ABSTRACT
This chapter uses primary source material to complicate the reception of the 2016 production of Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. Was the book by Black creatives Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles for the original 1921 production of Shuffle Along “racist”? Does such a critique even make sense? Or is Depression-era blackface, on and offstage, a harbinger of Black Lives Matter-era performance art? This chapter argues for a reconsideration of blackface and of the original Shuffle Along’s ongoing cultural meaning(s).
