The Impresarios of Beale Street: African American and Italian American Theatre Managers in Memphis, 1900–1915

Music scholars Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have researched what they call “a deep African American vaudeville theater tradition” in Memphis during the first decade of the twentieth century that helped lead the way to the commercialization of the blues. Their body of work provides a very useful and fascinating historical overview of the black vaudeville scene of the time on the national level. This article seeks to broaden that overview, using a much more focused, microhistorical perspective on the history of theatre management on one particular street in one particular, midsized southern city. It argues that in Memphis, the story of African American and Italian American theatre managers shows that realities were often much more complex than histories that portray a rigid and heavily drawn color line have suggested.