"The Bourbons Got the Blues" flyer, 1938 May 8

File — Box: 1, Folder: 1

Identifier: 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Series:

This series contains materials from the Black Civil Rights movement in the United States, including a 1938 advertisement for an event featuring Duke Ellington, Juanita Hall, Georgia Burke, and others, put on by the Negro Cultural Committee, and a poster advocating for the freedom of Black Panther prisoners, like David Hilliard.

Dates

Creation: 1938 May 8

Langauge of Materials

From the Collection:

Languages represented in the collection: English, Spanish.

Access

This collection is open for research.

Extent

From the Collection: 7.5 Linear Feet (4 document boxes, 1 oversize doc box, 1 half-size document box, 4 flat oversize boxes)

Additional Description

Note

Promotional flyer printed in dark blue ink on light blue paper. [New York]: Negro Cultural Committee, [1938]. 8.5 by 11 inches.

A flyer for a performance which “offered historical sketches of black life from slavery to the Depression, presented by actors and playwrights in the WPA Negro Theatre” — Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, p. 203. The black playwrights Carlton Moss and Dorothy Hailparn wrote most of the skits and enlisted Georgia Burke, Duke Ellington, Juanita Hall, Rex Ingram, Arthur Wilson and Frank Wilson as performers. By all accounts, the most memorable acts was Miriam Blecker and Anna Sokolow’s satiric ballet, Filibuster, in which the dancers played senators opposing the antilynching law while actors read from the politicians’ actual filibuster speeches.