Afrcian American women have fascinated American culture since the days of slavery when it was not uncommon for their "Masters" to engage in sexual relations with them and take them as Mistresses. One of the most famous of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson is well known for his fascination and love affair with his slave, Sally Hemmings. The Black female generally has a body accentuated with well rounded bottoms and magnificent breasts that look as if they could could serve a cafe au lait or a creamy latte to quench a mans thirst. The Black female was also designed phsyically strong and athletic, and as slaves were also coursen chosen and purchased for breeding purposes on the plantation.
As slaves they had to do their owners bidding. Along with domestic duties for the most part, at times they would dance to entertain the slave owner and his white cronies. The white wives of slave owners were not blind to the fact of the males attraction to the exotic Black beauties either, and there exist are many documented instances where the white mistress of the household had cruel streaks that culminated in violence against the Black female slave fostered by a festering jealousy that fueled the fire. It was not unusual for the white female to beat the Black female slave and otherwise humiliate her in front of her husband.
Slavery proliferated in the Western Hemisphere and documentation has shown that African slaves, similar to many Native American tribes, used a form of dance that included a heaping helping of martial arts that was more or less not for the purpose of entertainment, but, as a form of signal of intent of an upcoming uprising against their oppressers. Black females and males were participants in these displays that were unnoticed by the slaves owners for what they actually were.
As the era of slavery ended in America with the conclusion of the civil war, discrimination against African Americans did not. Jim Crow laws were enacted to keep them from voting, owning property and from real equality as promised in the Emancipation Proclamation. It was also an era of westward expansion and as wild west towns popped up lilke so many prarie dogs in Wyoming, there was a need for female companionship and female entertainment. Black females gradually joined the ranks of white females making the westward trek to fill the saloons employed as bar girls and prostitutes. The Black female was not regarded as an equal because of race, but, that did not stop white males from shelling out cowboy money for a romp under the African American covers of the best bordellos north of the border. This racial line also blurred when it came to Mexican, Indian and Asian females. Although racism was rampant for them as well, there was something about sex that seemed to break down these barriers, at least until orgasm was reached. Black female prostitutes were highly prized and soon they took on other roles in the burgeoning west as they became entrenced in the world of entertainment to an entranced white male population. Singers became famous, while dancers were regarded as goddess of the stage with their exotic bronze texture and long legs and ample attributes above and below their physical Mason Dixon line.
Then along came the dawn of burlesque. It spread across the continent from the land of Camptown Races in the wild west, as the Can Can Dancers hit the burlesque circuit in the midwest aboard the riverboats. In the midwest on the river of Mark Twain these boats were floating flotillas for vice including prostitution, gambling and drinking along with stage shows with costumed performers singing and dancing, some of it risque where women with full skirts would lift it up so the men would whoop it up with the first sign of female flesh in the form of thigh and a hint of what lay just below the navel. The riverboat shows soon added Minstels and entertainers made up to look like African Americans in the most grotesque exaggerated stereotypical makeup that was one part parody and two parts racism, but only whites were allowed to take to the stage. Black females were excluded from these presentations, with the exception of those engaged in theatrics in the industrial east. These girls were making headway in small Black venues but the Bronze Bomshell was about to explode!
Before the Bronze detonation, Black females were used in theatrical productions by white producers and were usually cast as servants and faithful maids. The mammie aspect was also highly visible, but by the late 1870's two sisters, Anna and Emma Hyer, both gifted singers decided to move from operatic offerings to the more proletarian stage in musicals produced by an African American theatrical company. Their portrayals moved the role of the Black female on stage from one of "bondage" in the role of servant on stage to that of respected artist and professional performer. Black females were now re-defining their role in not only theater, but in society as a whole!
The old west was waning by the last decades of the 19th Century and the industrial revolution was in full swing. The restrictive Victorian Era was coming to a close and it was time for the first all black female chorus line of long legs and high kicks. Burlesque was getting more racy and risque by the minute in the late 19th Cnetury, more and more Black females were penetrating this once whites only territory and by 1890 the Creole Show exploded on the scene with elaborate costuming and showing enough brown flesh, especially legs, that the Bronze Erector Creator was going full tilt boogie. It was also the first time in history that Black females were becoming bonafide bursleque stars, but it wasn't until 1895, that "The Octoroons" hit the circuit with a cast of long legged Black beauties that were entertaning with class and elegance, along with ample examples of delicious chocolate flesh visible. Other individuals and troupes followed inlcuding Sissieretta Jones who went by the name of "The Black Patti" who although had an operatic voice to shatter glass, was barred from singing at the Metropolitan Opera for one reason...she was African American. She realized too that other talented Black females were being denied entry to Broadway theater, so she gathered them together to form Black Patti's Troubadours which not only hired Black females providing employment for them, but also trained them the next generation of dancers and burslesque stars including Aida Overton Walker. Aida was as erotic and exotic as they came and she was the cause of adulation among black and white male patrons who discovered that no matter what race she was her beauty transcended all barriers proving that a great set of legs could bring down the house! Her most famous act was Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils, first performed in 1908 which was as erotic a telling of a bible story if there ever was. Makes one want to open up the good book and see what else was in there hidden amongst all the begatting and fornication!
As the 20th Century dawned, other shows proliferated for Black female burlesque including thsoe troupe members of the "Brownskin Models" and "Chocolate Scandals." Black venues and shows were all the rage of the golden jazz age, and Harlem was undergoing a renaissance where Black females dominated the stage and entertainment scene. It was standing room only. Meanwhile across the ocean in Europe another Bronze Bombshell, Josephine Baker was savagely dancing her "Danse Sauvage" to delighted crowds who wanted to see her peel those delightful dangling banana's that hung suggestively from her skirt. She became the Holy Grail of Black Female Entertainers. She was known as The Creole Goddess and blazed a trail by shaking her magnificent tail. Baker was sex personified. She was an American born Parisian dancer, dressed up in a skirt of dangling banana's with sexy bare brown breasts bared to an appreciative cabaret crowd, She not merely a symbol of the Jazz Age..she defined it. She was born in St. Louis in 1906. She left home at a young age, living on the mean streets as a homeless teenager living in cardboard boxes. She danced for money on the street and was so mesmerizing that she was eventually "discovered" and after time in the states in clubs, was taken to Paris to hit the cabaret circuit where she wowed the crowd as the "Bronze Venus" and as the "Creole Goddess" and took Europe by storm. She not only defined the jazz age with all it's sexuality and experimentation but in fact with her gyrating hips she fuel injected it.
She may have bared all, or nearly all, and many think that she was merely an entertainer that could elicit a male erection at 20 paces, but she was more. During WWII she worked as a spy for the French Resistance against Nazi tyranny. Shuttling coded messages from different regions of occupied France. Her work as an entertainer allowed her this freedom of travel. Also, what man could resist having a drink with her, and in the case of Nazi officers the alcohol loosened them up just enough to give some minute, yet important information of value to the Resistance which she would pass along in code. Admittedly bi-sexual, Josephine, had many affairs, with men and women, including one with Freda Kahlo among others. As a bi-sexual, participants from both genders appealed to her and lucky were those that did!
Burlesque was the sexual shot heard 'round the world for decades, in fact it evolved gradually over a century from timid roots to it's position as a genre of performance arts with sex as it's centerpiece that took tassles and topless to new heights, but by the Sixties, that was all changing, as was every facet of society. Feminists were protesting the exploitation of women in what were now called "strip clubs" and the clientele was getting downright sleazy. It was against this backdrop that the club owners wanted the dancers in the white clubs to mix and mingle with the customers, formerly a no no with the look but don't touch mantra that was the rule of the day. The burlesque dancer was no longer a true sex artist, but merely a stripper, and that customer mingling led to lap dancing and fantasy booth performances. The art had been effectively removed from the profession and by the disco era of the 1970's burlesque had become stripping for the sake of stripping, nudity for nudities sake. Along with clothing removed, art had been removed as well.
By the 1990's burlesque began a revival with new performers who wanted to explore this artform and culture, and today it is exploding once again and this time it is more theatrical and promotes positive female independance and sensuality. Once again, class and elegance have returned with a new age of burlesque that no longer is segrated by black and white, but also includes, other nationalities and races, as well as BBW's and other body types not associated in the past with burlesque. Today Burlesque Reviews are making a huge comeback and Black Burlesque artists are more popular then ever today, proving that Black is Beautiful and in the world of burlesque....Black is Back!