"Sisters are doin' it for themselves!" We're busting into the world of podcasting with a mini-series about SISTERS who shaped the history of social dance, but don't always make the history books.  In our first ever episode, we dig into  the Whitman Sisters. We talk about out what-the-hell vaudeville was, and consider the savvy of The Whitman Sisters as business owners, in particular, their work as black women who dominated the early phase of America's entertainment industry. We consider what their singing, dancing, wise-cracking revue might have looked like: including drag performances and flipping the script on racial expectations. Shout out to scholar Nadine George Graves; much of what we know about the fabulous Mabel, Essie, Bert and Alice  is thanks to her work.

Nadine George Graves. The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender and Class in African American Theatre 1900-1940. St. Martin's Press (2000).

Performing Arts Encyclopedia, Tap Dance America, Library of Congress

The Whitman Sisters: Why We May Never Silence Them. No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.  Sep 2012.

Newspaper advertisement for The Whitman Sisters at The Pekin Theater. The Montgomery Advertiser. 08 Jan 1933,

Lily Kind