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The young Miss is a native of Detroit, Michigan. She was born the 3rd of May, 1880. At an early age little Bessie showed market talent for the stage, and being of an apt and musical family, she was naturally encouraged in her natural vocation. At the age of three she participated in a concert in which she sang that ever popular song "Peek-a-boo," at that she had to be placed on a stool in order to be seen by the audience. After that from time to time she appeared in home talent concerts, until finally her marked advancement demanded recognition and in consequence of that she had the pleasure of holding the boards for eight weeks at the Wonderland Theater, (in Detroit) which speaks for itself. At that time she was only five years of age. At the end of this unprecedented engagement she was put in school, and at the same time she was given a musical education by her mother, (Georgie E Gillam, a very accomplished pianist). After receiving a good school education and the art of music, she was still haunted by the desire to become an actress, to that event she was fortunate in receiving an engagement in connection with her brother, (Harry L Gillam), from the Georgia University Graduates, under the direction of J. Edward George. They started on the road on Dec. 16, 1895, to tour the country. After a successful tour of thirty weeks, she returned home and had to remain home for a long while to patch up a sprained ankle received while in the act of performing. After taking a good rest she rejoined her brother at Eureka, Kansas on Dec. 10, 1897, to work as a team with the Nashville Students and P.T. Wright's Colored Comedy Co. She is receiving praise from press and public for her artistic rendition of coon songs and refined dancing. Being a young lady she has a bright future and we look forward to see her hold positions among the many bright lights now lighting the dark pathway on to the road of success for the colored race. Source: Indianapolis Freeman (April 9, 1898) issue

Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown (members of Brewer & Suttle's Rag-Time Four) embrace in a 1898 film, a depiction of genuine black affection that stands out from a cinematic era filled with stereotypes and racist caricatures. UChicago scholar helps identify 1898 film as earliest depiction of African-American affection .... They are on screen for less than 30 seconds, a couple in simple embrace. The man, dressed in a suit and bow tie, and the woman in a frilled dress. They hug and kiss, swing wide their clasped hands, and kiss again. Titled Something Good-Negro Kiss , the newly discovered silent film from 1898 is believed to be the earliest cinematic depiction of African-American affection. Thanks to scholars at the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California, the footage is prompting a rethinking of early film history. The film was announced December 12, 2018 as a new addition to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry—one of 25 selected for their enduring importance to American culture, along with Jurassic Park, Brokeback Mountain and The Shining. The 29-second clip is free of stereotypes and racist caricatures, a stark contrast from the majority of black performances at the turn of the century. “It was remarkable to me how well the film was preserved, and also what the actors were doing,” said UChicago’s Allyson Nadia Field, an expert on African-American cinema who helped identify the film and its historical significance. “There’s a performance there because they’re dancing with one another, but their kissing has an unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure, and amusement as well. “It is really striking to me, as a historian who works on race and cinema, to think that this kind of artifact could have existed in 1898. It’s really a remarkable artifact and discovery.” An associate professor in UChicago’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies, Field first saw scanned frames of the film in January 2017. The footage was discovered by USC archivist Dino Everett, who found the 19th-century nitrate print within a batch of silent films he had acquired from a Louisiana collector nearly three years earlier. In examining the film, Everett noticed physical characteristics that led him to believe the film was made prior to 1903. “I told students, ‘I think this is one of the most important films I’ve come across,’” Everett said. “But my expertise is not in African-American cinema. I didn’t know if something like this was already out there.” To find out, Everett reached out to Field, whom he had worked with when she was faculty at UCLA. A scholar who specializes in both silent and contemporary African-American film, Field is the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film & The Possibility of Black Modernity. Her 2015 book examined archival materials, such as memos and publicity materials, to explore how black filmmakers used cinema as a method of civic engagement in the 1910s. To uncover the origins of Everett’s footage, Field relied on inventory and distribution catalogs, tracing the film to Chicago. This was where William Selig—a vaudeville performer turned film producer—had shot it on his knockoff of a Lumière Cinématographe. That camera produced the telltale perforation marks which had tipped Everett off to the print’s age. With help from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Field identified Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown, who in the clip are dressed in stage costumes common for minstrel performers. Their performance is a reinterpretation of Thomas Edison’s “The Kiss,” featuring May Irwin and John Rice. Added to the National Film Registry nearly two decades ago, the 1896 film contained the very first on-screen kiss, and was also one of the first films to be publicly shown. But less discussed is the fact that Irwin herself was a well-known minstrel performer—a fact that, Field argues, would have shaped how viewers understood both the Irwin-Rice kiss and Something Good-Negro Kiss. Indeed, the discovery of Something Good-Negro Kiss could prompt scholars to reevaluate their perceptions of the time period. “This artifact helps us think more critically about the relationship between race and performance in early cinema,” Field said. “It’s not a corrective to all the racialized misrepresentation, but it shows us that that’s not the only thing that was going on.” The discovery also offers a reminder to archivists and film scholars that cinematic knowledge is based on an incomplete record—and the hope that other significant pieces live on, tucked away in basements and storage units. “I’m optimistic that lost films are just currently lost,” Everett said. “They’re not necessarily wiped off planet Earth. We can still make a lot of important finds.” Something Good A Negro Kiss (1898) 49 seconds: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1FvpEeUBQo Sources: uchicagonews.com; USC School of Cinematic Arts

Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), dazzled early 20th century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. She was, in the words of the New York Age's Lester Walton, the exponent of "clean, refined artistic entertainment." Born in New York City, where she gained an education and considerable musical training. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham's Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows—The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). Within about a year of their meeting, George Walker and Overton married and before long became one of the most admired and elegant African American couples on stage. While George Walker supplied most of the ideas for the musical comedies and Bert Williams enjoyed fame as the "funniest man in America," Aida quickly became an indispensable member of the Williams and Walker Company. In The Sons of Ham, for example, her rendition of Hannah from Savannah won praise for combining superb vocal control with acting skill that together presented a positive, strong image of black womanhood. Indeed, onstage Aida refused to comply with the plantation image of black women as plump mammies, happy to serve; like her husband, she viewed the representation of refined African American types on the stage as important political work. A talented dancer, Aida improvised original routines that her husband eagerly introduced in the shows; when In Dahomey was moved to England, Aida proved to be one of the strongest attractions. Society women invited her to their homes for private lessons in the exotic cakewalk that the Walkers had included in the show. After two seasons in England, the company returned to the United States in 1904, and it was Aida who was featured in a New York Herald interview about their tour. At times Walker asked his wife to interpret dances made famous by other performers—one example being the "Salome" dance that took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s—which she did with uneven success. After a decade of nearly continuous success with the Williams and Walker Company, Aida's career took an unexpected turn when her husband collapsed on tour with Bandanna Land. Initially Walker returned to his boyhood home of Lawrence, Kansas, where his mother took care of him. In his absence, Aida took over many of his songs and dances to keep the company together. In early 1909, however, Bandanna Land was forced to close, and Aida temporarily retired from stage work to care for her husband, now clearly seriously ill. No doubt recognizing that he likely would not recover and that she alone could support the family, she returned to the stage in Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson's Red Moon in autumn 1909, and she joined the Smart Set Company in 1910. Aida also began touring the vaudeville circuit as a solo act. Less than two weeks after Walker's death in January 1911, Aida signed a two-year contract to appear as a co-star with S. H. Dudley in another all-black traveling show. Although still a relatively young woman in the early 1910s, Aida began to develop medical problems that limited her capacity for constant touring and stage performance. As early as 1908, she had begun organizing benefits to aid such institutions as the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls, and after her contract with S. H. Dudley expired, she devoted more of her energy to such projects, which allowed her to remain in New York. She also took an interest in developing the talents of younger women in the profession, hoping to pass along her vision of black performance as refined and elegant. She produced shows for two such female groups in 1913 and 1914—the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls. She encouraged them to work up original dance numbers and insisted that they don stylish costumes on stage. When Aida Overton Walker died suddenly of kidney failure on October 11, 1914, the African American entertainment community in New York went into deep mourning. The New York Age featured a lengthy obituary on its front page, and hundreds of shocked entertainers descended on her residence to confirm a story they hoped was untrue. Walker left behind a legacy of polished performance and model professionalism. Her demand for respect and her generosity made her a beloved figure in African American theater circles. Sources: Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Thomas L Riis; James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

A Star Without a Star: An Oakland Man's Mission to Get his Aunt on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Long before the current reckoning with the Golden Globe Awards and the push for more diverse representation in media, Black actors in Hollywood's golden age paved the way in an industry that gave them few options and, often, no credit. In her seven-decade stage and screen career, Juanita Moore made more than 80 film and television appearances. Though she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 1959 film, "Imitation of Life," she didn't reach the level of fame and recognition that might normally follow such a nomination. Her nephew, Arnett Moore, says her spotlight is long overdue. From his home in the Oakland Hills, 75-year-old Arnett has launched a one-man campaign to get his late aunt a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce only picks one posthumous candidate each year to get a star. Applications are due by May 28, and this is the third year in a row Arnett has submitted Juanita for consideration. “In the '50s when I was growing up, when you saw a Black person on the TV screen, you got excited. And Juanita was that face you saw again and again and again,” he says, "You might not know her name, but you knew that she was that person." Juanita was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi, one of seven sisters, and the youngest of nine children, though one of her brothers died in childhood. Her other brother was Arnett's father. Juanita's mother moved all the children to Los Angeles around 1921. Her brother, Juanita's uncle, was a sleeping car porter and was able to get train tickets for the family to come to California. While attending Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, Juanita was part of the glee club, singing and dancing. A teacher saw her perform and suggested that she had the talent to pursue a career on stage. Arnett says she and a friend moved to New York City to do just that. "She was a showgirl at 18 at Small's Paradise, at the (Cafe Zanzibar), at several venues throughout New York, during the Harlem Renaissance. This is in the thirties." But soon after, says Arnett, Juanita headed to Europe, "Because Black entertainers weren't as well received in America as they were in Europe." She sang at the London Palladium, at the Moulin Rouge, and Arnett says she even had a chance to sing and dance with Josephine Baker, the entertainer and civil rights activist. Juanita returned to California after the death of her mother, and it was then that she began to pursue acting. "She started out in, they called it, Black cinema or race movies," Arnett says. These were films made by Black filmmakers featuring primary Black casts for Black audiences. "But these were all movies that you aren't getting credit for, for being a Hollywood star yet." Her first appearance in a mainstream movie came in the 1949 film, "Pinky," in which she had a few lines as a nurse. Many of the roles available to her were based on negative stereotypes, Arnett says. “She once said she was from the boudoir to the jungle,” he says, “In other words, she played a maid to a savage. And that was her early career.” Those were the roles available to Black women at the time, says Arnett, but Juanita had her limits. "One thing she wouldn't do is play the mammy role or the buffoon roles. She would not do those, and those that did became very successful. But she refused to do those." It wasn’t until 1959 that Juanita got her big break when she was cast in the drama, "Imitation of Life," alongside Lana Turner and Susan Kohner. Juanita plays Annie, a woman whose light-skinned daughter rejects her Black identity, to live her life passing as white. "I remember that it was a very emotional picture," Arnett says, "I once was asked by a friend of mine who was older, 'Did you cry during Imitation of Life?' I said, 'No!' I didn't want him to think I cried. But yes," Arnett admits, laughing, "I cry even today. And I cried then." During a 1995 interview with Turner Classic Movies, Juanita Moore remembered what the film’s producer, Ross Hunter, told her when she got the part: “'Juanita,' he said, 'I've put my neck out for you. If you’re no good, the picture is not gonna be any good.’" “That was significant pressure,” Arnett says, “Because really that was her coming out too. She had been in movies prior to that, playing small parts and some uncredited parts. But this was her opportunity to bust out at 44-years-old.” The film was a success and Juanita received an Academy Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She became the fifth Black actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar. Although she didn’t win, Juanita hoped she would get cast in more leading roles. But the offers never came. She didn’t work for a year after that. “I didn't want to carry the trays anymore,” recalled Juanita during the 1995 interview. “I knew that was the only kind of job that I was going to get. I knew that, but I did not want to do that. So I don't know if being nominated helped me or not.” But true to her passion, Juanita never quit acting. She went on to perform in mostly small roles. Her last role was in 2000, as a grandmother in Disney’s "The Kid" with Bruce Willis. She died just before New Year's Day 2014, at the age of 99. Arnett says his aunt never talked much about her career when he was a kid growing up in LA. He’s had to uncover much of her professional history himself after her death, including digging up hundreds of photos. A three-inch-thick binder holds much of the information he's found about his aunt, and many family photos too. Framed portraits of her sit in his living room. His affection and admiration for her is clear. “I'm very proud of her,” he says, “She had a lot of obstacles, the biggest one being racism … she's a star without a star.” Arnett recalls a conversation he had with Juanita just a few months before her death. "I said, Nita, do you want a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? And she says, 'If you think I deserve one, baby.' From that point on, I did everything I could to look and research and see how she could earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame." Arnett says he's mostly optimistic. If Juanita isn't selected this time around, he says he'll keep trying until she gets her star. Sources: kqed.org, The California Report; Amanda Font and Héctor Alejandro Arzate (May 22, 2021); Photograph courtesy of Ms. Moore's nephew Arnett Moore

Historically, some of the most visible queer people in America have been performers, particularly male and female impersonators. On the vaudeville and variety stages of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, performers that transgressed the gender binary were a common sight. For the most popular among them — people like Ella Wesner, Annie Hindle, and Julian Eltinge — doing drag could be a lucrative and fame-making endeavor. Eltinge, for instance, published three different magazines with his name on them, including “Julian Eltinge's Magazine of Beauty Hints and Tips,” which offered beauty advice and sold Eltinge-branded products to women. Wesner was so famous that she was hired by cigarette and champagne companies to hock their wares from the stage — the Little Beauties Cigarette company even went so far as to produce promotional cards featuring Wesner smoking their products. Not all of these performers were queer. For some, drag was simply a business; Eltinge, for example, cultivated the masculine public persona of a good college boy who just happened to discover he was skilled at female impersonation (although rumors dogged the bachelor Eltinge for his entire career). But life on the stage did offer some particular inducements for queer people: living on the road could be a way to avoid prying eyes, the police, or one’s family; fame could provide a measure of protection to those who transgressed gender norms off the stage as well; and traveling from city to city allowed them to forge connections with nascent queer communities around the country. By virtue of their work, we have more complete records of their lives than we do of other Victorian- and Progressive-era gender non-conforming folks. Yet even some of the most famous male and female impersonators of their time have been mostly forgotten today, even by historians — particularly performers of color. So it is with Florence Hines, a Black singer and drag king who got her start on the stage sometime around 1891, when she began to receive particular notice for her performances with Sam T. Jack’s Creole Burlesque. When the show came to Paterson, NJ, on November 23, 1891, “hundreds were turned away from the doorway” before the Creole Burlesque was even scheduled to take the stage, according to the Paterson Daily Caller. In their review, they called out Hines in particular for being an “excellent male impersonator.” The Creole Burlesque was a standard minstrel show, featuring all Black performers, led by a white manager, giving skits, songs, and scenes that featured standard variety acts (everything from clog dancing to drag) set in a pre-Civil War Southern plantation fantasy. But within a few years, Sam T. Jack would launch The Creole Show, an important milestone in Black performance in America. For the first time, an all-Black revue was presented as a modern, staged performance — not as an “authentic” recreation of Black life. According to Whiting Up, a history of white face entertainment by Black theater historian Marvin McAllister, The Creole Show was “a major outlet for Black artists interested in… developing a comedic tradition that was racially grounded but not riddled with stereotyping.” In another important departure from tradition, instead of hiring a man to play the traditional lead role of interlocutor or master of ceremonies, Sam T. Jack hired Florence Hines. As a drag king, Hines performed a routine that made mock of the “dandy” — flashy, modern, young men who drank and dated openly, and wore the latest clothes. One of her most famous numbers was “Hi Waiter! A Dozen More Bottles,” whose first verse went: Lovely woman was made to be loved, To be fondled and courted and kissed; And the fellows who’ve never made love to a girl, Well they don’t know what fun they have missed. I’m a fellow, who’s up on the times, Just the boy for a lark or a spree There’s a chap that’s dead stuck on women and wine, You can bet your old boots that it’s me. Many white drag kings of the day also performed this song, and similar dandy characters. For these performers, the dandy was a way to needle the men in the audience. But for Black performers, taking on a dandy role was also a way of resisting degraded depictions of Black people that were common on stage at the time. As Kathleen B. Casey wrote in The Prettiest Girl on the Stage is a Man, “when worn by a Black performer, the tuxedo with tails, cane, cape and a top hat countered the image of the ragged, shoeless plantation slave.” Thus, Hines made a natural choice for a show that wanted to show an entirely new kind of Black performance. By 1904, The Indianapolis Freeman would report that Hines “commanded the largest salary paid to a colored female performer.” In their book, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895, Lynn Abott and Doug Seroff wrote that “Hines’s male impersonations provided the standard against which African American comediennes were compared for decades.” Yet today, little is known about Hines. It is impossible to establish a place or date of her birth. Unlike her white counterparts, Hines seems not to have been profiled in major newspapers of her day, nor did she have promotional products with her face on them, or even posters. How she got her start on the stage is unknown. Her time in the Creole Show provides one of the few insights into her life off the stage: While in Ohio in 1892, Hines got into a fight with one of her co-stars, a singer named Marie Roberts. The Cincinnati Enquirer covered the incident with a healthy dose implication that Hines and Roberts were lovers, writing “the utmost intimacy has existed between the two women for the past year, their marked devotion being not only noticeable but a subject of comment among their associates on the stage.” Hines’s career seems to have lasted about 15 years — at least, her career as a male impersonator did. According to a letter to the editor written by a traveling vaudevillian from the Famous Georgia Minstrels, which was published in The Chicago Defender in 1920 (the year Prohibition was enacted), Hines became a preacher, now that her home city of Salem, Oregon had gone dry. “She would be pleased to hear from old friends,” the letter write wrote. But three years later, the Defender would publish a short column about Hines, “recognized as the greatest male impersonator of all times and all races,” in which they wrote that she had been paralyzed and an invalid since 1906. The final mention of Hines that I can find is also from the Defender, who carried a letter on March 22, 1924, from a Santa Clara, California woman named Nunnie Williams, saying “My mother was Florence Hines… called by many the mother of the Colored show business… she died on March 7th and was buried in Santa Clara cemetery on the 10th.” Today, Florence Hines deserves to stand in the long line of queer, Black, stud performers, from Gladys Bentley all the way up to Lena Waithe, whose incredible talent has won them acclaim from audiences all too ready to dismiss them for their race, their gender, and their queerness. Sources: themstory: This Black Drag King Was Once Known As the Greatest Male Impersonator of All Time Florence Hines deserves recognition in the long line of queer, Black, stud performers, from Gladys Bentley to Lena Waithe, article written by Hugh Ryan (June 2018)

Mattie Wilkes was born on February 14, 1875 in Montclair, New Jersey. She was a soprano and character actress of the musical and dramatic stage; active 1890s - 1920s. At the high point in her career, the Indianapolis Freeman in a March 9, 1901, article called her "a meritorious prima donna whose singing carried the house at every appearance." During the decade of the 1890s, after receiving some training as a member of Bob Cole's All-Star Company at Worth's Museum in New York City, she was a character actress and wardrobe mistress with The Octoroons (1895) and the leading soprano of the Oriental America Show (1896), where her singing was usually greeted with great applause. In 1900 she toured as a soprano with Williams and Walker's The Policy Players, and in 1901 she was a prima donna and special feature with L.E. Gideon's Minstrels. By 1902, having "toured abroad in all European capitals," she was already a famous singer and was then performing as a soubrette with the Smart Set Company in a show called Enchantment, of which Ernest Hogan and Billy McClain were the stars. During the tour of that show, she married Hogan; however, the marriage was short lived. During the summer of 1903, after they had performed together in a vaudeville sketch called "The Missionary Man," in which Mrs. Wilkes-Hogan played the role of Mrs. Angelica Scattergood the couple parted. In later life she acted in at least two films by famed African American director Oscar Micheaux, which includes: The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), and The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921). For His Mother's Sake (1922) was made by Blackburn-Velde Pictures. She died on July 9, 1927 in Montclair, New Jersey at just 52. Sources: Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960, by Bernard L. Peterson; Fred J. Hamill and Paul Cohn, “Of Course” / Introduced by Mattie V. Wilkes, with Williams & Walker (Windsor Music Co., NY. c/1900)

According to European press, she was the prettier alternative to Josephine Baker. Ruth Bayton (1907 - ? ), was an entertainer who first went to Europe as a chorus girl with Florence Mills in the hit play, Blackbirds. In 1927, she also appeared as an opening act for comedic actor Valeriano Ruiz Paris, dancing the "Black-Bottom Stomp" and the "Charleston" at the Teatro Comico in Barcelona, Spain. A painting of her still exists on the walls of the Paris Odeon. Throughout her career Ms. Bayton tried in vain to ride on Josephine Baker's coattails. Following Baker she also performed on stage wearing nothing but a girdle of bananas and a smile. [Afro American newspaper (March 3, 1928 edition]: Miss Ruth Bayton, most recent arrival from Harlem, is to take the place of Josephine Baker in the New Revue that is soon to appear at the Folies-Bergere, and has a year's contract with them in her bag. Miss Bayton has had much success in Madrid, Vienna, and Berlin in which latter place she played for eighteen months. Josephine Baker is now in Vienna but her picture (Baker's first film, Siren of the Tropics), at the Aubert Palace is still drawing large audiences. One critic said of her: Ruth Bayton, American dancer, whose reported romance with a Spanish monarch (King Alphonso of Spain), has caused society here and abroad to gasp, will cause a "tragedy" in France, according to David Sturgis, white critic, writing of her from paris. Sturgis says in the current issue of Variety: "I can't write anymore tonight. I have just seen Ruth Bayton dance. She is the colored artist at the Folies Wagram. She was once a stenographer in Virginia. Won a beauty prize offered by a New York newspaper. She is appearing this summer at a French channel resort. "I predict a tragedy on the coast. The nymphs, mad with jealousy, will strangle this creole goddess." [As reported in the Afro American newspaper on June 16, 1928] As reported in the The Afro American newspaper (May 29, 1937) edition: Ruth Bayton, playgirl of two continents, who created a sensation several years ago when she was reported to be a close friend of the then King Alphonso of Spain, is believed to be missing in the war torn country, according to relatives in New York. Miss Bayton has not been heard from since the outbreak of the conflict, and all efforts of her sister, Mrs. Julia Bayton Banks of 75 St. Nicholas Place to locate her have been futile. Miss Bayton, who first went to Europe in 1928 with Florence Mills in "Blackbirds," proceeded to Spain after the close of that production. Following her alleged sensational affairs at the Spanish Court she returned to America in 1932 and opened an exclusive dress shop for the Sugar Hill elite. Abandoning this enterprise, she returned to the night club world and again struck it rich when she foiled a holdup in a ritzy Broadway cabaret and was rewarded handsomely. With this money she returned to Spain and has not been heard from since. She was sought when her uncle, Dr. George Bayton, Philadelphia physician, died recently. (May 1937) Although Miss Bayton was always accepted as a New Yorker she was actually born in Tappahannock, Virginia where her father, the late Hansford Bayton, (1863 - 1927), was a well known river boat captain who operated an excursion steamer in the Tidewater section. Her family members are buried in the Bayton Family Cemetery in Essex County, Virginia. Photo: Getty Images, S. Ora, Photographer

Katherine Dunham as she appeared in the 1956 production of "Floyd's Guitar Blues." Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Born in Chicago, and raised in Joliet, Illinois, Katherine Dunham did not begin formal dance training until her late teens. In Chicago she studied with Ludmilla Speranzeva and Mark Turbyfill, and danced her first leading role in Ruth Page's ballet "La Guiablesse" in 1933. She attended the University of Chicago on scholarship (B.A., Social Anthropology, 1936), where she was inspired by the work of anthropologists Robert Redfield and Melville Herskovits, who stressed the importance of the survival of African culture and ritual in understanding African-American culture. While in college she taught youngsters' dance classes and gave recitals in a Chicago storefront, calling her student company, founded in 1931, "Ballet Negre." Awarded a Rosenwald Travel Fellowship in 1936 for her combined expertise in dance and anthropology, she departed after graduation for the West Indies (Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, Haiti, Martinique) to do field research in anthropology and dance. Combining her two interests, she linked the function and form of Caribbean dance and ritual to their African progenitors. The West Indian experience changed forever the focus of Dunham's life (eventually she would live in Haiti half of the time and become a priestess in the "vodoun" religion), and caused a profound shift in her career. This initial fieldwork provided the nucleus for future researches and began a lifelong involvement with the people and dance of Haiti. From this Dunham generated her master's thesis (Northwestern University, 1947) and more fieldwork. She lectured widely, published numerous articles, and wrote three books about her observations: JOURNEY TO ACCOMPONG (1946), THE DANCES OF HAITI (her master's thesis, published in 1947), and ISLAND POSSESSED (1969), underscoring how African religions and rituals adapted to the New World. And, importantly for the development of modern dance, her fieldwork began her investigations into a vocabulary of movement that would form the core of the Katherine Dunham Technique. What Dunham gave modern dance was a coherent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movement -- a flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of moving -- which she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance. When she returned to Chicago in late 1937, Dunham founded the Negro Dance Group, a company of black artists dedicated to presenting aspects of African-American and African-Caribbean dance. Immediately she began incorporating the dances she had learned into her choreography. Invited in 1937 to be part of a notable New York City concert, "Negro Dance Evening," she premiered "Haitian Suite," excerpted from choreography she was developing for the longer "L'Ag'Ya." In 1937-1938 as dance director of the Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago, she made dances for "Emperor Jones" and "Run Lil' Chillun," and presented her first version of "L'Ag'Ya" on January 27, 1938. Based on a Martinique folktale (ag'ya is a Martinique fighting dance), "L'Ag'Ya" is a seminal work, displaying Dunham's blend of exciting dance-drama and authentic African-Caribbean material. Dunham moved her company to New York City in 1939, where she became dance director of the New York Labor Stage, choreographing the labor-union musical "Pins and Needles." Simultaneously she was preparing a new production, "Tropics and Le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem." It opened February 18, 1939, in what was intended to be a single weekend's concert at the Windsor Theatre in New York City. Its instantaneous success, however, extended the run for ten consecutive weekends and catapulted Dunham into the limelight. In 1940 Dunham and her company appeared in the black Broadway musical, "Cabin in the Sky," staged by George Balanchine, in which Dunham played the sultry siren Georgia Brown -- a character related to Dunham's other seductress, "Woman with a Cigar," from her solo "Shore Excursion" in "Tropics." That same year Dunham married John Pratt, a theatrical designer who worked with her in 1938 at the Chicago Federal Theatre Project, and for the next 47 years, until his death in 1986, Pratt was Dunham's husband and her artistic collaborator. With "L'Ag'Ya" and "Tropics and Le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem," Dunham revealed her magical mix of dance and theater -- the essence of "the Dunham touch" -- a savvy combination of authentic Caribbean dance and rhythms with the heady spice of American showbiz. Genuine folk material was presented with lavish costumes, plush settings, and the orchestral arrangements based on Caribbean rhythms and folk music. Dancers moved through fantastical tropical paradises or artistically designed juke-joints, while a loose storyline held together a succession of diverse dances. Dunham aptly called her spectacles "revues." She choreographed more than 90 individual dances, and produced five revues, four of which played on Broadway and toured worldwide. Her most critically acclaimed revue was her 1946 "Bal Negre," containing another Dunham dance favorite, "Shango," based directly on "vodoun" ritual. If her repertory was diverse, it was also coherent. "Tropics and le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem" incorporated dances from the West Indies as well as from Cuba and Mexico, while the "Le Jazz Hot" section featured early black American social dances, such as the Juba, Cake Walk, Ballin' the Jack, and Strut. The sequencing of dances, the theatrical journey from the tropics to urban black America implied -- in the most entertaining terms -- the ethnographic realities of cultural connections. In her 1943 "Tropical Revue," she recycled material from the 1939 revue and added new dances, such as the balletic "Choros" (based on formal Brazilian quadrilles), and "Rites de Passage," which depicted puberty rituals so explicitly sexual that the dance was banned in Boston. Beginning in the 1940s, the Katherine Dunham Dance Company appeared on Broadway and toured throughout the United States, Mexico, Latin America, and especially Europe, to enthusiastic reviews. In Europe Dunham was praised as a dancer and choreographer, recognized as a serious anthropologist and scholar, and admired as a glamorous beauty. Among her achievements was her resourcefulness in keeping her company going without any government funding. When short of money between engagements, Dunham and her troupe played in elegant nightclubs, such as Ciro's in Los Angeles. She also supplemented her income through film. Alone, or with her company, she appeared in nine Hollywood movies and in several foreign films between 1941 and 1959, among them CARNIVAL OF RHYTHM (1939), STAR-SPANGLED RHYTHM (1942), STORMY WEATHER (1943), CASBAH (1948), BOOTE E RIPOSTA (1950), and MAMBO (1954). In 1945 Dunham opened the Dunham School of Dance and Theater (sometimes called the Dunham School of Arts and Research) in Manhattan. Although technique classes were the heart of the school, they were supplemented by courses in humanities, philosophy, languages, aesthetics, drama, and speech. For the next ten years many African-American dances of the next generation studied at her school, then passed on Dunham's technique to their students, situating it in dance mainstream (teachers such as Syvilla Fort, Talley Beatty, Lavinia Williams, Walter Nicks, Hope Clark, Vanoye Aikens, and Carmencita Romero; the Dunham technique has always been taught at the Alvin Ailey studios). During the 1940s and '50s, Dunham kept up her brand of political activism. Fighting segregation in hotels, restaurants and theaters, she filed lawsuits and made public condemnations. In Hollywood, she refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members. To an enthusiastic but all-white audience in the South, she made an after-performance speech, saying she could never play there again until it was integrated. In São Paulo, Brazil, she brought a discrimination suit against a hotel, eventually prompting the president of Brazil to apologize to her and to pass a law that forbade discrimination in public places. In 1951 Dunham premiered "Southland," an hour-long ballet about lynching, though it was only performed in Chile and Paris. Toward the end of the 1950s Dunham was forced to regroup, disband, and reform her company, according to the exigencies of her financial and physical health (she suffered from crippling knee problems). Yet she remained undeterred. In 1962 she opened a Broadway production, "Bambouche," featuring 14 dancers, singers, and musicians of the Royal Troupe of Morocco, along with the Dunham company. The next year she choreographed the Metropolitan Opera's new production of "Aida" -- thereby becoming the Met's first black choreographer. In 1965-1966, she was cultural adviser to the President of Senegal. She attended Senegal's First World Festival of Negro Arts as a representative from the United States. Moved by the civil rights struggle and outraged by deprivations in the ghettos of East St. Louis, an area she knew from her visiting professorships at Southern Illinois University in the 1960s, Dunham decided to take action. In 1967 she opened the Performing Arts Training Center, a cultural program and school for the neighborhood children and youth, with programs in dance, drama, martial arts, and humanities. Soon thereafter she expanded the programs to include senior citizens. Then in 1977 she opened the Katherine Dunham Museum and Children's Workshop to house her collections of artifacts from her travels and research, as well as archival material from her personal life and professional career. During the 1980s, Dunham received numerous awards acknowledging her contributions. These include the Albert Schweitzer Music Award for a life devoted to performing arts and service to humanity (1979); a Kennedy Center Honor's Award (1983); the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (1987); induction into the Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (1987). That same year Dunham directed the reconstruction of several of her works by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and "The Magic of Katherine Dunham opened Ailey's 1987-1988 season. In February 1992, at the age of 82, Dunham again became the subject of international attention when she began a 47-day fast at her East St. Louis home. Because of her age, her involvement with Haiti, and the respect accorded her as an activist and artist, Dunham became the center of a movement that coalesced to protest the United States' deportations of Haitian boat-refugees fleeing to the U.S. after the military overthrow of Haiti's democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. She agreed to end her fast only after Aristide visited her and personally requested her to stop. Boldness has characterized Dunham's life and career. And, although she was not alone, Dunham is perhaps the best known and most influential pioneer of black dance. Her synthesis of scholarship and theatricality demonstrated, incontrovertibly and joyously, that African-American and African-Caribbean styles are related and powerful components of dance in America. Snippet from Floyd's Guitar Blues (no sound): loc.gov/item/ihas.200003819 Source: PBS.ORG bio by Sally Sommer

She was of African American and Hispanic heritage. Born in Los Angeles, California the younger sister of Motown recording artist Brenda Holloway, who also got her start in the Detroit recording factory. She recorded several singles with Motown, none of which were ever released. She eventually found her place as a songwriter, co-writing "You've Made Me So Very Happy" which became a major hit for both Brenda Holloway and Blood, Sweat and Tears. She also contributed backing vocals (along with Brenda) to Joe Cocker's 1968 cover of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends." She also recorded several singles for Capitol, which did well on the Northern soul circuit. In 1970, she auditioned for producer Danny Janssen, winning the part of Valerie Brown in Josie and the Pussycats, alongside Cathy Daugher (Josie) and Cheryl Ladd as ditzy drummer Melody. However, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera balked at Patrice's involvement, demanding she be recast and that Valerie become Caucasian. It's worth noting that, in the original comic, Valerie was always intended to be African-American. Janssen refused to back down, resulting in a 3-week standoff between the producer and Hanna-Barbera. H-B finally relented, allowing Janssen to keep Patrice in the show, and keeping her character African-American. The producer's stance also won him the respect of L.A.'s session musician community, who offered their services to him at a fraction of their usual rates. Although Daugher's Josie was supposed to be the Pussycats' lead vocalist, Patrice ended up singing lead on the majority of the songs (including the show's theme). Unfortunately, the Josie and the Pussycats LP received almost no publicity on its December 5, 1970 release, and quickly sank out of sight. The character of Valerie Brown was voiced by African American voice actress, Barbara Pariot. After the demise of Josie and the Pussycats, Patrice returned to songwriting and background vocals, working with and writing songs for Neil Young, Diana Ross, Bobby Womack, Ray Conniff and Brenda Holloway. Patrice Holloway passed away at the age of 55, in the city of her birth following a heart attack on October 1, 2006 and is survived by one son, and her sister Brenda. Source: Spectropop Remembering Patrice Holloway

A book in my collection ---- 'The Great and Only Oscar Micheaux,' by Patrick McGilligan. A book I highly recommend. The most prolific independent filmmaker in American cinema, Oscar Micheaux wrote, produced and directed forty-four feature length films between 1919 and 1948. The fifth child in a family of thirteen, Micheaux worked as a shoeshine boy, farm laborer and Pullman porter. In his early twenties, he was self-confident to the point that he invested his savings in farmland in an all-white community in faraway South Dakota. Within nine years, he had expanded his holdings to 500 acres whilst writing, publishing and distributing his first semi-autobiographical novel, The Conquest (1913). He popularized it by selling it door to door to the farmers of South Dakota. In 1918, the Lincoln Film Company in Nebraska offered to film Micheaux's 1917 novel, The Homesteader. But when Lincoln refused to produce the film on the scale that he desired, Micheaux responded by founding his own production company and shooting the work himself. He started the Micheaux Book and Film Company, raising money by, again, selling shares door to door in South Dakota. Micheaux found the equipment and actors he needed in Chicago, bought a car, hired a white chauffeur and drove all the people and equipment from Chicago to Winner, South Dakota. (There was a sod house near Winner, which he needed as a location.) "The Homesteader" was the first full-length feature film directed, written and produced by an African-American. It secured Micheaux's name in history books, and was declared a success when it grossed over $5,000. Catching the bug, Micheaux devoted all his energy to moviemaking, writing, producing, directing and distributing every film himself. Within a year he made three more films, earning over $40,000. Micheaux worked successfully and prolifically throughout the next decade, largely thanks to the promotional techniques he had developed in selling his own novels. With script in hand he would tour ghetto theatres across the nation, soliciting advances from owners and thus circumventing the cash-flow and distribution problems that limited other all-black companies to producing only one or two pictures. Micheaux offered audiences a black version of Hollywood fare, complete with actors typecast as the "black Valentino" or the "sepia Mae West." Above all, Micheaux saw his films as "propaganda" designed to "uplift the race." In the 1930's, his films represented a radical departure from Hollywood's portrayal of blacks as servants and brought diverse images of ghetto life and related social issues to the screen for the first time. From the start, Micheaux sparked controversy. After "The Homesteader," he continued tackling interracial romance and skin color hypocrisy. Despite vehement protests, he never backed down from portraying another taboo subject, corrupt clergymen. With his fifth movie, "Within Our Gates," Micheaux attacked the racism portrayed in the most highly acclaimed silent movie of all time, D.W. Griffith's masterpiece, "The Birth of a Nation." In his movie, Griffith depicted blacks as lazy alcoholics who raped white women. Micheaux turned the table on Griffith, filming a scene where a white man tries to rape a black woman, using exactly the same lighting, blocking, and setting as the black on white rape scene in "The Birth of a Nation." Unfortunately for Micheaux, "Within Our Gates" came out right after the race riots, which plagued America throughout the summer of 1919. Black and white officials feared further violence if "Within Our Gates" was shown and they forced Micheaux to edit out controversial scenes. Micheaux, however, turned around and booked other theatres to show the "uncut version" to even bigger audiences. With the advent of sound (with its attendant high costs), Hollywood's move into the production of all-black musicals and the Depression combined to bring about the demise of independent black cinema in the early 1930s. Micheaux, alone, survived. He released his first "talkie, " The Exile in 1931. During his later years, black audiences abandoned Micheaux, having grown tired of his replaying certain themes over and over. Nobody could have guessed how visionary these themes would one day appear. Micheaux's attacks on hypocritical clergymen ring especially true in this day of money-grabbing television evangelists. Critics applaud modern filmmakers for breaking "new" ground in dealing with interracial romance and light-skinned versus dark-skinned blacks. Micheaux covered those subjects 80 years ago. Even Micheaux's craft, lambasted for years, demands new respect. He experimented with nonlinear storytelling and perspective shifts with which current filmmakers are now supposedly revolutionizing filmmaking in the 1990's. Micheaux's work has experienced a renaissance of sorts in recent years. His movies draw large audiences when shown at retrospectives, and his South Dakota books have returned to print. In 1986 the DGA honored Oscar Micheaux, Fellini and Akira Kurosawa with its Golden Jubilee Special Award. The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame honors artists every year at the Oscar Micheaux Award Ceremony. In Gregory, South Dakota, the Oscar Micheaux Festival is an eagerly anticipated annual event. In Hollywood, the Oscar Micheaux Award is presented each year by the Producers Guild of America. And the most independent moviemaker there ever was even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Oscar Micheaux Filmography 1919 The Homesteader Within Our Gates 1920 The Brute Symbol of the Unconquered 1922 Gunaslaus Mystery Deceit The Dungeon The Virctin of the Seminole Son of Satan 1923 Jasper Landry's Will 1924 Body and Soul (This movie marked the screen debut of Paul Robeson.) 1926 The Spiders Web 1927 Millionaire 1928 When Men Betray Easy Street 1929 Wages of Sin 1930 The Exile Darktown Revue 1932 Veiled Aristocrat Black Magic Ten Minutes to Live 1933 The Girl From Chicago Ten Minutes to Kill 1934 Harlem After Midnight 1935 Lem Hawkin's Confession 1936 Temptation Underworld 1937 God's Step Children 1938 Swing 1939 Birthright Lying Lips 1940 The Notorious Elinor Lee 1948 Betrayal Source: Producers Guild of America

Aida Overton Walker (1880 - 1914), dazzled early-twentieth-century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. She was, in the words of the New York Age's Lester Walton, the exponent of "clean, refined artistic entertainment." Born in 1880 in New York City, a city in which she gained an education and considerable musical training. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham's Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows—The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). Within about a year of their meeting, George Walker and Overton married and before long became one of the most admired and elegant African American couples on stage. While George Walker supplied most of the ideas for the musical comedies and Bert Williams enjoyed fame as the "funniest man in America," Aida quickly became an indispensable member of the Williams and Walker Company. In The Sons of Ham, for example, her rendition of Hannah from Savannah won praise for combining superb vocal control with acting skill that together presented a positive, strong image of black womanhood. Indeed, onstage Aida refused to comply with the plantation image of black women as plump mammies, happy to serve; like her husband, she viewed the representation of refined African American types on the stage as important political work. A talented dancer, Aida improvised original routines that her husband eagerly introduced in the shows; when In Dahomey was moved to England, Aida proved to be one of the strongest attractions. Society women invited her to their homes for private lessons in the exotic cakewalk that the Walkers had included in the show. After two seasons in England, the company returned to the United States in 1904, and it was Aida who was featured in a New York Herald interview about their tour. At times Walker asked his wife to interpret dances made famous by other performers—one example being the "Salome" dance that took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s—which she did with uneven success. After a decade of nearly continuous success with the Williams and Walker Company, Aida's career took an unexpected turn when her husband collapsed on tour with Bandanna Land. Initially Walker returned to his boyhood home of Lawrence, Kansas, where his mother took care of him. In his absence, Aida took over many of his songs and dances to keep the company together. In early 1909, however, Bandanna Land was forced to close, and Aida temporarily retired from stage work to care for her husband, now clearly seriously ill. No doubt recognizing that he likely would not recover and that she alone could support the family, she returned to the stage in Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson's Red Moon in autumn 1909, and she joined the Smart Set Company in 1910. Aida also began touring the vaudeville circuit as a solo act. Less than two weeks after Walker's death in January 1911, Aida signed a two-year contract to appear as a co-star with S. H. Dudley in another all-black traveling show. Although still a relatively young woman in the early 1910s, Aida began to develop medical problems that limited her capacity for constant touring and stage performance. As early as 1908, she had begun organizing benefits to aid such institutions as the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls, and after her contract with S. H. Dudley expired, she devoted more of her energy to such projects, which allowed her to remain in New York. She also took an interest in developing the talents of younger women in the profession, hoping to pass along her vision of black performance as refined and elegant. She produced shows for two such female groups in 1913 and 1914—the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls. She encouraged them to work up original dance numbers and insisted that they don stylish costumes on stage. When Aida Overton Walker died suddenly of kidney failure on October 11, 1914, the African American entertainment community in New York went into deep mourning. The New York Age featured a lengthy obituary on its front page, and hundreds of shocked entertainers descended on her residence to confirm a story they hoped was untrue. Walker left behind a legacy of polished performance and model professionalism. Her demand for respect and her generosity made her a beloved figure in African American theater circles. Sources: Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Thomas L Riis

Ernest Hogan, (1860-1909), a minstrel show and vaudeville entertainer and songwriter, was born Reuben Crowder (or Crowdus) in the African American "Shake Rag" district of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Nothing is known of his family or early youth, but by his early teens he was supporting himself as an actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. He appeared with a traveling "Tom show"--a repertory company presenting Uncle Tom's Cabin on the road--as a young child, and he was a member of such traveling tent shows as Pringle's Georgia Minstrels in his middle teens. A versatile youth, he excelled in all aspects of minstrelsy, and by 1891 he had found a distinct theatrical identity. In about that year he took the stage name of Hogan because the Irish were the most successful comedians of the time, and with a partner founded a company of his own, Hogan and Eden's Minstrels, in Chicago. Within a few years he graduated from stylized minstrel acts and found success in solo performances in New York City vaudeville. A singer, improvisational dancer, and comic with his own distinctive style, Hogan was described by poet James Weldon Johnson as "expansive, jolly, radiating infectious good humor, provoking laughter merely by the changing expressions of his mobile face." In 1895 Hogan published his first song, "La Pas Ma La," based on a comic dance step he had created as the "pasmala" while still with the Pringle troupe. Featuring a jerky hop forward followed by three quick backward steps, it met with a warm reception in the African American community. The next year, however, Hogan became a national star with the song for which he was to be known for the rest of his life, "All Coons Look Alike to Me." Adapted from a song he had heard in a bar in Chicago and written for the white show Widow Jones, it was the hit of the season, ultimately selling over a million copies. The word "coon" was not yet universally heard as a racial slur--as late as 1920 the Victor record company's catalog defined "coon song" as an "up-to-date comic song in Negro dialect"--but the image of African Americans as licentious and lazy as presented in the popular genre was becoming socially unacceptable by the end of the century, and Hogan was widely criticized among blacks for the song, which, according to Arnold Shaw, "did not embody the prejudicial stereotype implied by its title" (p. 41). Though the song made him famous and paid him well, he was to have mixed feelings about his association with it for the rest of his life. With this sensational hit to his credit, Hogan quickly became one of the country's leading black entertainers. In 1897 he was the comedy star and master of ceremonies of Black Patti's Troubadours, for which he wrote some of the music and all of the comedy routines. The next year he played the leading role and edited the script of Clorindy: or the Origin of the Cakewalk, the first African American musical to appear in a Broadway theater. With music by noted composer Will Marion Cook and script by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, it ran the entire summer season and was a major breakthrough for African Americans in show business. Following this triumph, Hogan returned to Black Patti, billed as "The Unbleached American," for a season, and after that began a tour of Australia and Hawaii with Curtis's Afro-American Minstrels. Costarring with minstrel Billy McClain in My Friend from Georgia, a musical comedy that he cowrote, he was warmly received throughout the run. In 1900 Hogan worked with youthful singer Mattie Wilkes, fifteen years of age at the time, in The Military Man in New York City. He and Wilkes were reportedly married for a short time. Hogan was said to have been later married to a woman named Louise (maiden name unreported), who worked with him in organizing concerts in New York City in 1905. The dates of these marriages are unrecorded, and there were no children from either. Hogan's activities extended beyond the writing and performing for which he was famous. In 1901 he was one of one of the first African Americans to buy a home in New York City's Harlem. On returning from his Hawaiian tour he and his costar, Billy McClain, organized the Smart Set Company, a highly successful black road show, which produced Enchantment in 1902. In 1905 he and his wife Louise established an orchestra called the Memphis (or Nashville) Students who presented a "syncopated music concert" at Hammerstein's Victoria Theater on Broadway that ran for a hundred performances and went on to tour Europe as the Tennessee Students. That year he starred in a musical comedy considered by many to be his crowning achievement, Rufus Rastus, for which he wrote the script and cowrote the music. Immensely popular, it toured the country for two years after its successful New York run. In 1907 he and comedian Bert Williams were instrumental in the formation of the Colored Actors' Beneficial Association, a professional union for black performers. During that year Hogan prepared his last musical vehicle, The Oyster Man, but fell ill with tuberculosis and collapsed during a performance. The troupe was dissolved when he withdrew in March 1908, and Hogan died the next year in Lakewood, New Jersey. The most popular African American entertainer of his time and the first to star in a Broadway production in New York City, Ernest Hogan was a transitional performer whose career spanned minstrelsy, vaudeville, and musical theater. He was a major influence in popularizing the emerging musical styles. He is credited with coining the term "ragtime" for the strongly syncopated rhythm that became the pop-music rage of the 1890s, and his songs were the first to feature the word "rag" on their sheet music. Hogan did much to bring African American music styles to a larger audience and to open the doors of mainstream American theater to later African American performers. Sources: Alexander's Magazine. v.001 (1905-06 edition); American National Biography by Dennis Wepman

W. Henry Thomas, originally of Charlottesville, Virginia, was a dramatist, actor, and manager of the Thomas Newark Dramatic Company in New Jersey when he was credited with writing five dramas, three of which had been staged by August, 1900. Since neither scripts nor production reviews are available, one lists the titles of his plays: The Duel That Didn't Come Off, Thister, A Sad Discovery, On the Brink, and The Oldest Title in France. Sources: The Colored American Magazine, vol. 1-2, 1900-01]; McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama: An International ..., Volume 1, By Stanley Hochman , McGraw-Hill, inc

Jennie Scheper Haston, Pioneer Stage Star, Dies Suddenly in New York, Jennie (Scheper) Haston, born in Washington, D.C., 1878, retired theatrical star who was among the pioneer colored entertainers abroad, died at Harlem Hospital Saturday where she had been taken three hours before, following a paralytic stroke. While playing under the name of Jennie Scheper, she once made a command appearance before the czar of Russia. She went abroad in 1909 and toured all of Europe up to the outbreak of WWI in 1914. She served as an entertainer and did Red Cross work among the American doughboys. She appeared on the continent with the vaudeville team of Rastus and Banks as a singer and dancer. Later she appeared in her own act in Paris and later became a drummer and organized a female band which appeared with great success at the Cafe Cecil, in Paris and also Madrid and London. After her marriage to A.A. Haston, she made her headquarters in London and their home was always open to American Negro performers who came to that city. Her husband was for twenty years manager for the Versatile Three, which act was for many years the most prominent colored act in the British Empire. She gave up her own stage career to serve as her husband's secretary and his success was in a large measure due to her ability in this direction. In infrequent appearances in this country she played in several of the shows produced by the late J. Leubrie Hill, and her last New York appearance was with one of these shows at the Lafayette Theatre. The deceased was known throughout the profession for her big-heartedness and often aided financially performers of her race who were stranded. She made a hobby of collecting theatrical programs and souvenirs of all kinds that related to the stage and has a valuable collection of things of this kind. Funeral services were from the chapel of Henry W. Payne , 233 Lenox Avenue, on Tuesday and burial was in the Frederick Douglass Cemetery, Staten Island. Besides her husband, several distant relatives in Washington, DC., her native home, survive. Photo: Leslie's Weekly Newspaper (July 22, 1897) Obit: The New York Age (January 30, 1937)

A 1922 publicity photo of Gertrude Saunders, born on August 25, 1903 in North Carolina. She was an actress, known for Big Timers (1945), Sepia Cinderella (1947) and The Toy Wife (1938). She died in April 1991 in Beverly, Massachusetts. Saunders is also infamously known for her affair with Empress of the Blues , Bessie Smith's husband, Jack Gee. Smith had given her husband money to produce a show for her. Jack threw together as cheap a production as possible for Bessie and decided to use the remainder of the money for personal gain—not to enrich himself financially, but to win the heart of Gertrude Saunders, a singer of striking looks and impressive past accomplishments. Ms. Saunders had starred successfully in the title role of Irvin C. Miller’s Red Hot Mama show during the 1926 season, and headed the cast of various subsequent editions, but her most successful shows had been Liza and the 1921 Sissle and Blake hit, Shuffle Along (which included Josephine Baker in the chorus line). The latter production would probably have secured Ms. Saunders’ stage future, but she made a fateful decision and allowed herself to be lured away from the original cast by an offer that never materialized. Gertrude Saunders’ bad move opened the door for the ultimate black beauty of the day, Florence Mills, who took over the role and was such a hit that she became the toast of Broadway. Ms. Mills career was cut short in November,1927, when she died at the age of 35, but the bright spotlight Gertrude Saunders so foolishly relinquished was never restored to her. It is not known when Jack’s relationship with Ms. Saunders began, but Bessie's niece Ruby Walker Smith, thought it had gone on for some time before Jack produced her show, and that it accounted for some of his “hunting” trips. Gertrude Saunders was the antithesis of Bessie Smith, their personalities and looks contrasted sharply: Gertrude’s complexion was light, her hair long and her disposition gentle. She was also slim and quite a bit younger than Bessie. The artistic gap that separated the two was equally wide: Gertrude Saunders relied more on her looks than on her voice. “She was the opposite of Bessie,” said Ruby (Bessie's niece), making no secret of her disdain. “She had light skin and long curly 'good' hair and a gorgeous figure, and she knew it. In fact, she thought her shit didn’t stink." In a 1971 author Jack Albertson interviewed Ms. Saunders asking her if she had known that three thousand dollars of Bessie’s money went to back her show. “No,” she replied, emphatically, “but Jack could very well have put the money in my show without telling Bessie. Naturally he wouldn’t tell me if it was her money, he’d want to act like a big shot.” Which, of course, was exactly what he was doing. “I don’t know how he thought he could get away with it,” said Ruby, “but he wasn’t never too bright and he didn’t know anything about show business. He should have known that you can’t keep something like that a secret, not with all them blabbermouths around. His show only lasted about five or six months, then it folded up. He couldn't get enough bookings. And,” she added acerbically, “his star wasn’t strong enough to hold it up.” Bessie and Gertrude had two run-ins, the second left Gertrude beaten and bloody on a sidewalk and Bessie charged with assault. Afterwards, Gertrude vowed never to have anything to do with Jack again. Although she denied it, word was that she did not keep her vow. Source: Bessie, by Jack Albertson; IMD; Frank Driggs Collection

Movie Synopsis An Easter "Lily" was a silent film made in 1914. A film that takes on upstairs/downstairs race relations with childhood candor. Following his family’s African American maid to the laundry, Sonny Jim befriends her daughter Lily and shares his teddy bear. With Easter approaching, Mother Dear buys her boy a new outfit and readies her home for relatives. Sonny Jim talks about the coming festivities with his playmate. When he learns that she does not have holiday clothes, he appropriates the white frock of his visiting cousin and invites Lily to join his family for Sunday worship. Sonny Jim prepares to escort his newly bedecked, but hesitant, friend into church just as the film breaks off. While the ending unfortunately does not survive, we know what happens from the plot summary in Motion Picture World: “To the huge amusement of all, he (Sonny Jim) drags her (Lily) up the aisle into Daddy Jim’s pew. Daddy later asks Sonny why he did it, and he replies ‘Cause nobody ‘membered Lily at all.’ Sonny is forgiven.” The film closes with the family presenting Lily with a new gingham dress. Film The film is a quick 10 minutes and 25 seconds. Please note: Only surviving copy of the film is degraded and unfortunately it cuts off at the last part of the film. From the above you can read what the final outcome is. However, I still think many will find it of interest if only for historical purposes. I was very surprised at how the issue of race was handled considering this was a film made in 1914, told through the innocent eyes of a child. Child Actors Sonny Jim played by Bobby Connelly Lily played by Ada Utley Preservation The film was preserved by the Library of Congress from an original nitrate release print discovered at the New Zealand Film Archive in 2010. The work was funded through the support of a Save America’s Treasures Grant secured by the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF). An Easter Lily (1914) 10min: www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/a...

Rachel Walker Turner (1868 - 1943), daughter to T.W. and M.L. (Lenyar) Turner, graduated from Cleveland's Central High School, entered Cleveland Normal Training School, and became a teacher in 1889. She taught in Cleveland schools for a few years before she followed a career as a singer. She studied in New York and then expanded her musical training in Europe. In 1895 the music critic of the Cleveland Leader wrote: "I listened to one young lady whom I regard as the coming soprano of the age, Rachel Walker. I am confident.... she will prove to be one of the greatest living singers. Her vocalization is extremely soulful." That same year, she toured California as the prima donna of the white Henry Wolfsohn Musical Bureau, and in July 1896 she made her debut as "The Creole Nightingale" in New York City at the Olympia Roof Garden, where the "unusual compass and excellent quality" of her voice made her "an extraordinary hit." A correspondent for the Cleveland Gazette who saw her New York performance complained about her "palming herself off as a 'creole' rather than stressing "the Afro-American connection." Miss Walker later joined the Robert Downing Company in Washington D.C. and then went to Europe to study voice. She lived in London, England and performed throughout Europe sometimes under the name Lucie Lenoir. At the outbreak of World War I she returned to Cleveland where she married Robert Turner and ran a music studio. Although she made a few concert appearances, due to the lack of opportunities for African-American singers in the United States during the early 20th century, her career came to an end. Photo: Historical Society of Cleveland Bio: Black Americans in Cleveland by Russell H. Davis, Associated Publishers, 1972

She was as huge as Josephine Baker was in France. Miss Fields gained her fame throughout Europe, learned their language, and became one of the first women to make a record. She also starred in two silent European films. Arabella Fields came to be known in Europe as The Black Nightingale . A contralto, she was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 31, 1879. She initially came to Europe as one half of a brother and sister singing act (James and Bella Fields) in 1889. From the 1890's to the 1920's she toured as a single act throughout Europe and became one of the most prolific African American entertainers outside the States. Fields was one of several women to make records in the 1900s. Her first recording was for the Anker label in Berlin in 1907; reissued many times, her twenty year old original records were listed in a 1928 catalogue. In this respect, the only artist comparable to Fields is Enrico Caruso, whose acoustic pre-1914 recordings were available well into the 1920s era of electric recording. To attract attention of her German audiences Fields often dressed in German style attire. She was also featured in many adverts in Europe (the photo is from an advert where she is dressed as an 'Alpine Cowgirl,' in 1910). In 1907 she was featured in two silent European films. In the first two decades of the 20th century she toured widely singing German lieder and Swiss yodels as well as English language songs. During the 20s and 30s she appeared in various black musicals that toured Europe. Among them, Sam Woodings 'Chocolate Kiddies' and Louis Douglas's 'Black Follies Girls and Negro Revue.' According to newspapers of that time she was in Amsterdam in 1915, 1916, and 1917. And made tours in the Netherlands in 1926, 1928, and 1931. It appears she was in at least one American film, Love in Morocco (1933) in which she portrayed an enslaved woman named Mabrouka. The social climate encouraged many African American entertainers performing in Europe to remain there permanently. Miss Fields lived the rest of her life in Germany. Source: Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe by Neil A Wynn A more extensive and well researched bio can be found here: blackjazzartists.blogspot.com/2020/03/arabella-fields-sch...