Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Bill "Bojangles" Robinson

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949)

Although Bojangles' time in Harlem was brief and seems to only be in the context of stops on his tours, he is included by the wiki author as part of the Harlem Renaissance. I have included him in this series for that reason and because he is a well known performer of the time frame.

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From Wikipedia:

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology, starting in the age of minstrel shows, moving to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, “Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging,” giving tap a “…hitherto-unknown lightness and presence.”[1]:pp. 186–187 His signature routine was the stair dance, in which Robinson would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. Robinson is also credited with having introduced a new word, copacetic, into popular culture, via his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.

A popular figure in both the black and white entertainment worlds of his era, he is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on Robinson's own life, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Robinson used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers, including becoming the following:

one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear without the use of blackface makeup
one of the earliest African American performers to go solo, overcoming vaudeville's two colored rule
a headliner in the first African-American Broadway show, Blackbirds of 1928
the first African American to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Temple in The Little Colonel)
the first African American to headline a mixed-race Broadway production
During his lifetime and afterwards, Robinson also came under heavy criticism for his participation in and tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with critics calling him an Uncle Tom figure. Robinson resented such criticism, and his biographers suggested that critics were at best incomplete in making such a characterization, especially given his efforts to overcome the racial prejudice of his era. In his public life Robinson led efforts to:

persuade the Dallas police department to hire its first African American policemen
lobby President Roosevelt during World War II for more equitable treatment of African American soldiers
stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which, with the permission of the mayor, was attended by both black and white city residents
Despite being the highest-paid black performer of the era, Robinson died penniless in 1949, and his funeral was paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. Robinson is remembered for the support he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens, and the Nicholas brothers. Both Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ann Miller credit him as a teacher and mentor, and Miller credits him with having “changed the course of my life.” Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best actor Award. In 1989, the U.S. Congress designated May 25, Robinson's birthday, as National Tap Dance Day.

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The interesting thing is that the above is just the intro to the wiki!  I haven't really watched the full repertoire of Bojangles but my passing awareness of him was as a minstrel performer along the lines of Steppin Fetchit bur with more style (his tap routine in Shirley Temple movies for example). From what little I have read of him, I think the folks in Harlem probably regarded him in much the same way. In spite of that it is notable that he did break a lot of barriers in the entertainment industry as a Black man in the time when he was "colored" or "negro" at best. In a sense, he paved the way for the artists of the jazz movement that the Harlem Renaissance is most known for.  He may have played "safe" roles for his skin tone, but what actor even today doesn't? Plus he did the roles with a dignity that Steppin did not (in my opinion).