Bill Robinson

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, born Luther Robinson on May 25, 1878, in Richmond, Virginia, was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer. His parents, Maxwell Robinson, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director, both died in 1884, after which his grandmother Bedelia Robinson, formerly enslaved, raised him and his younger brother William in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. Robinson disliked his given name and persuaded his brother to swap names with him; his brother later adopted the name Percy and built a career as a musician under that name.

Robinson's performing life began at age five, when he danced as a busker outside local beer gardens and theaters in exchange for tossed coins. A promoter spotted him outside Richmond's Globe Theater and brought him into a local minstrel show as a pickaninny. At twelve, he ran away to Washington, D.C., taking odd jobs at Benning Race Track and working briefly as a jockey. In 1891 he joined Whallen and Martel's touring production of The South Before the War, again performing as a pickaninny. He later partnered informally with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1898 Robinson returned to Richmond and enlisted in the United States Army as a rifleman during the Spanish-American War, during which he sustained an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant cleaning his weapon.

His vaudeville career gained momentum on March 30, 1900, when he won a buck-and-wing contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, defeating Harry Swinton, then considered the foremost dancer of his day. The publicity from that victory secured him work across numerous traveling shows. From 1902 he partnered with George W. Cooper in a tap-dancing and comedy duo booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits, their collaboration lasting until 1916. Vaudeville performer Rae Samuels introduced Robinson to her manager and husband, Marty Forkins, whose guidance helped Robinson transition to a solo act earning an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this in part by constructing an alternate history that presented Robinson as an established solo performer, a strategy that helped him become one of the first Black artists to break vaudeville's two-color rule, which prohibited solo Black acts. During World War I, Robinson volunteered to perform without pay for thousands of troops in both Black and white units of the expeditionary forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. From 1919 through 1923 he maintained full bookings on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed by the Keith Circuit in 1924 and 1925, frequently performing multiple shows per night on two different stages. In 1926 he made a short tour of British variety theaters, headlining at the Holborn Empire and the Brighton Hippodrome.

Dance critic Marshall Stearns credited Robinson with transforming tap technique by bringing it up onto the toes, dancing upright and with a lightness that had not previously existed in the form. His signature routine was the stair dance, a rhythmically complex sequence of taps performed up and down a set of stairs, which he attempted unsuccessfully to patent. He is also credited with popularizing the word copacetic through repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.

Robinson's Broadway career extended from 1928 to 1945. He starred in All in Fun and appeared in the musicals Memphis Bound!, The Hot Mikado, and Buddies. He was among the earliest Black performers to headline Broadway productions and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.

His film career brought him widespread recognition, particularly through a series of films in the 1930s in which he danced alongside Shirley Temple. In The Little Colonel in 1935, Robinson became the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film as part of an interracial dance team. He starred in the 1943 musical film Stormy Weather, loosely based on his own life, which was later selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Throughout his career Robinson used his public prominence to challenge racial barriers. He was among the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear on stage as a Black performer without blackface makeup. He lobbied the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black officer, pressed President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II for equal treatment of Black soldiers, and organized the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser attended by both Black and white residents. He came under criticism from some who viewed him as too accommodating of racial stereotypes, a charge he strongly resented; his biographers argued that such critics underestimated the obstacles facing Black performers navigating mainstream white entertainment culture and overlooked his sustained efforts against racial prejudice.

Robinson was known for his support of fellow performers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, with Miller stating that he changed the course of her life. Gregory Hines later produced and starred in a biographical film about Robinson, for which Hines received the NAACP Best Actor Award. Congress designated May 25, Robinson's birthday, as National Tap Dance Day in 1989. Despite having been the highest-paid Black entertainer in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, with his funeral expenses covered by his longtime friend Ed Sullivan.