Abstract
“What shall the Negro dance about?” asked Hemsley Winfield after a dance performance at the Harlem YMCA in October 1933. The question is a metaphor for all African American performing artists who faced, throughout the twentieth century, overwhelming discrimination, but triumph on the stage. Those performers who have been most fulfilled and respected were those who had a strong sense of identity as African Americans and who, at some point in their careers, either danced, sang, wrote about, or performed dramatic roles that showed this strong sense of identity They resisted racism in their daily lives and in the theatre. They demanded that African Americans be represented authentically on the stage.
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N.B. I use the term Negro in this chapter because it is historically appropriate.
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© 2000 Glenda E. Gill
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Gill, G.E. (2000). What Shall the Negro Dance About?. In: No Surrender! No Retreat!. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05361-9_1
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