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The Cake Walk Photo Girl and Other Footnotes in African American Musical Theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2018
Extract
On 22 August 1897, the American Woman's Home Journal published seven photographs of “The Cake Walk as It Is Done by Genuine Negroes” in which “Williams and Walker Show How the Real Thing Is Done before the Journal Camera.” In this series, the African American stars Bert Williams, George Walker, Belle Davis, and Stella Wiley perform their popular cake walk act with situational humor in medias res before an unknown photographer in a nondescript space. Among the seven selected poses, one intriguing photograph in the lower right-hand corner depicts the encircled dancers gazing down upon an empty space in the center. The subject of their gaze becomes apparent when comparing the magazine images with the seven “Post Cards” Franz Huld published as part of his “Cake Walk/Negro Dance” series around 1901. Although the performers’ poses are the same, the postcard includes extra space between Wiley and Walker to feature a young girl of mixed racial heritage bending forward while hiking the back of her dress with her smiling face proudly held high (Fig. 1). If standing upright, she appears to be less than four feet tall and perhaps five to nine years of age. Given the obscure date and location of her photo shoot, her birth year could range anywhere from the mid-1880s to the early 1890s. Like Thomas F. DeFrantz, an African American dance theorist who gazes upon two 1920s photographs of other dancing girls, my gaze leads me to wonder about her identity, how she met and socialized with these four dancers, and whether she pursued a theatrical career.
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Footnotes
I am deeply indebted to Dr. Daniel Atkinson for calling my attention to the cake walk photo girl and for sharing his critical insights on the extraordinary life of George W. Walker. My sincere gratitude also extends to Cheryl Lester, Marlis Schweitzer, and two anonymous readers for their invaluable suggestions and supportive encouragement.
References
Endnotes
1. “A Lesson for Society Cake Walkers,” American Woman's Home Journal, 22 August 1897, 12; at www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030180/1897-08-22/ed-1/?sp=12&q=Cake+Walk+1897, accessed 27 August 2017. Note that I conserve “cake walk” as two words herein, per apparent African American preferences around the turn of the twentieth century.
2. William Foster misidentified Belle Davis as Ada (Reed) Overton in “Pioneers of the Stage: Memoirs of William Foster,” The Official Theatrical World of Colored Artists National Directory and Guide 1.1 (April 1928): 40–9, at 47Google Scholar. He propagated the following myth about Aida (her stage name spelling) among subsequent biographers:
A tobacco company had engaged Williams and Walker to pose some cake walking pictures to be used in advertising their product. Walker instructed a girl friend, named Stella Wiley to get another girl who could dance and meet him and Williams at the studio … to make up the four-some. Aida accepted, earned twenty dollars for posing and returned home without paying any particular attention to Mr. Walker; at least so the story goes. (my italics)
Jayna Brown includes five of the seven photographs from Stella Wiley's scrapbook (Scrapbook of the Negro in Theatre, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University) in Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 151Google Scholar. See also illustrations of Walker and an unidentified woman in “Cake Walks and Culture,” The World, 23 January 1898, 33.
3. Along with other photographs, this same pose was reproduced as a colorful but undated sign advertising Old Virginia Cheroots, as well as prints without the added lettering advertising the brand, before 31 December 1899. See www.icollector.com/old-virginia-cheroots-cardboard-sign_i5839440 and www.icollector.com/Old-Virginia-Cheroots-Paper-Sign_i12110019, accessed 27 August 2017.
4. Franz Huld published various card types from 1900 to 1914; www.metropostcard.com/publishersh2.html, accessed 23 August 2017. Sherry Howard and others attempt to date his cake walk postcards at http://myauctionfinds.com/2009/11/24/cakewalk-postcards-at-auction/, accessed 6 September 2017. On dating postcards, see Smithsonian Institution Archives, “Postcard History,” at https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/postcard/postcard-history, accessed 9 March 2018.
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6. Jo A. Tanner provides an extraordinary directory of black women performers in the appendix of her germinal dissertation, “The Emergence and Development of the Black Dramatic Actress, 1890–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Department of Theatre, CUNY, 1989), not included in her Dusky Maidens: The Odyssey of the Early Black Dramatic Actress (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
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14. See the alphabetized entries on these and subsequent productions noted below in Peterson, Bernard L. Jr., A Century of Musicals in Black and White (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Billy McClain claimed he originated cake walks in productions; “Billy McClain—Originator of the Cake Walk,” Indianapolis Freeman, 23 April 1910, 6. For biographies, see the alphabetized entries in Peterson, Bernard L. Jr., Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816–1960 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
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16. Paynes in New York Clipper, 5 August 1893; Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 365–6, 370–3.
17. For incisive critiques of female minstrelsy, see J. Brown, chap. 3.
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19. New York Clipper, 18 August 1894, 372.
20. Respective performances in New York Clipper, all 1895: 12 January, 9 February, 9 March, 13 and 20 April, and 23 March. Worth's Museum in Peterson, Bernard L. Jr., The African American Theatre Directory, 1816–1960 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 12–13Google Scholar.
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23. George W. Walker, “Bert and Me and Them,” New York Age, 24 December 1908, 4; Bert Williams, Indianapolis Freeman, 14 January 1911, 5; Smith, Eric Liddell, Bert Williams: A Biography of the Pioneer Black Comedian (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992), 16–19Google Scholar.
24. Wiley and Cole performed with Jack's Creoles at his Madison Street Theatre, in Chicago Daily Tribune, 23 February 1896, 1 March 1896, 32; while Davis performed with Isham's Octoroons in Chicago, in Daily Inter Ocean, 17 February 1896, 8, and 24 February 1896, 6 and New York Clipper, 7 March 1896, 10.
25. Shipp in Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, ed. Rowland, Mabel (New York: English Crafters, 1923), 28–9, 34Google Scholar; Charters, Ann, Nobody: The Story of Bert Williams (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 26–7Google Scholar. This “character song” introduced Octoroon members in an opening sketch entitled “The Blackville Derby”; Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 166–7; Riis, 21 n. 11.
26. Quotations in Stearns and Stearns, 250–1.
27. Quotations in ibid., 251; Peterson, Profiles, 91–2. Photograph of Ida Forsyne, billed as Topsy, in Sampson, Henry T., Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, 2d ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2014), 1: 118Google Scholar.
28. Burgoyne biography in Perpener, John O., African-American Concert Dance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 73–7Google Scholar; Peterson, Profiles, 39. Photograph and biography in Sampson, Blacks in Blackface, 2d ed., 1: 425, 2: 1383–4.
29. New York Clipper, 22 August 1896; Indianapolis Freeman, 7 November 1896; Washington Bee, 28 November 1896. Obituary of Pearl Meredith in Chicago Broad Ax, 28 July 1917.
30. Sampson, Henry T., The Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865–1910 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988), 191Google Scholar; Indianapolis Freeman, 2 March 1901 and quoted in 15 June 1901.
31. Bauman, Thomas, The Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black-Owned Theater (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 55Google Scholar; New York Age, 14 May 1908; “Lottie Grady Makes Hit,” Indianapolis Freeman, 19 March 1910, 1.
32. Tanner, Dusky Maidens, 74–8; Reid, Mark A., Redefining Black Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 7–9Google Scholar. Photograph of Lottie Grady on sheet music of “Dat Lovin’ Rag,” 1907 at https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/media/loc.award.rpbaasm.0009/000901v.tif/200, accessed 30 October 2017.
33. Foster, “Pioneers,” 47.
34. Quoted in “Notes of the Week,” New York Times, 29 November 1896; see also Smith, Bert Williams, 26–9.
35. Davis was in Washington, DC, with Isham's Oriental America and in other cities through late February 1897; Washington Bee, 28 November 1986, Indianapolis Freeman, 2 January and 2 February 1897. Wiley was in Binghamton, Philadelphia, and other cities until mid-March; New York Clipper, 28 November 1896, 27 March 1897.
36. Peterson, Century, 19–20.
37. Lee, Maureen D., Sissieretta Jones: “The Greatest Singer of Her Race” 1868–1933 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012), 102–3, 110–11Google Scholar. Lena Wise in New York Clipper, 12 December 1896. Obituary for Maggie Davis in Chicago Broad Ax, 8 September 1917, 3.
38. While many biographers rely on Foster's 1928 memoirs in “Pioneers,” see also Floyd G. Snelson, “Aida Overton Walker,” Pittsburgh Courier, 16 July 1932, 7; Newman, Richard, “‘The Brightest Star’: Aida Overton Walker in the Age of Ragtime and Cakewalk,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 18 (1993): 465–81Google Scholar.
39. “A Children's May Party,” New York Age, 13 June 1891, 2.
40. New York Clipper, 21 August 1897.
41. Carter, Marva Griffin, Swing Along: The Musical Life of Will Marion Cook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 38–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42. “A Lawrence Boy,” Lawrence Weekly World, 15 July 1897, 7; “How He Started,” Lawrence Daily Journal, 9 August 1897, 4; quoted in Kansas City American Citizen, 8 January 1892. Ollie Whitman disappears from Kansas newspaper reports around 1896.
43. Wichita Daily Eagle, 19 April 1889, 5; Stearns and Stearns, 85.
44. Stearns and Stearns, 86.
45. Quoted from “The Whitmans,” Chicago Defender, 26 January 1918, 4; see also George-Graves, Nadine, The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender and Class in African American Theater 1900–1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 13–19Google Scholar.
46. Quote from “A Lesson for Society Cake Walkers.” Over this summer, Wiley apparently broke up with Cole over his court case dispute with the Troubadours’ managers; Lee, 112–14. Rather than perform in Cole and Johnson's blacklisted tour of A Trip to Coontown, she signed on with Isham's Octoroons in mid-July with Ada Overton and Ada's mother, Pauline Reed; Indianapolis Freeman, 17 July and 28 August 1897; New York Clipper, 31 July and 21 August 1897. Having embarked upon a tour of Great Britain with Isham's Oriental America in April, Davis may have returned to the States with Mattie Wilkes in July; New York Clipper, 1 May 1897; Indianapolis Freeman, 24 July 1897. Davis later joined Wiley in the Octoroons’ “Darktown Outing at Blackville Rock” sketch; Boston Sunday Globe, 24 October 1897, 10. See J. Brown, 150–2, for an alternative explanation of this photo session.
47. Quoted in Floyd J. Calvin, “Lincoln Audience Gets Big Thrill When Pretty Actress Cries ‘Double-Crossed,’” Pittsburgh Courier, 19 May 1928, 13; for Greenlee and Drayton, see Stearns and Stearns, 291. Anderson's Dancing Academy at 116 West 53rd was near Marshall's Hotel at 127 & 129 West 53rd, where Williams and Walker, among others, strategized their next moves away from minstrel stereotypes; Nugent, Richard Bruce, “Marshall's—A Portrait,” Phylon 5.4 (1944): 316–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48. Richmond Planet, 19 March 1898, 2.
49. Quote from Tanner, “Emergence,” 345; see also Peterson, Profiles, 8.
50. Compare Mitchell's journals in Carter, 49, with Lee, 127. Quote from Carter, 47.
51. Carter, 44–9, 56, 91–2; Seniors, Paula Marie, “Ada Overton Walker, Abbie Mitchell, and the Gibson Girl: Reconstructing African American Womanhood,” International Journal of Africana Studies 13.1 (2007): 38–67Google Scholar. Earliest photograph (1903) of Abbie Mitchell at www.ipernity.com/doc/285591/39339566, accessed 30 October 2017.
52. Although Sadie's birth year remains unknown, she married her vaudeville partner, Joe Britton, in 1894 and died in 1925; New York Age, 13 October 1910, 6, and 31 January 1925, 9. Photographs of Sadie Britton in Sampson, Henry T., Blacks in Blackface, 1st ed. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980), 64Google Scholar; Sampson, Blacks in Blackface, 2d ed., 1: 119.
53. New York Clipper, 20 and 27 August 1898.
54. Indianapolis Freeman, 10 September 1898; Lynn Abbott and Seroff, Doug, Ragged but Right (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 52–3Google Scholar. A photograph of the 1899 Black Patti Company may include Ringgold and the Meredith sisters; Sampson, Blacks in Blackface, 2d ed., 1: 662.
55. Stowe, Harriett Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (Boston: John P. Jewett), 91Google Scholar. See J. Brown, chap. 1 (“‘Little Black Me’: The Touring Picanniny Choruses”); Bernstein, Robin, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 43–55Google Scholar.
56. Frick, John W., “Uncle Tom's Cabin” on the American Stage and Screen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 43, 110–11Google Scholar; Miss Hutchins in New York Clipper, 21 April 1877; Hill, Errol, “The Hyers Sisters: Pioneers in Black Musical Comedy,” in The American Stage, ed. Engle, Ron and Miller, Tice L. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 115–30Google Scholar.
57. Andersons, New York Clipper, 20 October 1894; Mills, New York Clipper, 30 March and 13 April 1895.
58. Indianapolis Freeman, 22 April 1905.
59. New York Clipper, 5 March 1898. Little Dottie's last name and age are unknown.
60. Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 403–9; Stearns and Stearns, 80–4.
61. New York Clipper, 17 February and 19 May 1894.
62. “The Pickaninny Dance, from the ‘Passing Show’ (1894),” www.imdb.com/title/tt0285903/, accessed 13 October 2017. Almost half of the one-minute film may be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDxgGk-iDyQ, accessed 12 September 2018.
63. New York Times, 18 June 1894, 8. Daly herself could not appear at Tony Pastor's Theatre until she reached age sixteen; New York Clipper, 18 August 1894. Vey, Shauna, “Good Intentions and Fearsome Prejudice: New York's 1876 Act to Prevent and Punish Wrongs to Children,” Theatre Survey 42.1 (2001): 53–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64. Laurie, Joe Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), 56, 203Google Scholar.
65. Fletcher, 157; for more on “picks” and “coon shouters,” see Trav, S. D., No Applause—Just Throw Money (New York: Faber & Faber, 2005), 109–11Google Scholar.
66. Stearns and Stearns, 83.
67. New York Clipper, 14 August 1897, 27 November 1897, 26 March 1898; “Didn't Care for Stage So Colored Dancer Is Now Again in Southern Home,” Philadelphia Tribune, 6 April 1912, 3.
68. “New York Sees the Youngest Cake Walkers,” with illustrations of them and Gassman's story in The World, 27 February 1898, 10. Williams and Walker were featured on the sheet-music cover of “Enjoy Yourselves.”
69. New York Dramatic Mirror, 5 March 1898. In 1902, Rudy and Fredy Walker took Paris by storm with the help of publicity photographs that promoted their cake walking fame across Europe. See their biographies in Lotz, Rainer E., “Rudy & Fredy Walker: Les Enfants Nègres in Europe,” Doctor Jazz Magazine 44.192 (2006): 9–23Google Scholar.
70. “Eva Taylor Started Stage Career at Age of Two,” Afro-American, 10 February 1934, 6.
71. Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1901, 1. Photograph in Fletcher, 158.
72. Variety, 25 February 1911; New York Clipper, 13 June and 5 December 1917.
73. New York Clipper, 12 and 26 February 1919, 12 March 1919.
74. Chicago Defender, 1 October 1921.
75. Egan, Bill, Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 1–8Google Scholar, and her photograph at age five, n.p. (facing 168).
76. Sampson, Ghost Walks, 131; quoted in New York Clipper, 7 October 1911, 7.
77. Stearns and Stearns, 24, 81; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 126.
78. New York Clipper, 15, 20, 27 August 1898, and 3, 10 September 1898.
79. New York Clipper, 3 September 1898, 1, and 7 October 1898; Baltimore Daily Record, 12 September 1898; Washington Bee, 17 September 1898.
80. Chicago Daily Tribune, 16, 24, 27 October 1898, and 13, 17 November 1898.
81. Boston Sunday Globe, 13 November 1898, 33; Book Notes 12 (January 1899): 58–9Google Scholar; Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 January 1899; quoted in Topeka Plaindealer, 10 February 1899.
82. Quoted in Chicago Daily Tribune, 16 July 1900, 7; Chicago Broad Ax, 21 July 1900, 3.
83. Quoted in Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 February 1901, 3; quoted review in Boston Post, 5 April 1901; Boston Daily Globe, 26 February 1901, 8. Interestingly, Davis sued Will Isham for owing her $250 and “a chattel mortgage [of her scenic properties] for $1,500”; Indianapolis Freeman, 20 April 1901, 5; New York Clipper, 27 April 1901, 185.
84. Lotz, “Belle Davis.”
85. Bauman, 25, 61; on Captain Rufus, see Peterson, Century, 71–2.
86. Bricktop [Ada Smith] with Haskins, James, Bricktop: Prohibition Harlem, Cafe Society Paris, Movie-Mad Rome (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 19–23, quote at 20Google Scholar.
87. Stearns and Stearns, 86–91, quote at 91; George-Graves, 25–6, 96–8.
88. Over this period, they broke away from white producers and achieved complete artistic control and long-running success by directing their subversive farces to black audiences.
89. Grace Halliday (1872–1906) married Frank Mallory, and Mazie Brooks (1873–1949) married Ed Mallory. See respective obituaries, Indianapolis Freeman, 10 November 1906, 5; Kansas City (Kansas) Plaindealer, 1 July 1949, 3; and Peterson, Profiles, 179. Obituary of Lottie Williams, New York Age, 23 March 1929, 1.
90. These two productions were likely inspired by Williams and Walker's experiences with Chicago's gambling saloons and policy shops in the mid-1890s, in Bauman, 5–6, 11–13. Respective notices of cast members and characters in Cleveland Gazette, 15 April 1899; Colored American, 6 May 1899; New York Clipper, 21 October 1899; Indianapolis Freeman, 10 February 1900, 5. Pearl and Carrie's sister, Lottie Meredith, in Indianapolis Freeman, 31 December 1898 and her 1901 marriage to Dr. Robert Cooper (d. 1932) in Chicago Broad Ax, 1 January 1921; Chicago Defender, 23 July 1932.
91. Indianapolis Freeman, 6 October 1900, 5. Cast and characters in Syracuse Evening Herald, 13 November 1900, 4.
92. George W. Walker, “How the ‘King of Dahomey’ Met the King of England,” Kansas City (Missouri) Rising Son, 10 July 1903, 1. Krasner, David, Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895–1910 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 66–73, 99–115Google Scholar; Brooks, Daphne A., Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), chap. 4Google Scholar (“Alien/Nation”).
93. Quoted in New York Times, 4 February 1908, 7; Krasner, Resistance, 149–55. For further details on respective Williams and Walker productions, see Riis, and Peterson, Century.
94. Mattie Evans in Indianapolis Freeman, 29 October 1898, 5; Lavinia Jones in Cleveland Gazette, 11 April 1896; Indianapolis Freeman, 17 January 1901.
95. Katie Jones in New York Age, 24 March 1908 and Pittsburgh Courier, 2 January 1926, 10; Ward and Thomas in New York Age, 12 March 1908, 6. Obituary of Bessie Brady Thomas (b. 1882) in New York Age, 19 September 1912, 6.
96. For example, see Nettie Glenn in Sampson, Blacks in Blackface, 2d ed., 1:170–1, and obituary of Jennie Scheper-Haston in New York Age, 30 January 1937, 9; on A Trip to Coontown, see Peterson, Century, 359–61; Riis, 75–8.
97. “The Tragic Breaking of a Thespian Friendship,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 October 1899, 2.
98. For example, Adah Fleming Banks (Mrs. Arthur H. Payne), a widow and former music teacher, in “Midnight's Musings,” Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, 5 September 1908, 1, and Chicago Defender, 16 August 1924; Carrie Carter (Mrs. Louis H. Saulsbury), in Topeka Plaindealer, 26 May 1899, 2; Anna Cook (Mrs. Theodore Pankey), in Pittsburgh Courier, 10 September 1927; Maggie Davis (1879–1917) (Mrs. Jessie Shipp), in Chicago Broad Ax, 8 September 1917, 3; Mamie Emerson (ca. 1877–1916) (Mrs. Clarence Logan), in “New York City Marriage Records, 1829–1940,” provided by Oberlin Heritage Center, 30 August 2017; Lavinia Gaston (1879–1940) (Mrs. Alex C. Rogers) and Ida Day, in New York Age, 23 November 1940, 1, and 30 November 1940, 8; Ada Guiguesse (Mrs. Sterling Rex), in New York Age, 11 October 1917; Lizzie Harding (Mrs. Dan Avery), in Chicago Broad Ax, 2 March 1912, 2; Alice Mackey (Mrs. Will Accooe), in Indianapolis Freeman, 24 December 1898, 6; Estelle Pugsley (Mrs. Charles Hart), in New York Age, 8 December 1917, 6; and Daisy Robinson (ca. 1882–1935) (Mrs. G. Henri Tapley), in Indianapolis Freeman, 11 September 1909, 6.
99. Antoine, Le Roi, Achievement: The Life of Laura Bowman (New York: Pageant Press, 1961), 49, 78, 83–90, 96, 106–7Google Scholar.
100. Indianapolis Freeman, 12 May 1900, 5; New York Age, 4 March 1909, 6.
101. Kaslo (British Columbia) Prospector, 20 June and 25 July 1895; Salt Lake City Broad Ax, 22 June 1912; “H. Lawrence Freeman Recalls the Work of Miss Minnie Brown,” Afro-American, 9 May 1935, 10; Indianapolis Freeman, 11 September 1909, 6. Photograph at www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/minnie-brown, accessed 30 October 2017.
102. New York Clipper, 4 November 1899, 747; Sister Thompson, M. Francesca, “The Lafayette Players: 1915–1932,” in The Theatre of Black Americans, ed. Hill, Errol (New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1987), 211–30Google Scholar.
103. Indianapolis Freeman, 24 December 1898, 1, with photograph; New York Age, 21 February 1921; “100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History,” with photograph, www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1478?locale=en, accessed 3 March 2018.
104. Fuell-Guther, Melissa, Blind Boone: His Early Life and His Achievements (Robbins, TN: Evangel Publishing Society, 1918), 103–4Google Scholar; Kansas City (Missouri) Rising Son, 4 September 1903, 12 August 1904.
105. Indianapolis Freeman, 10 December 1910, 5; Sampson, Blacks in Blackface, 2d ed., 1:239, 262–3.
106. Story and photograph in Chicago Defender, 3 October 1942, 9. In 1916, two years after Mrs. Walker's death, Anthony Overton manufactured Aida Hair Pomade in honor of his step-cousin and advertised it in his Half-Century Magazine.
107. For examples, see Nettie Glenn and Anna Cook Pankey in Indianapolis Freeman, 30 March 1907, 8; Jessie Ellis, possibly in her Bandanna Land costume, in New York Age, 23 April 1908, 6; Ada Guiguesse in New York Age, 5 June 1913, 6; and Pauline Freeman in Pittsburgh Courier, 20 August 1932, 1.
108. In Dahomey photo at www.flickr.com/photos/147039490@N04/31612539440, accessed 30 October 2017; and Abyssinia photos in Indianapolis Freeman, 6 October 1906, 7. See also the last company Bandanna Land photograph of unidentified members in Fletcher, 234.
109. New York Tribune, 18 February 1906, 7. Hattie Hopkins in New York Age, 26 January 1929, 10.
110. Quoted in Indianapolis Freeman, 20 October 1906. Women's names and hometowns in Indianapolis Freeman, 7 October 1905.
111. Dorothy, “The Abyssinia Maids,” Indianapolis Freeman, 20 October 1906, 5.
112. Aida Overton Walker, “Afro-American Men and Women on the Stage,” Chicago Broad Ax, 14 October 1905, 1–2.
113. Programs and reviews in New York Age, 28 May 1908, and 11 June 1908, 6; 22 April 1909, 3, and 6 May 1909, 6
114. Photograph of Ada Vaughn in New York Age, 2 April 1908, 6.
115. Gee relates her girlhood in Boston Sunday Post, 10 September 1922, 37.
116. Photographs in Cleveland Gazette, 16 August 1913, 1.
117. Tanner, Dusky Maidens, 45–6, 75–7.
118. Review in New York Age, 16 September 1909, 4 November 1909, 6. New York cast and characters in New York Clipper, 13 November 1909.
119. After Florence Mills took over Gertrude Saunders's role, Edith Spencer and Eva Taylor each replaced her during the show's run.
120. Stearns and Stearns, 125–31; Krasner, David, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 239–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
121. For example, see Brown, Ruth Nicole, Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013)Google Scholar; and Roberts, Rosemarie A., “Dancing with Social Ghosts: Performing Embodiments, Analyzing Critically,” Transforming Anthropology 21.1 (2013): 4–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.