In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows-The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907).
Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham’s Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. She was, in the words of the New York Age’s Lester Walton, the exponent of “clean, refined artistic entertainment.”īorn in 1880 in Richmond, Virginia, Aida Overton grew up in New York City, where her family moved when she was young and where she gained an education and considerable musical training. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript LibraryĪida Overton Walker dazzled early-twentieth-century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes.
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