin', tireless and high octane performances. Though born in Washington, DC., Harlem was home to Mills. After a grueling, whirlwind tour of England, Mills returned home gravely ill with appendicitis. Her death, a month later at the age of 31, set off an outpouring of love and grief, memory and flowers, affection and music that Harlem had ever seen. Her body lay in state for a week in the chapel of the Howell Undertaking Parlors at 137th & Seventh Avenue, and her funeral at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted an estimated 5000 mourners. Numerous accounts suggest that at least 150,000 people lined the streets outside while hundreds of blackbirds were released by helicopter above. The great Duke Ellington wrote, "Black Beauty" in memory of the great lady.

Hughes Allison, author of the first black detective story in ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,’ pictured in 1950. [ Hughes Allison Archive, Newark Public Library ] In September of 1950, Hughes Allison, a playwright and writer of pulp fiction, responded to a manuscript sent by a writer who requested that he reply via the Mystery Writers of America. The author, Polly MacManus, singled out Allison for a reason: He was black, she was white, and she wanted his advice on how to write from the point of view of a black detective. Allison warned MacManus he would be “brutally frank” in his letter: “I urge you to abandon the attempt to write about Negroes.” He felt MacManus’s detective “neither talks nor acts nor thinks like any college-trained Negro I’ve ever met.” Another black character in the manuscript, a maid, “is the most unrealistic chauvinist I’ve ever encountered in fiction. And in real life, she would be regarded by the Negro detectives whom I know as the kind of stool pigeon only heaven could spawn.” He then followed up with what he considered to be one of the major pitfalls white writers face when writing black characters: "When you begin handling Negroes as major characters in fiction you immediately enter into that big and enormous and important and most complex area of American life called the Negro Question—where no answer can be secured from any part of that question if conjecture is allowed to play even a small part. You can’t guess. You have to know. You have to know Negro life as Negroes live it—and they live on numerous political, economic, social, and intellectual levels growing out of cause-and-effect patterns, the character of which is historical. The history of this matter is well documented—so well documented that those who are informed can tell at a glance who knows and who is guessing." MacManus may have had good intentions, but those, Allison wrote, “are seldom consistent with the harsh facts of history.” In a 1950 interview with the Newark Evening News, Allison explained: “It’s a battle to get a story about a Negro detective published in a national magazine, you know. I send the publisher a page-by-page explanation of what I’m doing in the story, and how I know what I’m talking about. He has to be ready in case some letters of protest arrive from Mississippi or Georgia.” Literary erasure is not always deliberate, but literary championing must be. Rachel Howzell Hall wrote earlier this year about being one of the few black mystery writers at annual genre conferences in an essay titled “Colored and Invisible” for The Life Sentence, a web site for crime and noir writers: “It can be lonely in those grand ballrooms, in those lesser ballrooms, at that reception. And there have been times when I’ve retreated to my hotel room, emotionally exhausted from being visibly invisible all day.” For a moment in the 1990s, after Walter Mosley and Devil in a Blue Dress, crime fiction made room for more black writers. But then writers like Eleanor Taylor Bland, Penny Mickelbury, Paula Woods, Charlotte Carter, and others perhaps fell away in the relentless turnover of the publishing industry: canceled contracts, merged companies, and shifting editorial priorities. In recent years, few black crime-genre writers have reached Mosley’s level of popularity. To date, there are no available statistics on how well, or how badly, they are represented in the industry. Recognizing the problem and addressing it accordingly takes work, and time. Yet it is frustrating, even shameful, how few writers of color get through the mystery corridors with a fictional representation of their own experiences. The door opened, briefly, for Hughes Allison. Before editorial neglect slammed it shut, Allison showed, years before Mosley, Himes, or any black detective fiction writer, what it was to live in his character’s skin. Hughes Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1908. His family moved to Newark, New Jersey in 1919. Allison attended Bergen Street Grammar School, Barringer High School, and Upsala College. His first short story was published in Challenge Magazine in 1935. By 1937, Allison’s first play, The Trial of Dr. Beck was being produced on Broadway, which starred famous white actor, William Bendix. Also throughout the 1930s, Allison worked as a reporter for True Story Magazine. Later he authored a series of articles about school segregation for the Newark Evening News. He wrote over 2,000 radio scripts. Allison’s most famous character is African-American detective Joe Hill, who was modeled after the real Newark Police Homicide Detective Carlton B. Norris. Allison was married to Elitea Bulkley Allison, a children’s librarian at the Newark Public Library. He died on August 26, 1974 at Presbyterian Hospital in Newark. Info: 'The Case of the Disappearing Black Detective Novel,' by Sarah Weinman and 'Newark's Literary Lights'

Ethel Waters was born the daughter of Louise Howard, on October 31 1900, at her great-aunt Ida’s home in Chester, Pennsylvania. Waters was a product of rape. At the age of 13, Waters’ mother was raped by John Waters (pianist). Waters said about her childhood, “I never was a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.” Waters’ never had a relationship with her mother. Louise Howard moved away when Waters was a child, leaving her to the care of her grandmother, Sally Anderson. However, Waters’ spent most of her time with her aunts, Vi and Ching, because her grandmother worked long hours. Though both alcoholic with terrible lifestyles, Waters’ aunts loved to sing. Waters wrote in her autobiography, Eye is on the Sparrow: “Vi had a sweet, soft voice. Ching’s was bell-like and resonant…One of the first pieces I remember Vi singing was ‘I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.’ Ching’s favorites were ‘There’ll Come a Time’ and ‘Volunteer Organist.’ But in the beginning it was always the story in the song that enchanted me.” These last few words explain Waters’ style of singing more than anything else. Waters was always able to tell a story with her music, though she would not figure this out until later in life. As a young girl, Waters was exposed to a lot of negative things. She befriended a prostitute and witnessed the sexual relationships of her older sisters (they all shared a room). She grew up fast. Though she was exposed to these things, she didn’t allow them to influence her. Waters’ first steady job was at the Harrod Apartments in Philadelphia. She was a maid—a very humble job compared to what she would soon land. On October 17 1917, Waters’ seventeenth birthday, her friends convinced her to perform at a Halloween party. She sang a blues ballad which the crowd and a black vaudeville team (a group who would perform variety shows), Braxton and Nugent, loved. They approached her after the show and offered her $10 a week to join their team. Waters then began her steady ascent to fame. Her first performance was in 1917 at the Lincoln Theater in Baltimore. She sang solos and was known as Sweet Mama Stringbean because, “I was so scrawny and tall.” Though the crowd was tough, and often louder than the performances, Waters’ voice would always capture the audience. One night Waters decided to add a new song to her show. She took the song, “St. Louis Blues” and sang it more slowly, with more pathos. She says, “You could have heard a pin drop in that rough, rowdy audience.” Her version of the song is now a classic and nown to be the greatest blues song every written. However, she was not involved with the most honest people. Waters soon found out that Braxton and Nugent were pocketing extra money from her act. At the time two other females were performing with Braxton and Nugent, as the Hill Sisters. After finding out about the scam Waters immediately left and the Hill Sisters followed. They decided to travel together as their own act. They performed the same songs they did in Baltimore. One of them was Waters’ famous song, “St. Louis Blues.” They moved from theater to theater, performing for a different crowd every time. Though the Hill Sisters had good times, the trio did not last. The original Hill Sisters, Jo and Maggie, were jealous. There was backstage rivalry which stemmed from Waters’ success. Though they were a trio, Waters soon felt singled out and unwanted. The trio turned into a duo, with just Jo and Ethel Waters. Though they traveled and sang together, Waters often took the spotlight. Once, Waters landed a job at 91 Decatur Street in Atlanta. That same night, Bessie Smith was on the bill. Smith had a lot of say with the managers, and forbid Waters to sing any blues while Smith was there. However, during Waters’ performance, the crowd began to shout, “Blues! Blues! Blues! Come on, Stringbean, we want your blues!” The manager was forced to revoke the ban placed on Waters. Bessie Smith personally gave Waters permission to sing “St. Louis Blues” and said to Waters after the show, “Come here long goody. You ain’t so bad. It’s only that I never dreamed that anyone would be able to do this to me in my own territory and with my own people. And you know damn well that you can’t sing worth a--” Waters had come into her own. She was a one-woman act. “I still had no feelings of having roots. I was still alone and an outcast,” Waters says about her time with the Hill Sisters. After being injured in a car accident in 1918, Waters went back to Philadelphia. She placed her singing career on hold and began washing dishes at an automat. She did this until Joe Bright, a black actor-producer from New York, persuaded her to go back on stage. Wearily, in 1919, Waters accepted Bright’s offer and performed at Lincoln Theater in Harlem. It was during her second week at Lincoln Theater that her acquaintance, Alice Ramsey—a dancer—invited her to sing at Edmund’s Cellar. Waters began working there for $2 a night. Her salary came from the audience in the form of tips. There were no set hours for work. Waters said, “There was no set closing time…I used to work from nine until unconscious.” Again, she changed her style of singing. Andrea Barnett writes in All-Night Party, “A pianist, Lou Henley, challenged Ethel to expand her repertoire, urging her to tackle more complex, ‘cultural’ numbers. But to Ethel’s surprise, she found that she could characterize and act out the songs just as she did with her blues. Audiences were enthusiastic.” More and more people would come to Edmond’s Cellar to watch Waters perform and tips became so good that musicians all around Harlem began looking for a chance to perform there. Waters’ finally began making a name for herself. Waters even went to Chicago at the request of Al Capone, who wanted her to sing at his bar. In 1929, with James P. Johnson as her accompanist, Ethel was singing songs like, “Am I Blue?” in On with the Show, where she was now making $1250 per week! In All-Night Party, Andrea Barnet says, “Ethel’s versatility and inventiveness were beginning to serve her well. She had the sexual swagger of singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, yet her voice was softer. Ethel’s style was crisp and urbane, more northern.” She soon was noticed by Black Swan Records. She began recording with them and released a record with two sides. “Oh Daddy” and “Down Home Blues” were on that record, which sold 500, 000 copies in 6 months. Waters had recorded with pianist, Fletcher Henderson. The duo was so successful that they toured through the South and became the first black musicians to broadcast on the radio. Ethel continued to perform with various artists: female pianist, Pearl Wright, dancer, Ethel Williams (suspected to be her lover). She was living a lavish lifestyle, but her music never reflected her extravagant lifestyle. Instead, they reflected a more negative side of Waters’ adult life. Ethel Waters held a few rocky relationships in her lifetime. She once dated a drug addict and thief. She married and divorced three times, though she rarely talks about two of her marriages. There are also rumors that Waters was bisexual. Though she tried to keep this private, she was often seen fighting in public with whichever girlfriend she was with at the time. The nature of her relationships was often reflected in her music; her songs are full of heartbreak. There was also another aspect of Waters music that must be noted. According to Barnet, “…besides the sweeter quality of her voice, she was just as likely to take a more droll, comedic view of male-female relations, making mischievous sport of both sexes.” Though singing was a great part of Waters career, she also became an actress. Waters acted in a number of films and Broadway plays. In Waters’ opinion, her greatest role was that of Hagar in Mamba’s Daughters on Broadway in 1939 where she gave 17 curtain calls on opening night. In Mamba’s Daughters Waters plays a woman sent to exile after committing a minor crime. Consequently, she has to leave her daughter, Lissa, to the care of her mother, Mamba. Years later, Hagar must make one more sacrifice for her daughter, who is on her way to fame and fortune. She felt that Hagar paralleled her own mother’s life, and she put all of the emotion that she had into each performance. She was also the first black woman to ever star in a dramatic play on Broadway. In 1950, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Pinky. In the movie, she plays the grandmother of Pinky, a young light-skinned woman, who passes for white while attending school in the North. In that same year she won the New York Drama Critics Award for her role in the play, The Member of the Wedding. Her co-star was the actress Julie Harris. Waters continued to land a number of roles in films and plays. Sh>e performed in Cairo (1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Member of the Wedding (1952) and was even a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1972. Ethel Waters also wrote two autobiographies. In 1951, His Eye is on the Sparrow was published. Her second autobiography, To Me it’s Wonderful, was published in 1977. Ethel Waters’ career began to slow as the blues began to fade out of pop culture, but she was able to continue her career largely because of her ability to identify with the characters she played and the songs that she sang. Waters died on September 2, 1977, in Chatsworth, California. She will always be remembered for her incredible vocal and theatrical performances, and for being a woman who broke racial boundaries by playing in black and white vaudeville companies and earning equal praise in both. Decades after her death, three of Waters’ singles were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: “Dinah” in 1998 for Traditional Pop, “Stormy Weather” in 2003 for Jazz, and “Am I Blue?” in 2007 for Traditional Pop. Bio written by Julia J. Spiering, Fall 2004; revised and extended by Joanne A. Gedeon, Spring 2010

Rose McClendon was one of the most famous black dramatic actresses of the 1920s and 1930s. Although she did not become a professional actor until she was in her thirties, she consistently won critical acclaim for many of her acting roles and influenced the careers of many aspiring black actors of the period. Rose (Rosalie) V. McClendon was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1884 and with her parents, Sandy and Lena Jenkins Scott, migrated to New York City around 1890. At the age of twenty she married Dr. Henry Pruden McClendon, a licensed chiropractor, who supplemented his income by working as a Pullman porter. McClendon's interest in the theatre first found expression in the church where she directed and acted in cantatas at Saint Mark's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan. In 1916 she won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall under the tutelage of Franklin Sargent, and subsequently began her stage career. McClendon made her professional debut in Justice (1919-1920), a play starring writer, director, and actor Butler Davenport. Four years later she appeared in Roseanne (1924) with Charles Gilpin (and later Paul Robeson). In 1926 she gained prominence for her acting in Deep River, where she earned rave reviews, and in Paul Green's Pulitzer prize-winning folk tragedy, In Abraham's Bosom that starred Jules Bledsoe in the title role. Her reputation grew with her portrayal of Serena in Dubose and Dorothy Heyward's Porgy (1927) for which she received the Morning Telegraph Acting Award the following year (along with Ethel Barrymore and Lynn Fontanne). After a long run of one year in New York City, McClendon went on tour with Porgy to Chicago (nine weeks), London (approximately six weeks), Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Washington, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the northwest, and Canadian cities. Other plays she appeared in include Green's House of Connelly (1931), Black Souls, an all black production of Never No More and The Cat and the Canary (1932), Brain Sweat (which had a black cast) and Roll Sweet Chariot (1934), and Panic (1935). Her last starring role was as Cora in Langston Hughes' Mulatto (1935) which ran for 375 performances on Broadway, the second-longest run by a black playwright at that time. Hughes created the role of Cora specifically for her, unfortunately, McClendon left the cast in December when she became ill. Her love of the theatre inspired McClendon's stewardship of other African American's involvement in the theatre. From 1923 to 1925 McClendon was active in the Ethiopian Art Theatre. Also by the mid-1920s, she was a director for the Negro (Harlem) Experimental Theatre located at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and, in addition, worked in a supervisory capacity with the Federal Theatre Project (Negro Unit), ca. 1935-1936. Furthermore, she served as a board member for the Theatre Union, which governed the Civic Repertory Theatre on West 14th Street. While working with the Federal Theatre Project, McClendon developed her vision of a black theatre company. Together with Dick Campbell she founded the Negro People's Theatre in 1935. Members of the advisory board included: Cheryl Crawford, Clifford Odets, Paul Green, Albert Bein, Countee Cullen, Herbert Kline, and Lena Bernstein. Officers of the small thirty-five member company were: Morris McKenney (chairman and director of the executive board), Campbell (vice chairman), Lena Bernstein (play reader), and Alston Burleigh (musical director). The company produced one play, Odets' Waiting for Lefty, prior to McClendon's untimely death at the age of 51 of pneumonia in 1936. Two years later, Campbell, his wife, actress Muriel Rahn, and George Norford established the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem in her honor. NYPL Archives & Manuscripts

One of the first African American women to specialize in ragtime coon song singing was Bessie Gillam, a product of one of Detroit, Michigan's premier black musical families. Her father, barber musician Charles Gillam, had been prominent in the local black string and brass milieu until his death in 1890, while her older brother Harry appeared in local community productions like Ed Rector's Juvenile Minstrels before venturing out with some of the major black road shows of 1890-1910. Source: Indianapolis Freeman; PosterMuseum, Greve

Though her career as a coloratura was eclipsed by Sissieretta Jones aka 'The Black Patti' in later years, for a time Selika held forth as the preeminent artist and biggest drawing card of the day. Born Marie Smith (1849 - 1937), she borrowed the pseudonym from the lead character Selika in L'Africaine . Petite and demure looking with refined features, Marie Selika was heralded as the "Queen of Staccato," a title she earned from her exemplary singing of show pieces such as Mulder's "Staccato Polka." The piece, showing off her solid two-octave range (from C to C) and her flair for ornamentation, became her signature work. She was the first black concert artist to sing at the White House (during the Hayes administration), preceding Sissieretta Jones (Black Patti), by ten years. She also sang for the Queen of England in 1883. Details about her birth, early life and parentage are scant and conflicting. Little information is available prior to 1875, except that she was born circa 1849 in Natchez, Mississippi. She studied voice as a child under the patronage of a wealthy white family who arranged for her lessons with a professional teacher. Between 1873 and 1876, she moved to San Francisco, where she continued her voice studies with Italian singer, Signora G. Bianchi. In Chicago she studied with a coach named Farini and met her future husband baritone concert singer, Sampson Williams (an African American man who billed himself as Signor Velosko a 'Hawaiian Baritone'). Both studied with Antonio Farini, who taught the so-called Italian method. She settled in the Northeast, and in Boston was said to have replaced the indisposed Hungarian soprano Etelka Gerster at a concert one evening, to critical acclaim. In 1878 the black press announced the engagement of the young singer to perform the title role in L'Africaine at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. From 1882 to 1885, Selika and her husband toured Europe, performing in Paris, Russia, Germany, and England, and giving a command performance for Queen Victoria at St. James' Hall in October 1883. She performed at the Musée du Nord in Brussels and sang Weber's Der Freischütz in Germany. The press reported that the European trips provided excellent musical experiences for Selika and Sampson Williams. In November 1878, just two years after her concert debut, she along with her husband became the first African American concert singers to perform at the White House. Announced by Frederick Douglass, their performance took place in the Green Room for an audience that included President and Mrs. Rutherford Hayes. Her performance included Verdi’s “Ernani, involami,” Thomas Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer,” Harrison Millard’s “Ave Maria,” and Richard Mulder’s “Staccato Polka.” Her husband, also sang, by popular request, the well known ballad “Far Away” by Bliss. In the years following her performance at the White House, Williams continued to tour nationally performing for all black audiences. She interspersed her national performances with two tours of Europe, one from 1882-1885, where she gave a command performance in October of 1883 at St. James Hall for Queen Victoria, and another from 1887-1892. Selika performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and soon after the couple settled in Cleveland, Ohio. On October 12, 1896, Selika, Sissieretta Jones, and Flora Batson—the three leading black singers of the period sang together at New York City's Carnegie Hall. She also toured the West Indies. Despite Williams’s successful career and her status as the leading black prima donna of her time, she frequently struggled to obtain good professional management, even managing her own concerts on occasion. The prevalent racism of the era prevented black artists from being easily accepted in anything other than Minstrel shows, and blacks would not be welcomed to the American operatic stage until the 1930s. After her husband's death in 1911 and with her career in decline, Selika accepted a teaching position at the Martin-Smith Music School in New York City. A testimonial concert in her honor was given in 1919, at which she performed. She was active as a private teacher until her death on May 19, 1937, in New York City. Selika reigned for almost three decades as a queen of song in the United States and Europe. She was the first concert coloratura in African-American music culture. As a tribute to her vocal excellence, Frederick G. Carnes wrote Selika, A Grand Vocal Waltz of Magic, which included staccato passages, trills, and vocal cadenzas. Sources: Facts On File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America: The Early Years, 1617 - 1899 Darlene Clark Hine, editor (NY) 1997; N. Weston, Photographer, San Francisco, California

Louisa Melvin Delos Mars, was one of the first African Americans to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music, and the first African American woman to have an opera staged and produced. The opera, "Leoni, the Gypsy Queen", was performed in Providence, Rhode Island in 1889. Louisa also directed, produced, and performed in her own operettas. She composed and copyrighted five full length musical dramas between 1889 and 1926. Details on her life are scant....born Louisa Melvin in Providence, Rhode Island around 1858. She was the oldest daughter of Charles and Elizabeth Melvin. During the 1880s she and her younger sister, Carrie Melvin Lucas, formed a duo, with Carrie playing violin and cornet with Louisa singing. Her sister, Carrie Melvin Lucas was the second wife of famous vaudevillian, Sam Lucas. The couple (who would later divorce) had a child who became a popular musician in her own right, Maria Lucas (Louisa's niece). [Info: American Opera by Elise K. Kirk] On a census site I found that she was married to William Delos Mars (1856 - 1927). The couple had two sons, Charles born May 19, 1883, and Christian born December 23, 1886 both in Providence, Rhode Island. Source: The Colored American Magazine, vol. 5, 1902

Belle Davis was an African American song and dance artist, entertainer, choreographer, and director. She was a recording pioneer who toured Europe extensively during the period 1901-1929. Not only did she record on disc as early as 1902, she also performed in front of a movie camera at least twice during the early years of this century. In spite of these extraordinary achievements, little has been written about her; her biography, her discography and her filmography remain sketchy. Belle Davis, was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 28, 1874, the daughter of George Davis. Of European and African ancestry, she spent most of her adult life abroad, largely in Britain, where she arrived in mid-1901 with two boys who were billed as Piccaninny Actors. Her performance style changed from ‘coon shouting’ and ‘ragtime singing’ in the 1890s to a more decorous manner, where prancing children provided the amusement. She directed their stage act, and with two, sometimes three or four, black children the act was a vigorous and popular entertainment in British and continental theatres. Davis's troupe appeared on the reputable Empire Theatre circuit in late 1901, recorded in London in 1902 (including the song ‘The Honey-Suckle and the Bee’), continued touring London and the provinces in 1903, and ventured to the continent. Dozens of other African-Americans were entertaining the British at this time, and on June 9, 1904 Davis married one of the more successful, Henry Troy, in London. Following her marriage the act continued to tour, and was filmed, for commercial distribution. The Empire circuit continued to employ the group, as did other leading theatres. They presented their ten-minute stage act in Dublin, Cardiff, Swansea, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Sheffield between May 1906 and August 1909, and appeared in Berlin, The Hague, Paris, Vienna, St Petersburg, and Brussels during the same period. Some leading performers had their apprenticeship as dancers in Davis's act; when they grew too large she recruited younger boys from America. The act had been seen by hundreds of thousands of Britons by 1914, when war prevented continental touring and so exposed more Britons to Belle Davis and Her Cracker Jacks. She and the children performed in major cities as well as Ayr, Doncaster, Portsmouth, Ilkeston, and Weymouth during the war years. Her last known performance in Britain was in 1918. From 1925 to 1929 she directed the dancing in the revues at the Casino de Paris, and 1929 also saw Belle Davis Piccaninnies in Germany with Wunderland der Liebe, a revue set in the south seas. As early as 1915 she was describing herself as married to the African American entertainer Edward Peter (Eddie) Whaley (circa 1880–1960), and she took out an American passport in the name Belle Whaley in 1920. She and Whaley eventually did marry, on July 12, 1926, but they had divorced by 1936. In 1938 she boarded the Queen Mary in Southampton to return to a Chicago address. Sometimes billed as a creole , Davis was a soprano whose songs were not from the minstrel show or spiritual traditions, but were graceful melodies. By contrast the children were energetic dancers who combined suppleness with comedy. Their well-dressed director's elegance was praised, and is evidenced by surviving promotional material. The mercurial entertainment business had few acts for whom top theatres provided employment for the length of time she worked in Britain. Her qualities both as a singer and as dance director, combined with her professionalism in travelling from town to town, country to country, in charge of boisterous children, were solid, and enabled her to have success at her chosen profession for three decades. Stately, well dressed, and showing faint African features, she presented American dance and song to countless Britons and kept top employers anxious to take her act for their shows. Source: [Rainer E. Lotz]

Aida Overton Walker pictured along with her hubby George A Walker in a publicity photo depicting their version of the famous Cakewalk in the 1903 play In Dahomey performed at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. The play was written by Will Marion Cook, Jesse A Shipp and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Synopsis: A musical comedy about a fraudulent scheme to return discontented Blacks to Africa. It was performed by a cast of about one hundred African American actors, and made a huge impact not only on the theatre but on fashion. Its display of dances such as the 'Cakewalk' and 'Buck and Wing' helped them become the latest dance hall crazes in the UK. Despite the show’s misrepresentations of Africa, it was a milestone because it was created and performed by an all-black cast and was the first to introduce an African theme to the musical genre. A few historical facts about the play In Dahomey : It was the first African American musical play. It was created and performed by an all African American cast. The show had 53 performances in New York,. Had a seven month run in England. The play ran between the years 1902 and 1905. All music and lyrics were written by African Americans, Will Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Source: V&A Theatre Collection

Madam Desseria Plato stands foremost as a dramatic soprano. Born in New York City, she has studied with several of the prominent teachers there. As a lyric actress she has no equal among the other prima-donnas. Her voice is of astonishing compass and beauty; she sings with ease G below the staff to E above high C. Madam Plato recently made a concert tour through the West with great success. She is a most deserving artist, having gone through many hardships to maintain the high position which she now holds. Her last appearance in New York was last May, when she sang the part of Carmen in Bizet's opera with wonderful success, considering that it was the first time she had ever appeared opera, and the part is one of the most trying. The details concerning Desseria Plato's career are not known. However, when she attracted attention she did so on a grand scale. During the last decade of the 19th century Plato was making a name for herself as a concert singer. In Signor A Farini's Grand Creole and Colored Opera and Concert Company she was billed as a "prima donna mezzo-soprano." With Farini's company she sang the role of Azucena in Verdi's Il Trovatore at the Union Square Theatre in New York. As a substitute for Sissieretta Joyner Jones (Black Patti), at a concert given on Colored American Day (August 23, 1893) at the Chicago World's Fair, she again gained much attention. In 1896 Plato joined John Isham's Oriental American Company. She died in 1907. Sources: Colored American Magazine (1902 issue); Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians, by Eileen Southern

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was the first African American opera singer who became popular in the United States and Europe. Many reviewers and critics portrayed Greenfield as unusual and exotic to increase her popularity. Nevertheless, her performances disrupted racist stereotypes about slavery and Black people. She became the best-known Black concert artist of her time and performed for Queen Victoria. Elizabeth (Eliza) Taylor Greenfield was one of the first African American musicians to gain international recognition. Her natural vocal talents took her to places beyond what anyone could imagine for someone enslaved born in Mississippi during the 1850's. Popularly known as "The Black Swan" whe was born into slavery in Mississippi. She gained her freedom as a teenager in the 1820s when her "mistress" moved to Philadelphia. Active in local abolitionist circles, she made her public debut as a concert singer in 1851. She toured widely and to great acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic before eventually returning to Philadelphia and opening a music studio. She possessed an incredible and powerful clear 27-31 note vocal range. Sang soprano, tenor, and bass. James Trotter, one of her vocal contemporaries, described her as having “remarkably sweet tones and wide vocal compass.” She worked hard and persevered to overcome the challenges surrounding her. Born enslaved in Natchez, Mississippi as Elizabeth Taylor. At the tender age of 1, she was taken to Philadelphia by her namesake and owner Mrs. Elizabeth Greenfield. Once settled in Philadelphia, Mrs. Elizabeth Greenfield joined the Quaker Society of Friends and freed all those she slaved. However, Miss Elizabeth continued to serve as a maid and companion. A self-taught vocalist and musician Miss Elizabeth learned to play the piano, guitar, and harp, often providing entertainment for Mrs. Greenfield’s guests. After Mrs. Greenfield’s death, she supported herself by giving public and private performances, gaining significant recognition throughout the Northeast. On March 31, 1853, in a landmark engagement, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield made her New York City debut at Metropolitan Hall, drawing an all-white audience that exceeded nearly four thousand people; the people of her own race could not be “accommodated” (in other words barred from attending due to their race). Greenfield apologized to who had been denied the chance to hear her and subsequently gave a concert they could attend to benefit the Home of Aged Colored Persons and the Colored Orphan Asylum. A few days following her recital, she traveled to Europe for engagements in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in hopes of finding a good teacher to further develop her vocal technique. Shortly after her arrival in England, she was abandoned and left penniless by her manager in London. Luckily Greenfield crossed paths with Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while in London. With Stowe’s assistance, she was able to sing for the Duchess of Norfolk, the Duchess of Argyle, and the Duchess of Sutherland. She even received a royal invitation to sing for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace and on May 10, 1854 gave a command performance. Another notable performance includes a benefit concert she gave in 1855 for Mary Ann Shadd’s campaign to encourage the emigration of refugee slaves to Canada. Upon returning to America, Greenfield received anything but the royal treatment. She was refused entrance to a university music class because of her race. Determined, she opened a music studio in Philadelphia, where she created and directed an opera troupe in the 1860s. Greenfield used music and her opera troupe to fight the oppressive systems of American slavery and racism. Her troupe traveled the world singing for integrated audiences and donating proceeds to colored nursing homes and orphanages. She eventually settled in Philadelphia, where she opened a music studio and created and directed an opera troupe in the 1860s. She passed away on March 31, 1876, her obituary was published in The New York Times. Trivia: The first black owned record company established in 1921, was named Black Swan Records in Greenfield's honor. Sources: Library and Archives Canada, photographed in Buffalo, NY (photographer unknown); NPS; "The Music of Black Americans: A History" Eileen Southern and, "Music and Some Highly Musical People" James Trotter and "Opera Exposures: Excerpt from Life Upon the Sacred Stage, The Black Swan: A Tribute Concert ," by Mary Sheeran

Madame Annie Pauline Pindell was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1834. When an infant the sound of a musical instrument would cause the most intense excitement in the child, and as she grew older it was discovered that she possessed a remarkable organ in height, depth and sweetness. In those days the free colored people gave small thought to the cultivation of any talent that they might possess, so nothing was done to develop the girl's great gift. At nineteen the young girl married Joseph Pindell, a brother of the Baltimore Pindells, so well known in that city, and later in Boston. Proud of his wife's talent he encouraged her to study and improve, and soon Mrs. Pindell became a familiar figure among musical circles in Boston. In those days there were no great music schools and so Mrs. Pindell studied first with a celebrated German professor and later was under the tuition of Wyzeman Marhsal in elocution, and of his brother in music, vocal and instrumental. Indefatigable in her desire to acquire knowledge and improve in her art, the singer added to her vocal work the study of German, French and Italian, and she also made herself an expert performer on the piano, harp and guitar. She also delighted in original composition and Ditson's house published her songs, of which "Seek the Lodge Where the Red Men Dwell," was the most widely known, becoming a popular "hit" of the day. Mrs. Pindell went to California in 1860, and for thirty years her magnificent voice was celebrated on the Pacific Coast. On the occasion of a visit to the Hawaiian Islands during Queen Emma's reign, Mrs. Pindell was presented with a diamond necklace worth fifteen hundred dollars. The compass of this singer's voice was the same as the "Black Swan's," embracing twenty seven notes, from G in bass clef to E in treble clef. Musical critics compared her to Madame Alboni. Her great uncle was James Monroe Whitfield, an abolitionist and poet. Her niece was not only her namesake, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins but a famous novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. Pindell was the earliest documented black female composer in the United States. Her songs “Seek the Lodge Where the Red Men Dwell” and “Ah, Foolish Maiden” are listed in the Complete Catalogue of Sheet Music and Musical Works, 1870, published by the Board of Music Trade of the United States of America. Madame Pindell died in Los Angeles, California, May 1, 1901. Source: Illustration and article appeared in the Colored American Magazine [Nov. 1901, Vol. 4, No. 1 issue].