Kicha's photos with the keyword: Theatre

British Nobility Balk At Mixed-Race American Actress: The Story of Marion Smart When Britain’s Prince Harry’s engagement to actress Meghan Markle became public, some negative reactions suggested that racism and class snobbery still persist among the British upper crust. According to news reports, Markle, whose mother is African-American and father is white, describes herself as a “strong, confident mixed-race woman.” Just such a woman caused a stir in England back in 1903, and the ripples reached as far as Cincinnati. Marion Smart visited Cincinnati frequently as an actress and singer with the Smart Set troupe. This all-African American ensemble got top billing at Cincinnati’s hottest theaters: Heuck’s, on Vine between Twelfth and Thirteenth; Robinson Opera House at Ninth and Plum; and The Walnut, on Walnut Street between Sixth and Seventh. Variously described as “pretty,” “dashing” and possessed of a “most handsome form and face,” Marion Smart was what was then known as an octoroon, meaning that she was one-eighth black. In other words, one of her eight great-grandparents was African American. Under the “one drop” standard in place at the time, Marion was considered “colored.” The Cincinnati Enquirer [25 February 1904] claimed she could easily pass as white: “Miss Smart is almost white. It would require a second glance to discover any trace of her Ethiopian origin.” Most news reports claim that she was a Louisiana native, but she consistently told census-takers that her mother was from England and her father from New York, where she was born at Utica in 1884. In the summer of 1903, Marion sailed to England with an all-African American minstrel show headed by Bert Williams and George Walker, among the most celebrated proponents of this much-derided theatrical genre. The troupe occupied rooms in the very posh Hotel Cecil and performed at the Shaftesbury Theatre in central London. Among her new fans, Marion attracted the attention of the son of an English Lord. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer: “This young scion of British nobility for a time contented himself with a nightly attendance at the London theater where the Afro-American entertainers were holding the boards. Subsequently he sought an introduction, and through a business attaché of the theater became acquainted with Miss Smart, or Marion Henry, as she was known on the London playbills. From that time on the young Englishman was the most devoted admirer of the colored singer and entertained her lavishly at the swagger Cecil.” For almost a month, Marion’s devotee followed her everywhere and rained gifts of jewelry upon her. It all ended when Marion was visited backstage by a representative of the British Foreign Office who informed her that she was being deported, immediately, on the next steamer to America. “She demurred at first, but changed her mind when transportation and a few thousand-pound notes on the Bank of England were thrust into her hand. It developed that the father of the prospective heir to an earldom had learned of his infatuation for the colored actress and had quietly invoked the aid of the Foreign Office.” Marion returned to the United States and joined the Smart Set troupe, which brought her to Cincinnati, where she told her tale to a Cincinnati reporter. She made sure to add her opinion to the Enquirer story, contrasting life for African Americans here and in Europe: “She says that prejudice against the colored race in England is nothing like it is in America and that it is more than likely that nearly half of the Williams and Walker company that went over about a year ago are so well established in England it is doubtful they will ever return to this country.” Marion Smart’s career lasted just a year or so following her 1904 visit to Cincinnati. She retired from the stage at the age of 21 when she married Moses C. Moore, the wealthiest African American in Dayton, Ohio. Moore owned a stable of fine racing horses, a Dayton hotel that served a black clientele, and was an early investor in a Negro League baseball team. In 1909, Moore opened Dahomey Park, described by the Indianapolis Freeman [6 March 1909] as: “ . . . a Colored pleasure park for Colored people, owned and operated exclusively by Colored financiers and managers.” Although the park remained open for only a couple of years, it attracted national news coverage. The name, Dahomey Park, was proposed by Marion Moore as a nod to “In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy” the first full-length musical written and performed by African Americans at a major Broadway house. The stars of “In Dahomey” were Marion Moore’s former employers, Bert Williams and George Walker. Moses Moore died in 1927 and Marion remarried a building contractor named Carl Anderson. She was active in charitable causes, notably founding a day nursery. Marion died in 1954, aged 69, and is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, next to Moses Moore. Source: The Dayton Herald (Dec. 1905); Cincinnati Curiosities by Greg Hand (Bill Stolz, Archivist at Wright State University

Since 1851, many remarkable black men and women did not receive obituaries in The New York Times. With Overlooked , they've added their stories to their archives. NY Times Overlooked No More: Valaida Snow, Charismatic ‘Queen of the Trumpet’ By Giovanni Russonello Feb. 22, 2020 Popperfoto (Getty Images) She was not just a master musician, singer and dancer; she was also a teller of tall tales whose interviews could be as much a performance as her stage act. Valaida Snow in an undated photo. She was a big name in Europe and Asia as well as in black communities across the United States, often giving some of the first jazz performances on major international stages. A singer, a dancer, an arranger, a master fabulist, a virtuoso trumpeter adept at a half-dozen other instruments, too: Back when being all these things could also mean being a pop star, Valaida Snow was a sensation. From the age of 5, when she began stealing the show as a member of her father’s performance troupe, Snow lived her life onstage, and on the road. She became a big name in Europe and Asia, just as much as she was in black communities across the United States, often giving some of the first jazz performances on major international stages. And she often graced the movie screen, helping to bring black music from the vaudeville stage into the audiovisual age. African-American newspapers and the international press celebrated Snow both for her immense skill and for her novelty as a female trumpet master. She encouraged that coverage and bent it to her ends, telling tall tales and making her interviews as much a performance as her stage act. “She pursued her life and career confidently, indomitably and even defiantly,” her biographer, Mark Miller, wrote in “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow” (2007). “In fact and fiction both, it is a life to celebrate.” Snow was in Denmark during an extended engagement when Nazi Germany stormed across Europe in the early years of World War II. But she refused to decamp for the United States and ended up imprisoned — though it was in a Copenhagen jail, not a German concentration camp as she later claimed. When she was finally shuttled out of the country, she returned to the United States physically diminished. Though she worked hard to reclaim the spotlight, she died in 1956, at 52, in ill health and relative obscurity. “The unfortunate thing about her legacy is that she wasn’t recorded as much as many of her peers,” Tammy Kernodle, a musicologist at Miami University in Ohio, said in a phone interview. “But she was a greatly respected musician on the vaudeville circuit, and even amongst male jazz musicians themselves.” Dashing and charismatic, Snow earned the nicknames Little Louis — a reference to Louis Armstrong’s influence on her — and Queen of the Trumpet, given to her by W.C. Handy, who himself was known as the Father of the Blues. That appellation often appeared below her name on the 78-r.p.m. records she made. Yet Snow’s stardom appeared to have an implacable ceiling. While many musicians held residencies in New York or Chicago clubs during the 1920s and ’30s, often catapulting to famous recording careers, Snow stayed on the road, possibly because club owners and promoters did not see women as viable bandleaders. “This conversation about chronicling the evolution and the progression of jazz has always been rooted in recordings,” Dr. Kernodle said. “She spent a lot of time in Europe during a key time when jazz was being documented in recordings — she’s back and forth, and that back-and-forth doesn’t give her an opportunity to amass a catalog in the way that many of her peers did.” Still, at the height of her success, Snow lived in sumptuous style. She rode in a convertible, often with a chauffeur; had a personal servant; and even acquired a pet monkey. And she kept her coterie coordinated. “The chauffeur, the footman and the monkey were all to dress alike,” the cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short recalled fondly. Valada Snow was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on June 2, 1904, the eldest of four children in a musical family. (She later added an “i” to her name, possibly to clarify its pronunciation.) Her sister Lavada later claimed that their father, John, had been a Russophile, and named his first-born child after the city of Vladivostok. Valada’s mother, Etta, was a music teacher who had attended Howard University and taught her children to play instruments and sing. John, who went by J.V., was a minister who assembled a troupe of child performers known as the Pickaninny Troubadours, presenting them at black theaters and vaudeville stages across the South. By the time she was 5, Valada had become the show’s star. By adolescence, she was proficient on nearly a dozen string and wind instruments. Her bailiwick as a child was the violin, but her stage act also included singing, dancing and even an escape-artistry act. At 15, Snow married Samuel Lewis Lanier, a fellow entertainer, but he was physically abusive, and she soon left him. Her father had recently died and the Troubadours were no more; a period of drifting set in. It wasn’t until 1921, when she joined the popular revue “Holiday in Dixieland,” that she began to make her name on the national stage. Snow held a long residency the next year at a Harlem cabaret run by the famed proprietor Barron Wilkins, bringing her new levels of attention. Then she set off on the road again. In 1924, Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle cast her in “In Bamville,” the follow-up to their smash hit musical “Shuffle Along.” It traveled to New York the next year under the name “The Chocolate Dandies,” but received unsympathetic reviews and soon closed. In many of those negative reviews there were two exceptions: Snow and her co-star Josephine Baker, whose own career was just taking off. Snow mounted a few tours of the United States with small jazz bands, but it was a three-year jaunt across Europe and Asia beginning in 1926, when she was 22, that established her as a star. She traveled to London and Paris with the producer Lew Leslie’s “Blackbirds” revue, and then joined the drummer Jack Carter’s octet on a tour of China and Southeast Asia. “She is important in terms of helping us gain an understanding of the spread of jazz to Europe, particularly after World War I,” Dr. Kernodle said, adding that Snow helped “shift the context of jazz away from the early Dixieland style.” Back in the United States, Snow took a prominent role in another musical, “Rhapsody in Black,” which Leslie had built largely to showcase her talents, though Ethel Waters was billed as its star. It gave rise to a long rivalry between the two. Snow directed the production’s 60-person stage band, though it was known as Pike Davis’s Continental Orchestra. Over the latter half of the 1930s, Snow recorded roughly 40 sides in studios across Europe, including her signature song, “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm.” But she never made a commercial recording in the United States as a trumpeter. In the mid-1930s, Snow met and married Ananias Berry, a 19-year-old dancer who performed with the Berry Brothers, a family troupe; the new couple developed a stage act and toured together. But their age difference drew negative publicity — especially after Samuel Lewis Lanier, Snow’s former husband, took her to court on allegations of bigamy, claiming their long-ago marriage had never been officially annulled. It all led to tensions between Snow and Berry, and the marriage did not last. Starting in 1940, while living in Europe, Snow found herself stuck for two years in Nazi-occupied Denmark, staying even after her manager had fled. Mr. Miller’s biography revealed that she had spent only 10 weeks in custody at two Danish prisons. She had developed a dependency on oxycodone and was said to have participated in petty robberies, though no charges were ever filed. Her imprisonment could have been an attempt by the authorities to protect and house her during difficult times, as Mr. Miller surmises, or it could simply have been unlawful. Over the latter half of the 1930s, Snow recorded roughly 40 sides in studios across Europe. But she never made a commercial recording in the United States as a trumpeter. Snow was able to leave Denmark in the spring of 1942 on an American ship that had come to rescue refugees. Back home where her return was front-page news in black newspapers she told stories of having been held at a concentration camp “for eight horrible months,” and sometimes beaten. The Amsterdam News reported that she was “the only colored woman entertainer on record to have been interned in a Nazi concentration camp.” Whatever the truth, by the time she returned, Snow was worse for the wear. Some reports suggested that her weight was down to 76 pounds. Friends said she carried an air of sadness that would never fully go away. She married again in 1943; her third husband, Earle Edwards, was a former performer who became her manager. The couple moved to Los Angeles, where she was seen as a mentor and inspiration to the young musicians turning Central Avenue clubs into a hotbed of modern jazz innovation. In 1949, performing at Town Hall in New York, she received her first and only mention in The New York Times: a paragraph-long review. Snow died of a brain hemorrhage on May 30, 1956, during an engagement at the Palace Theater in New York. “She was survived,” Mr. Miller wrote in his biography, “by her husband, Earle, her sister Lavada, her brother Arvada and her stepbrother Arthur (Artemus) Bush — as well as a mythology that had taken on a life of its own.”

Here she appears in costume for a play she co-produced, Midnight Steppers from 1930. Today Gertrude is mainly remembered as a rival for the affections of Bessie Smith's husband, Jack Gee, a situation that caused a violent reaction from the ever volatile Bessie. In 1921, however, Gertrude was one of the hottest properties in show business. Gertrude Saunders while her greatest fame and recognition came from being the original star of Shuffle Along , the groundbreaking musical and theatrical production by Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Flournoy Mille, and Aubrey Lyles in 1921, which some cite as launching the Harlem Renaissance, Gertrude Saunders went on to continue her varied show-business career in motion pictures, as well as with live stage performances. Born on August 25, 1903, in North Carolina, Saunders was still a teenager at the time she left studies at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, to tour with stage and vaudeville entertainer and producer Billy King as a featured singer and comedienne, where her performances turned a number of his songs into hits. Saunders also starred in another King production in 1919, Over the Top , which dramatized the state of African Americans at the time of the Paris Peace Conference and presaged other Harlem Renaissance efforts to stage serious theatrical works and music revues. After Saunders was replaced by Florence Mills as the star of Shuffle Along , she continued to work in other revues during the 1920s and '30s, including one financed by Bessie Smith's husband Jack Gee in 1929, which led to a fight with Smith. After suffering a nervous breakdown and returning to her home in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1931 to recuperate, Saunders resumed performing in such revues as Red Hot Mama during the 1930s. Saunders was also highly recognized for her passion and style of performing the Charleston famous during the Harlem Renaissance period and singing Sweet Georgia Brown composed by musicians Maceo Pinkard and Ben Bernie for the musical show Runnin Wild on Broadway. She appeared in several films in the 1940s, including Sepia Cinderella and in 1943 the Broadway production of Run, Little Chillun . Saunders was honored by the Negro Actors Guild of America in 1964 in New York City, the benevolent organization for African American entertainers. Gertrude C. Saunders, a trailblazing entertainer, died on April 1, 1991, in Beverly, Massachusetts. She was eighty-seven. Sources: Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen by By Bill Egan; Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era edited by Lean'tin L. Bracks, Jessie Carney Smith; BlackPast by Otis Alexander; NYPL Digital Collections

Kansas City Sun (June 1915): Hattie McIntosh, who is giving a remarkable exhibition of her histrionic ability in the classical plays now being put on at the Criterion theater. She is queen of her profession not only in physique but in art as well. The Only "Billy" King. The greatest of them all, who is now the sole proprietor of the Criterion theater, and who is crowding the house nightly with his excellent play. Hattie McIntosh From minstrelsy to vaudeville to the Broadway stage, Hattie McIntosh was one of the first black women to make a profession of the theater. She was born in Detroit, Michigan around 1860. She first performed in 1884 in McIntosh and Sawyer's Colored Callender Minstrels. Her husband, Tom McIntosh, was part-owner of the company and one of the country's leading black showmen. At a time when there were few black women onstage, many were wives of performers and producers; it was considered somewhat more respectable for a woman to go onstage with her husband than alone. There was very real protection in marriage, as well, from the hardships and dangers of touring. In the early 1890s, the McIntoshes created a vaudeville act called "Mr. and Mrs. McIntosh in the King of Bavaria." In the next few years, they performed with the three important companies that broke out of the minstrel format and included women in their casts as well as men. In 1894, their act played with Sam T. Jack's Creole Shows, and they joined the legendary Black Patti's Troubadours in 1896. After that, they toured with John Isham's Octoroons Company. Hattie McIntosh soon had a leading role in Isham's King Rastus Company. After the turn of the century, she joined the Williams and Walker Company, going to England in 1902 In Dahomey. Her husband, Tom McIntosh died in 1904. The following year, Hattie was in Chicago, as a member of Bob Mott's Pekin Theater Stock Company. Bob Mott was a saloon owner who turned his saloon into a music hall in 1904. He built a new building in 1905 calling it the Pekin Theater. He then formed a stock company to perform at the Pekin; eventually the company also toured the East and Midwest. It is not clear how long McIntosh stayed at the Pekin, but in 1909 she was back with Bert Williams in Mr. Lode of Koal. That was her last performance with the musical comedy great. In about 1911, she formed a vaudeville team with another woman, Cordelia McClain. McClain and McIntosh took their act to the Billy King Stock Company in 1912, which toured the South and then opened at the Grand Theater in Chicago in 1915 or 1916. McIntosh married Billy King the same year that she and McClain joined the company. Hattie McIntosh died in Chicago in December of 1919. Billy King Born in Whistler, Alabama, in 1875 on a large farm, where at the gae of ten he was considered one of the best plough hands. But this rural labor dd not satisfy little Billy, who dreamed of being a show performer. So one day, he ran away from home, hopping a freight car for he knew not where. Drifting about the country, Billy eventually fell in with some actors. A little later, he organized his own minstrel company, which was billed as "King and Bush, Wide Mouth Minstrels." They toured the South in the early 1890s. After the closing of his company, Billy joined Richards ad Pringle, Rosco and Holland's Georgia Minstrel Company. At the time, Billy Kersands was the star. After a season with this company, King became stage manager and producer of the company, Billy Kersands, Clarence Powell, James Crosby, and King were known as the "Big Four" comedians. After King quit the Georgia Minstrels, he made his home in Chicago, where he opened an office for booking and producing shows and vaudeville acts. The season of 1911 found Billy King teamed with James Mobley in a successful vaudeville act. The next season King formed his first stock company in Atlanta, Georgia. Billy wrote and produced all of the company's plays and engaged a very talented group of artists. In 1913, he went to the Lyric Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, and organized another successful stock company. In 1915, King moved his company to the Grand Theatre in Chicago, where he produced shows for the next eight seasons. King's company put on a new show each week and King was responsible for bringing many new innovations into musical comedy, including girls clowning at the end of chorus lines. The latter routine was used by Josephine Baker to gain her first real notice in the chorus of Sissle and Blake's "Chocolate Dandies." King also wrote popular songs, several of which were introduced by his protegee, Gertrude Saunders. He married fellow vaudevillian Hattie McIntosh in 1912. King died in 1951. Sources: Kansas City Sun (June 1915); Black Women in America: Theater Arts and Entertainment, Encyclopedia of Black Women in America by Kathleen Thompson; Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows by Henry T. Sampson

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

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)

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

An advert featuring the Armstrong Family: left to right Ellen Armstrong, John Hartford Armstrong, and Lille Belle Armstrong. One of America’s foremost early 20th-century African-American magic acts. J. Hartford Armstrong, his wife, Lille Belle Armstrong, and eventually their daughter (Lille's stepdaughter), Ellen Armstrong, performed feats that included mind reading, slight of hand, and card tricks. At times they were joined by J. Hartford Armstrong’s brother and by members of the Jordan family. They were lauded by one newspaper reporter “as being the most royal colored entertainers of the century, as magicians,—artists of the highest type.” The Armstrongs performed along the Atlantic seaboard from Key West to Philadelphia and are reputed to have toured in Cuba and Europe. According to the many newspaper accounts and handwritten endorsements included in their scrapbook, the troupe received widespread and enthusiastic audience acceptance. They performed before African-American audiences in churches and schools. They also gave performances for white audiences and, depending upon the location, for mixed audiences, in theaters, churches, schools, and opera houses. An advance publicity news clipping advertising their forthcoming appearance at Newport News, Va., asserts “The Armstrongs will tickle your shoe strings and make your big toe laugh. They will not pay doctor’s bills if you faint from laughter.” An undated newspaper clipping publicizing an appearance by the Armstrongs at the Columbia Theatre notes “These artists have been before the American public for the past 23 years, and have never failed to entertain their audiences with their magic, mirth, and mind reading mysteries. They have appeared in the largest cities of America and come well recommended.” John Hartford Armstrong Was one of the few black magicians who performed in the time span from 1900 to 1930. From 1901 through 1909 he toured with his brother Joseph (or Thomas) as the “Armstrong Brothers." Early 1901 he teamed up briefly with a magician named Jordan as "Armstrong and Jordan." After he married Lillie Belle he teamed with her as the “The Celebrated Armstrongs” also known as the “Armstrong Company." Lille Belle Armstrong When her husband died in 1939 both she and her stepdaughter Ellen continued his tradition, performing magic for the African American community. Lille Belle died in 1947. Ellen Armstrong She was the daughter of J. Hartford Armstrong and his first wife Mabel. Her mother died shortly after she was born. Along with her new stepmom (Lille Belle) she was soon integrated into the show. When her father passed away both she and her stepmom continued the act. After the death of her stepmom, Ellen continued her family's act becoming the first and only African American female magician touring with her own show. For thirty-one years, she continued to perform the Armstrong show up and down the East Coast, mainly at black churches and schools. Her tricks were common magic fare where she featured her own tricks and illusions of her father, such as "The Miser's Dream" and "The Mutilated Parasol." As time went on, she focused more on the drawing ability, billing herself as "Cartoonist Extraordinary." She retired in 1970 and spent her final years in a nursing home in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Her date of death is unknown. An excellent account of Ellen's life story can be found in the book, Conjure Times: Black Magicians in America by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson. Sources: magictricks.com; South Carolina Digital Archives/University of SC/Armstrong Family Papers

Mamie Emerson was an entertainer both in the States and abroad during the vaudeville era with performances in the early 1900s from "Sons of Ham" starring Williams and Walker and "Rufus Rastus" starring Ernest Hogan and "The Smart Set." In the June 8th, 1916 edition of the New York Age it announced that Mamie Emerson Logan died on May 6th in London. Funeral arrangements were made by a friend and fellow vaudevillian Belle Davis-Whaley. She was buried on May 9th. She left behind a son, Raymond and two sisters. Sources: Leslie's Weekly Newspaper (July 22, 1897); NY Age (June 8, 1916): The New York Age (June 8, 1916)

Amy Height (circa 1866 – 1913), was born in Boston, Massachusetts. No information has come to light about her arrival in Britain, but in July 1883 her name first appeared in The Stage newspaper, when she was credited as a member of the cast of a variety show at the Surrey Music Hall in Barnsley. Thereafter theatre critics often singled her out for praise. For example, when she appeared as Topsy, ‘Friday's Squaw’, in the pantomime Robinson Crusoe at the Grand Theatre in Islington in 1886, The Stage noted that she ‘displays considerable humorous power and command of expression, whilst in the vocalization of her songs she uses a clear and musical organ with considerable skill and effect’ (Dec. 31, 1886). In 1888 Height joined the first provincial tour of the African-American Bohee Brothers, who were billed as ‘banjoists to the Prince and Princess of Wales’. When she appeared on the London variety stage in Hoxton in 1891, The Stage noted that she put ‘much vitality and go into her songs and actions, and scored a distinct success’ (Oct. 8, 1891). In 1894, at Hammersmith's Lyric Opera House, she made the first of several appearances as the slave Aunt Chloe in the melodrama Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Stage acknowledged her ‘original and clever reading’ (Dec. 6, 1894). Later that year she was praised for her role as the Princess in another pantomime, Dick Whittington and His Cat, staged at the Elephant and Castle in London. In 1895 she shared the bill with the music hall comedian George Robey at the Royal Standard in Pimlico. In 1898 an article in The Stage mentioned Height alongside two other music hall legends—Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley—when a female impressionist publicly thanked them for permitting her to impersonate them. In 1899 she enjoyed one of her biggest successes as Princess Lulu in ‘a bright and tuneful musical farce’ called The Gay Grisette in London and then on tour. The Stage described her as ‘the cleverest coloured lady we have seen. She is a born comedienne, can sing, and introduce patter and gag, and makes herself a general favourite on her first entrance’ (Aug. 17, 1899). In 1900 the New York Times published a report on an African-American who had made a successful transition from singer to ‘straight’ actress in London in the play Madame Delphine. The newspaper noted that Height, whom they described as ‘a colored actress from Boston’ had made a ‘hit’ with Londoners as ‘a negro mammy, which is quite new to the English stage, and proved the chief artistic success of the play’ (New York Times, July 22, 1900). In 1901, at London's Tivoli, she appeared in the same variety show as the African-American music hall artiste Belle Davis. In the 1891 census Height described herself as a thirty-year-old ‘Theatrical Singer’, born in New York. She was living in Lambeth. In the 1901 census she described herself as a singer, again aged thirty. By then she was living in theatrical digs in Swansea. She entered her place of birth as America. When she appeared in the 1911 census, she described herself as a music hall artist from Boston, America, now aged twenty-nine. She was then living in Farnham, Surrey. Her last recorded appearance in The Stage was in January 1913 when she appeared at the Royal in Smethwick in Aladdin. She was still captivating audiences: she ‘sings and dances herself into favour as Smut-Tee, the servant’, the paper reported (The Stage, Jan. 16, 1913). By now living at 90 St George's Road, Southwark, she died from pneumonia on March 21, 1913 in the Southwark Infirmary in Camberwell. Her age was entered on the death certificate as forty-six, but this is likely to have been an underestimate. In the late Victorian era, and throughout the Edwardian era, Height was a popular entertainer in music halls, but she also made a number of appearances in pantomime, and there is evidence of a successful transition to ‘straight’ theatre. Her success was unusual for a black woman in Britain at that time. The public's contact with black women in the world of theatre was minimal in the Victorian era, but the versatile Height helped open doors for others, including her fellow American Belle Davis. Sources: Stephen Bourne Collection; The Stage (1883–1913); New York Times (July 22, 1900)

Emma Louise Hyers (1857 - circa 1901), one half of the famous Hyers Sisters. After the Gold Rush, a New York City barber named Samuel B. Hyers, 26, came west with his young wife. They settled in Sacramento, where he opened a barbershop and she devoted herself to the musical education of their gifted young daughters, Emma Louise and Anna Madah. The girls received pianoforte lessons and vocal training and were soon performing at private parties in order to gain experience in front of an audience. On April 22, 1867, the Hyers Sisters, 9 and 11, made their professional stage debut at Sacramento's Metropolitan Theater before a reported audience of 800. They received enthusiastic reviews in the Oakland Transcript and the Elevator, San Francisco's African American newspaper. When the girls were 14 and 16, they performed in Boston, singing mostly Verdi arias. By now their father was managing their career. "They are destined to occupy a high position in the musical world," the Boston critic wrote, citing the quality of Anna's high soprano (particularly her "faculty of reaching E-flat above the staff") and of Emma's phenomenal range, from mezzo-soprano to deep contralto. In 1872, the Hyers Sisters performed at the World Peace Jubilee, a festival held in Boston. It was the first major musical production in the country to feature artists of many colors together on the same stage. Their career reached its apex five years later, when a theater company organized by the Hyers family produced three musical dramas starring Anna and Emma. The shows "Out of Bondage," "The Underground Railway" and "Princess Orelia of Madagascar" were performed at San Francisco's Bush Theater. "Their production of 'Out of Bondage' (1890) was the first musical show to be produced by a black organization, thus signaling the transition from minstrelsy to black musical comedy in black entertainment." In 1883 the sisters decided to leave their father's management. Their parents had long been estranged, mother Annie Hyers having moved away from the family home in Sacramento, first to San Francisco then to Stockton. The breach with their father came in 1881 when he admitted into the company a young woman, 'little more than a teenager,' named Mary C Reynolds, whom he married two years later. He was then 53. Reynolds, billed as Mrs. May Hyers, was also a contralto and competed with Emma Louise (her stepdaughter) for roles. As the situation became untenable and likely to generate controversy, the sisters felt it incumbent on them to leave. At ages 17 and 19, they chose to be on their own. The sisters found new engagements for their combination of vocalists, at times in league with other managements, at other times contributing special items in companies of so called minstrels. Both sisters entered first marriages in 1883: Anna Madah to cornet player Henderson Smith and Emma Louise to bandleader George Freeman. The latter wedding took place in full view of the audience on the stage of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco during a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Callender's Minstrels. By the start of the 1890s the sisters had been performing professionally for more than twenty years and had won recognition and respect for their talents and skills. The sisters announced that they were leaving the stage after a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1893. Source: 'San Francisco Chronicle' by Heidi Benson and 'A History of African American Theatre' by Errol G Hill and James V Hatch Photo Source: Scrapbook belonged to Sallie Estell Ferris and passed down to her daughter, Ella Ferris Peck. The donor said that one of these women knew George M. Cohan (1878-1942), which explains why the album contains photographic prints of various performers active at the turn-of-the-century. Cohan was an entertainer, playwright, actor and director active prior to WWI. [Historic Charlton Park Village Museum]

She began her career as a child actress on radio and made her Broadway theater debut at the age of 15, when she snagged a role from 100 other girls for the Broadway play, "The Wisteria Trees," starring Helen Hayes. From then on, it was smooth sailing as she appeared on TV and radio and in seven other Broadway plays, garnering great reviews -- but still, as she put it during a TV interview, roles for "Black women were either mammies or whores." She chose another path and proceeded to create her own plays -- one-woman shows featuring a diverse group of characters from African villagers to American slaves to contemporary characters of all ages ranging from children to elders. The people she brings to life in these stunning vignettes exemplify the injustices she so hates. Her productions have been seen on Broadway, off Broadway, and in over 6,000 theaters, universities, and other venues on four continents. And they're still going strong as she continues to present them. She graduated from a Harlem high school at the age of 15, a member of Arista honor society, with a Classics Award in Latin, an American History Award, and a prize for excellence in English composition and literature. In recent years, Vinie acquired a Masters Degree in Performance Studies, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Summa cum Laude. She received an Honorary Doctorate from Paine College, for "achievements as artist, activist and scholar." This mother/grandmother and great-grandmother has been a fervent advocate for peace, joining together with 17 other grandmothers in October 2005 when they tried to enlist in the military at the Times Square recruiting center to replace America's grandchildren as a protest against the war in Iraq. This action resulted in arrest, time in jail, and a six-day trial in criminal court, at the end of which they were acquitted. Impressed with her oratorical brilliance and command of fact and theory, the Granny Peace Brigade quickly assigned her the task of often serving as spokesperson. Some of her honors include: • Michael Tigar Human Rights Award, University of Texas, Austin • NYS Peace Action Award • Eugene McDermott Award Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. • Silver Gavel Award American Bar Association - video narration • Emmy Nomination - video narration • Living Legend Award of The Black Theatre Festival • AUDELCO Award, Best Actress of the Year • Paul Robeson Award from Actors Equity Association www.vinieburrows.com

Theresa Harris, star of the theater relegated to portraying maids on film in Hollywood. Actress Theresa Harris (1909 - 1985), once shared with a reporter that her “greatest ambition was to be known someday as a great Negro actress.” Harris was born in Houston, Texas to Anthony and Ina Harris. Her father was a construction worker and her mother was a well-known dramatic reader and school teacher. In the late 1920s, her family relocated to Southern California, where Harris graduated from Jefferson High School with scholastic honors and then studied music at the University of Southern California Conservatory of Music and Zoellner’s Conservatory of Music. She briefly pursued a career in theatre, gaining her most acclaimed role as the title character in the Lafayette Player’s musical production of Irene. In 1933, Harris married John Robinson, a prominent Los Angeles physician. The same year, she received her first credited film role as a domestic in the drama Baby Face and subsequently became one of RKO’s most visible stock players. Although routinely donned in apron and head wrap, Harris refused to comply with the mammy stereotype and parlayed her dignified style in a plethora of Hollywood’s most classic films. Under RKO, Harris later graduated to glamorous film roles, semi-frequently showcasing her vocal abilities in solo segments. Recognition as one of the industry’s leading African American actresses followed rave reviews of her role as comedian Eddie “Rochester” Anderson’s costar in Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), which earned Harris a two-year, multi-picture contract with Paramount Studios. While the majority of her appearances remained minor or uncredited, Harris maintained visibility in more than 60 films and offered on-screen companionship to many of Hollywood’s greatest icons – including Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, and Barbara Stanwyck. As one of the industry’s first sable-toned actresses to receive credited and speaking roles, Harris also broke barriers by serving as a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), where she lobbied for dignified roles for African American actors. In 1974, Harris was inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame. She died in Englewood, California in 1985. Sources: On the Real Side by Mel Watkins; George Walters, Photographer (Los Angeles)

Frank and Edward Mallory were an outstanding novelty instrumental music, singing and dancing team, active on the minstrel and vaudeville stage, from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Their act included hand bells, saxophones and other brass instruments. Famed for their ability to imitate an entire brass band, they were considered one of the top vaudeville acts. As each brother married, he included his wife in the act and changed the name of the group accordingly. When Edward married Maizie Brooks (a harpist and singer), the name of the group changed to The Mallory Bros. & Brooks. When Frank married Grace Halliday (pianist, violinist, singer and dancer), the group's name changed to the Mallory Bros. Brooks and Halliday. Both Frank and Edward began their careers with Billy Kersands' Genuine Colored Minstrels (1885-1889), of which Frank was the end man and drum major of Kersands Minstrel Band. The two brothers next toured for a 20-week season with Richards & Pringle's Minstrel Show. The brothers next joined The Creole Show (1894-1896) as featured instrumentalists, in which they were praised for "their mandolin songs and dances and musical melange." Edward's wife, Maizie, was also in the chorus of this show. As the Mallory Bros. & Brooks, the three toured with The Octoroons show (1895-1897); next they joined Williams & Walker's Senegambian Carnival (1898), during which Frank's wife, Grace, also became a part of their act. Now calling themselves the Mallory Bros., Brooks & Halliday, they toured in Williams & Walker's A Lucky Coon show (1898-1899), of which Frank was also stage manager and played the title role, after which the four Mallory's toured in Williams & Walker's The Policy Players (1899-1900). After leaving Williams & Walker's company, the Mallory Brothers and their wives joined the King Rastus show (1900-1902), then were a featured act with the Fenberg Stock Co. (a white company), from 1902 -1904. And finally took their novelty musical act on tour of the Orpheum Circuit (a chain of white owned vaudeville and movie theatres) until Grace's (Frank's wife), death in 1906, after which the three remaining members of the group retired from the stage, making their home in Jacksonville, Florida. The Freeman, (Aug. 28, 1909) : Upon leaving the stage the Mallory Brothers, have made good use of money earned. They now possess some of the best property owned by colored people in Florida. They have eight rental houses in the city and one large two-story brick building in the business part of town, worth not less than $8,000. All of their property is well situated, and is always occupied by paying tenants. Since they left the stage they have been engaged in the broker business, and they run a first and second-hand mercantile establishment. They are constantly in demand also to furnish music for entertainment for whites and colored, as they keep an orchestra of eight persons constantly on hand. Maizie Brooks (Mrs. Ed Mallory), has permanent engagement with the leading (white) theater in Jacksonville. Sources: Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People (1816-1960) by Bernard L. Peterson; The Freeman Newspaper (August 1909)

Here she is dressed as Prince Zurleska in the opera Urlina the African Princess from 1879. The Hyers Sisters were important performers of musical theatre in northern California. They lived in Sacramento and started out as musical prodigies. Anna Madah was 12yrs and Emma Louise was 10yrs (although they were billed as ages 10 and 8) at their concert debut in 1867 at the Metropolitan Theatre in Sacramento. Their parents, Samuel B. Hyers and Annie E. Hyers (nee Cryer), had come west from New York. As singers themselves, they had first trained their daughters before sending them for instruction to a German professor, Hugo Frank, and then to the opera singer Josephine D'Ormy. Anna was a soprano; Emma a contralto and gifted comedienne noted for her character songs. They performed for several years in the San Francisco and Oakland areas before embarking on their first transcontinental tour in 1871, under their father's management. For their east coast performances, including an appearance at the Steinway Hall in New York, Samuel Hyers engaged the services of Wallace King, tenor and John Luca, baritone. Mr. A.C. Taylor pianist of San Francisco, traveled with the sisters as accompanist. Early in their repertoire the sisters had included 'dialogues in character' and were said to possess 'great dramatic ability.' It was no surprise, when on March 26, 1876 at the Academy of Music in Lynn, Massachusetts, they presented a musical drama entitled, 'Out of the Wilderness,' which had been written for them by Joseph Bradford of Boston. For this show the quartet of singers was joined by Sam Lucas, a sometime minstrel actor slated to become a veteran comedian of the African American stage. Billed as the Hyers Sisters Combination, the troupe toured their show to New England towns, playing mostly one-night stands. In June the play's title was changed to 'Out of Bondage.' It was a simple tale of a slave family before and the Civil War. Four younger slaves go North as older folk hold back when Union troops arrive to liberate the South. In the end the family is reunited as the elders, who had stayed behind, visit their children, who have become professional vocalists. In 1883 the sisters decided to leave their father's management. Their parents had long been estranged, mother Annie Hyers having moved away from the family home in Sacramento, first to San Francisco then to Stockton. The breach with their father came in 1881 when he admitted into the company a young woman, 'little more than a teenager,' named Mary C Reynolds, whom he married two years later. He was then 53. Reynolds, billed as Mrs. May Hyers, was also a contralto and competed with Emma Louise (her stepdaughter) for roles. As the situation became untenable and likely to generate controversy, the sisters felt it incumbent on them to leave. At ages 17 and 19, they chose to be on their own. The sisters found new engagements for their combination of vocalists, at times in league with other managements, at other times contributing special items in companies of so called minstrels. Both sisters entered first marriages in 1883: Anna Madah to cornet player Henderson Smith and Emma Louise to bandleader George Freeman. The latter wedding took place in full view of the audience on the stage of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco during a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Callender's Minstrels. By the start of the 1890s the sisters had been performing professionally for more than twenty years and had won recognition and respect for their talents and skills. Sources: A History of African American Theatre by Errol G Hill and James V Hatch; The Huntington Library

Youngest sister (Emma Louise Hyers) top right and older sister (Anna Madah Hyers), is at the bottom left. The Hyers Sisters were important performers of musical theatre in northern California. They lived in Sacramento and started out as musical prodigies. Anna Madah was 12yrs and Emma Louise was 10yrs (although they were billed as ages 10 and 8) at their concert debut in 1867 at the Metropolitan Theatre in Sacramento. Their parents, Samuel B. Hyers and Annie E. Hyers (nee Cryer), had come west from New York. As singers themselves, they had first trained their daughters before sending them for instruction to a German professor, Hugo Frank, and then to the opera singer Josephine D'Ormy. Anna was a soprano; Emma a contralto and gifted comedienne noted for her character songs. They performed for several years in the San Francisco and Oakland areas before embarking on their first transcontinental tour in 1871, under their father's management. For their east coast performances, including an appearance at the Steinway Hall in New York, Samuel Hyers engaged the services of Wallace King, tenor and John Luca, baritone. Mr. A.C. Taylor pianist of San Francisco, traveled with the sisters as accompanist. Early in their repertoire the sisters had included 'dialogues in character' and were said to possess 'great dramatic ability.' It was no surprise, when on March 26, 1876 at the Academy of Music in Lynn, Massachusetts, they presented a musical drama entitled, 'Out of the Wilderness,' which had been written for them by Joseph Bradford of Boston. For this show the quartet of singers was joined by Sam Lucas, a sometime minstrel actor slated to become a veteran comedian of the African American stage. Billed as the Hyers Sisters Combination, the troupe toured their show to New England towns, playing mostly one-night stands. In June the play's title was changed to 'Out of Bondage.' It was a simple tale of a slave family before and the Civil War. Four younger slaves go North as older folk hold back when Union troops arrive to liberate the South. In the end the family is reunited as the elders, who had stayed behind, visit their children, who have become professional vocalists. In 1883 the sisters decided to leave their father's management. Their parents had long been estranged, mother Annie Hyers having moved away from the family home in Sacramento, first to San Francisco then to Stockton. The breach with their father came in 1881 when he admitted into the company a young woman, 'little more than a teenager,' named Mary C Reynolds, whom he married two years later. He was then 53. Reynolds, billed as Mrs. May Hyers, was also a contralto and competed with Emma Louise (her stepdaughter) for roles. As the situation became untenable and likely to generate controversy, the sisters felt it incumbent on them to leave. At ages 17 and 19, they chose to be on their own. The sisters found new engagements for their combination of vocalists, at times in league with other managements, at other times contributing special items in companies of so called minstrels. Both sisters entered first marriages in 1883: Anna Madah to cornet player Henderson Smith and Emma Louise to bandleader George Freeman. The latter wedding took place in full view of the audience on the stage of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco during a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Callender's Minstrels. By the start of the 1890s the sisters had been performing professionally for more than twenty years and had won recognition and respect for their talents and skills. Sources: A History of African American Theatre by Errol G Hill and James V Hatch , Blacks in Blackface by Henry T Sampson

Charlotte "Lottie" Gee was born in 1886 in Millboro, Virginia. The details of her family and life remain obscure. Her career began in the early twentieth century as a dancing girl for the great Aida Overton Walker. In 1904, Gee appeared in James Weldon Johnson's musical comedy The Red Moon and other shows at that time. With Effie King and Lillian Gillman, she formed a trio, and then a sister act with Gillman. The two toured in vaudeville shows and Gee became a soloist with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra. When Gee, who played the part of Jessie Williams, introduced the song I'm Just Wild About Harry in the original Broadway musical comedy Shuffle Along also preempted New Yorkers' interest in black theatricals. Throughout the 1920s, Gee appeared in other revues. Notable among these was Chocolate Dandies (1924), a musical comedy in which she played the part of Angeline Brown. Edith Spencer and Gee teamed up in 1928, and advertised themselves as Harlem Sweethearts . When Lew Leslie's Blackbirds revue was mounted beginning 1926, it helped advance the career of several famous Harlem Renaissance artists, including Florence Mills, and Aida Ward. Mrs. Charlotte "Lottie" Gee Moy died on January 13, 1973. She is buried at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. Sources: Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era edited by Lean'tin L. Bracks, Jessie Carney Smith; The Competitor (vol. 2-3, '20-'21); Edward Elcha, Photographer

Siren Navarro was born on August 4, 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mom was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and her father was born in Italy. She was an early black entertainer who gained her biggest success when she teamed with dancer Tom Brown in an act called, "Brown and Navarro." They became a well known act touring the vaudeville circuit. Her former partner, Tom Brown was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1868. He was with McCabe and Young's Minstrels then with Richard and Pringel's Minstrels and the Lafayette Players. He died on June 20, 1919 of stomach cancer. Miss Navarro (sometimes spelled Nevarro), later re-invented herself (circa 1920) in an act with her husband (the couple married in 1919), Fred Byron and his brothers. They became known as the Byron Brothers Saxophone Band or the Byron Brothers Saxophone Quintet. After Siren joined the group it became known as the Byron Brothers Sextette. The elder Byron was known for inventing an instrument called the 'byrondolin.' In the 1930 census it lists her as being a housewife --- also appears she didn't have children. Siren Navarro Byron died on August 28, 1943 and is buried in Worth Township, Cook County, Illinois at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. She was 56. Source: White Studio, Daniel Cowin Collection (circa 1910)