![]() In an appendix I provide a time-line drawn from many sources, which I hope will serve as a starting point for A(i)da Overton Walker’s biographer. Laying the groundwork for this biography I outline facets of Overton’s work, along with cultural historians’ commentary on the importance of some of these facets, as well as proposing my own interpretations, questions, and suggestions for further research. This essay argues the urgent need for a feminist biographer to write a comprehensive biography of Overton’s life and work, as well as to publish her collected writings, and published interviews and reviews of her work. ![]() Du Bois and others, and a mentor for younger black female stage performers to carry on her work of increasing racial understanding internationally. Overton was a mother of modern dance, proponent of feminist black pride, a race leader along with W. ![]() Through her singing, acting, choreography, dance, teaching and mentoring, theatre production, intellectual writings, and cross-dressing performance Aida Overton Walker successfully subverted stereotypes of class, race and gender during the social upheaval and white-mob violence of the Gilded Age and early 1900s, while making her living on the popular stage. This paper is a critical overview of the society-shaping importance of the many facets of A(i)da Overton Walker’s life and work as the foremost African American stage performer at the turn of the century.
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