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Arts and Entertainment

Performing Arts

When were black women introduced in the minstrel show cast?

In 1891 The Creole Show, an all-black production in New York City with a white promoter, John Isham, became the first minstrel show to introduce black women into the cast. In the finale Dora Dean and Charles Johnson introduced the first theatrical cakewalk, derived from the old plantation chalk-line walk. It is also one of the first shows in which black performers did not wear blackface.



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