Respectable Vamp: A Black Feminist Analysis of Florence Mills’ Career in Early Vaudeville Theater

Abstract

Florence Mills was one of only a few African American women vaudeville performers to become an international success. Born in Washington D.C. in 1895 and raised in Harlem, New York, Mills was a child performer in dramatic and musical theater. Through analysis of Florence Mills’ performances in Shuffle Along (1921), Dover Street to Dixie (1923) and The Black Birds Revue (1926), I seek to reveal the ways Florence Mills made use of the cultural economies of vaudeville to resist dominant constructions of race and gender. In particular, I assert that Florence Mills manipulated white American and European desires to consume slave culture, and expanded economic and cultural possibilities for African American women entertainers.