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Egbert (Bert) A. Williams (1874-1922) was a black Bahamian performer whose comedic skill brought him the adulation of black and white Americans alike. Moving to the United States at a time when blacks in America faced de jure segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North, he rose from obscurity to become not merely the "pioneer black comedian," in the words of biographer Eric Ledell Smith, but the leading comedian of his time.1 He possessed extraordinary versatility, and performed in various forms of popular theatrical entertainment, beginning in minstrelsy in the 1890s, later moving on to black musical theatre, vaudeville, and the Broadway musical revue. At the time of his death at age forty-seven, he was preparing to bring his star vehicle, Under the Bamboo Tree-in which he was the sole black actor-to Broadway. These achievements evidence not only Williams's success throughout his career, but also his unparalleled skill in managing white and black audiences, whom he addressed in distinct ways both on and off the stage. Remarkably, even as he sought to satisfy disparate audiences, he created a space for self-definition. Through his inimitable onstage character, he disrupted images of the stage "darky"; through his offstage presentation, he countered the Negro stereotype. In this essay, I analyze Williams's onstage and offstage interventions, examining his performative strategies during the later years of his career.
Study reveals, however, that most scholars who have considered Williams have been primarily invested in the early years of his career: specifically, his sixteen-year partnership with black American George Walker.2 Notable exceptions are Smith, who chronicled Williams's entire career, and Sandra Richards, whose "Bert Williams: The Man and the Mask" attends to Williams's career after his work with Walker, but does so mainly to illustrate what she perceives as a period of decline.3 Williams's years as part of Williams and Walker have merited considerable study. The two were the first black recording artists (1901), and first to perform a full-length musical on Broadway (1902); additionally, they and their company gave a command performance before the king of England (1903).4 These and other accomplishments demonstrate the duo's critical role in black musical theatre, which David Krasner has addressed in Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895-1910,...