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Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 93; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4486491

1945-2314

Scott Newman,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

In this engaging and well-written book, Karen Sotiropoulos examines the history of black performers in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The growing popularity of vaudeville during that period provided black artists with new opportunities to express themselves creatively and earn a comfortable living. But, as Sotiropoulos shows, it also gave them a unique vehicle for challenging the racist stereotypes of white Americans and the accommodationist political strategies of some black leaders. She contends that artists such as Bert Williams, George Walker, and Aida Overton Walker used vaudeville and the era's other commercial amusements to advance a modern black identity based on professional achievement and personal respectability. Black vaudeville artists, as the first part of the book explains, developed a strong sense of community during the 1890s by gathering at select New York City hotels and saloons, where they searched for jobs, shared trade secrets, and developed a professional language understood only by insiders. United by their willingness to resist racism more forcefully than did their elders, these black performers increasingly distanced themselves from derogatory roles that played to white stereotypes. In two of the book's best chapters, Sotiropoulos demonstrates how black artists positioned themselves as race leaders during the “coon” song craze of the 1890s and staged several Africa-themed musical productions—including In Dahomey (1903) and Abyssinia (1906)—between 1900 and 1906. By injecting their singing performances with subtle critiques of Jim Crow, she contends, black artists exposed the “happy darky” myth that lay behind many of the tunes. Similarly, by staging shows based on African life and black America's somewhat ambivalent relationship to the continent, they challenged prevailing notions of Africa as a primitive land and questioned the authority of black political leaders in the realm of international affairs. Finally, as the last section of the book reveals, many black performers adopted a respectable off-stage lifestyle—characterized by formal attire, spacious Harlem residences, and close ties to prominent white artists—to buttress their standing as skilled, middle-class professionals and once again defy white stereotypes of blacks as lazy and irresponsible.