In Dahomey
Videos
In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy is a landmark 1903 American musical comedy described by theatre historian Gerald Bordman as "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be perform
George Walker, Adah Overton Walker, and Bert Williams dance
Original program from In Dahomey's debut tour.
The poster announcing the London premiere of In Dahomey at the Shaftesbury Theatre, 1903. The poster features the famous cake walk with Bert Williams, acclaimed comedian, at the top of the cake.
Vaudeville performers Bert Williams (left) and George Walker in blackface and comic outfits.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Videos
Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the Ame
In Dahomey
…and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." It features music by Will Marion Cook, book by Jesse A. Shipp, and lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was written by Jesse A. Shipp as a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement of the earlier nineteenth century. In…
Dunbar, circa 1890
1897 sketch by Norman B. Wood
Dunbar grave site at Woodland Cemetery, 2007
Dunbar on 1975 U.S. postage stamp