Note: The following, having originally published here, is reprinted with the author’s permission.

BY TRAV S.D. | Some years we manage to lean into Black History Month (February) more than others, and this’ll be one of those years. As it happens this, is the centennial of there being some kind of nationwide celebration of black culture in America. 1926 was when what was then known as Negro History Week was founded. (BTW I have seen some egregiously worded headlines and logos marking this benchmark, bearing some variation of “100 Years of Black History.” What we are observing however is 100 years of celebrating black history. Because there has been 400 years of black history in America and thousands more in Africa before that. Even jazz is older than 100!). Anyway, there is a dedicated website to the BHM100 project. Learn much more about it here.

Naturally we celebrate black culture year ’round at Travalanche. We add to our store of related posts every few days in the section we rather archaically titled “African American Interest,” my young adulthood having taken place in the 1980s and ’90s. That’s what we called the relevant section in the bookshop I worked at anyhow back in the day! In any case, there are nearly 700 posts in that part of the blog, most having to do with black performing artists of one kind or another, although we also write about other aspects of black culture as well. This year, as I say, we’re adding many more relevant posts than usual, including several more today, and others in the coming days and weeks.

To kick it off, I wanted to share intel about two great museum exhibitions that are up in New York right now that I heartily recommend.

Syncopated Stages: Black Disruptions to the Great White Way is at the New York Public Public Library for the Performing Arts (at Lincoln Center) through February 21.

This terrific and through overview of the history of black artists on Broadway was curated by scholar, author, and educator Michael D. Dinwiddie, who sadly died just a short time before the exhibition opened. Dinwiddie smartly began his chronology before the beginning, winding back his time machine all the way back to the African Grove Theatre in downtown Manhattan in the 18th century. The first thing one encounters upon entering the gallery is a scale model of the theatre, which is a real treat for theatre history geeks. There is also a section on blackface minstrelsy, tastefully and intelligently sequestered in its own cul-de-sac in the event that some sensitive visitors may wish to skip it.

I didn’t jot down every single thing I saw, but some of the artists I saw represented in the overall timeline include information on the Hyers Sisters, the Whitman Sisters, James A. Bland, Billy Kersands, Ernest Hogan, Walker and Williams, James Reese Europe, and Josephine Baker. There is a whole wall on shows like Shuffle Along, Porgy and Bess, The Hot Mikado, the works of Langston Hughes, House of Flowers, Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr, and Pearl Bailey in Hello Dolly. Then we come to come to more modern times, where we find stuff on Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Ellen Stewart, George C. Wolfe, The Wiz, Jelly’s Last Jam, Ragtime, Dreamgirls, The Scottsboro Boys, right up to political efforts like WSYWAT and beyond.

Syncopated Stages is up for three more weeks. Learn more about the exhibition here.

A few blocks north at our old salt mine New York Historical, we visited The Gay Harlem Renaissance, which will be up until March 8.

This being a history exhibit, it was more experiential than the Broadway one. As in the NYPL exhibit, music is piped in, in this case period-appropriate selections from Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and many others. As the poster indicates, there is lots of material on those old lesbian and bisexual blues queens and drag kings. That’s Gladys Bentley on the poster. Obviously, the LGBTQ subculture within the Harlem nightlife scene was clandestine, as it was technically illegal. During prohibition there were LEVELS of illegality. So among the items that made a big impression on me were actual POLICE REPORTS detailing activities in uptown gay bars and parties, from a time when same-sex conviviality was a crime. It of course made an impression because there is every reason to fear that Project 2025 had set us on a course that would bring that stuff back. Other objects were more celebratory: tuxes and top hats, a map of Harlem nightspots, paintings by Malvin Gray Johnson, poems by Countee Cullen, stuff on the likes of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin of course, and some likely bi figures like Moms Mabley and Zora Neale Hurston. And tons more.

Read more about The Gay Harlem Renaissance here.

Your trip to the New York Historical will be rewarded by everything ELSE they have going on, so I just want to plug a bit of that. You can continue your black history exploration with a tribute to Frederick Douglass on the first floor. There’s a second floor installation on women in downtown theatre, featuring info on folks as diverse as Laura Keene, Anita Bush, La Mama’s Ellen Stewart, The WOW Cafe, and Candy Darling (they have her shoes!)

Also timely is Declaring the Revolution, an exhibition of materials from the Society’s library relevant to America’s 250th birthday. There are also installations devoted to the late Bill Cunningham, the Erie Canal Bicentennial, and much else.

As a bonus extra, I want to mention a terrific one I saw a few months ago at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last fall. Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. This is why the theme of the Met Gala a few months ago. was Black Dandyism. I’m not a fashion person per se to put it mildly, but I was interested in many of the looks presented (and the people who sported them), because vaudeville was never very far away. Lots of good visual ideas to steal! There was stuff on Josephine Baker, George Walker, The Nicholas Brothers, Stump and Stumpy (zoot suits), and many others. I saw a pic of contemporary colleague Dandy Wellington at the opening! It doesn’t seem to be touring, but a catalog of the show is available to purchase.

Stuff to admire and inspire! For more like that, the relevant section of Travalanche is here.

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