Liberty Covered in Lights

Abstract This chapter evaluates how the history of tap dance runs parallel to a history of blackface. As a result of tap dance’s affiliation with minstrelsy and thus its ties to caricatures of Blackness, the form itself has come to signify not only “Otherness,” but also a national identity that allows white artists to perform Black affect without any acknowledgment of its diasporic evolution. One example of this presents itself in George M. Cohan’s production of Little Johnny Jones (1904), a successful Broadway show that reintroduced tap dance as solely white while utilizing a set of Africanist rhythms and hybridized dance practices. Rather than focusing on the visible aspects of tap dance and blackface minstrelsy, the chapter highlights some of minstrelsy’s invisible expressions, mainly those that can be heard. It explains how the term “Great White Way,” while not directly a critique of Broadway’s racial constitution, acts as a metaphor for the formation and inherent racial hierarchy of America’s primary theatrical space. Cohan, like so many other white Broadway directors, saw an economic advantage in capitalizing on Black art while disposing of the Black artists who contributed greatly to the artistry performed on his stage. The chapter also considers In Dahomey (1903), which presented the cakewalk in tandem with vulgar caricatures of Black people.