14 December 2021 | Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music

Abigail Davis, Raina Rosemary,

Dayo Ogunmodede, Meggie Synder, Taylor Wesseln

Mapping Black Women in Vaudeville:

The Theater Owners Booking Association

ABOUT

Project Abstract

Our project maps the performances of Black women who performed on the Theatre Owners Booking Association circuit in the 1920s. The Theatre Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A) was a circuit of theaters that booked African American vaudeville performers in the 1920s and 30s. We chose to focus on women performers both to narrow the scope of our project and to highlight the contributions of a group that faced unique barriers due to the intersection of their race and gender. 

The points on our maps represent performances documented in African American newspaper advertisements, news stories, and reviews. We compiled the performance dates, locations and performers into a spreadsheet and then imported them into our maps. Overall, we identified more than 100 performances. Using Henry T. Sampson’s Blacks in Blackface : A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, we also mapped 32 theaters that became the original T.O.B.A. circuit members and over 150 theaters owned or operated by Black people between 1910-1930 across the United States.

To add to our data collection, we created a bibliography of scholarly work regarding the T.O.B.A. circuit, vaudeville, and African American performers. We were interested in understanding the work that had already been done and sought to build on this work through the stories that our maps could tell. We were particularly interested in highlighting the accomplishments and popularity of these performers, many of whom we encountered frequently in our research. 

The data in our maps was compiled over the course of a single semester, and are not a complete collection of T.O.B.A. performances by women, nor a complete collection of T.O.B.A. theaters. However, we do think our research is an important first step in inspiring further questions and research about the lives and legacies of these artists and the theaters in which they performed. 

Abigail Davis, Taylor Wesseln, Raina Rosemary, Meggie Synder, and Dayo Ogunmodede

Image Credits: Unknown author. “Whitman Sisters.” published c.1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whitman_Sisters.jpg | Used under Fair Use for educational purposes.