Music, Muscle, and Masterful Arts

Before the heyday of the Chitlin Circuit and the Harlem Renaissance, African American performing artists and creative entrepreneurs—sometimes called Black Bohemians—seized their limited freedoms and gained both fame and fortune with their work in a white-dominated marketplace. These Black performers plied their trade in circuses, blues tents, and Wild West Shows with Native Americans. The era’s traveling entertainments often promoted the “disappearing Indian” myth and promoted racial hierarchies with Black and Native people at the bottom. But in a racial economy rooted in settler-colonialism and legacies of enslavement, Black and Indigenous performers found that otherness could be a job qualification. Whether as artists or manual laborers, these workers rejected marginalization by traveling the world, making a solid living off their talents, and building platforms for political and social critique.  Eventually, America’s popular entertainment industry could not survive without Black and Native Americans’ creative labor. As audiences came to eagerly anticipate their genius, these performers paved the way for greater social, economic, and cultural autonomy.

Sakina M. Hughes provides a conceptually rich work revealing memorable individuals—laborers, artists, and entrepreneurs—who, faced with danger and discrimination, created surprising opportunities to showcase their talents and gain fame, wealth, and mobility.