Master Juba

Master Juba (c. 1825 – c. 1854) was an African-American stage performer and variety theater actor active in the 1840s. He was one of the first black performers in the United States to play onstage for racially integrated audiences. His real name was believed to be William Henry Lane, and he was also known as "Boz's Juba" following Charles Dickens's graphic description of him in his 1842 travelogue American Notes. By affecting blackface performance, Juba was highly influential in the development of such American dance styles as tap, jazz, and step dancing.

As a teenager, he began his career in the rough saloons and dance halls of New York's Five Points neighborhood, moving on to minstrel shows in the mid-1840s. "Master Juba" frequently challenged and defeated the best white dancers, including the period favorite, John Diamond. At the height of his American career, Juba's act featured a sequence in which he imitated a series of famous dancers of the day and closed by performing in his style. Being a black man, he appeared with minstrel troupes in which he imitated white minstrel dancers caricaturing black dance, obscuring his underlying ethnic identity with blackface. Even with his success in America, his greatest success came in England.

In 1848 "Boz's Juba" traveled to London with the Ethiopian Serenaders, an otherwise white minstrel troupe. Boz's Juba became a sensation in Britain for his dance style. He was a critical favorite and the most written-about performer of the 1848 season. Nevertheless, an element of exploitation followed him through the British Isles, with writers treating him as an exhibit on display. Records place Juba in both Britain and America in the early 1850s. His American critics were less kind, and Juba faded from the limelight. He died some time after 1851, most likely in 1854, likely from overwork and malnutrition. He was largely forgotten by historians until a 1947 article by Marian Hannah Winter resurrected his story.

Existing documents offer confused accounts of Juba's dancing style, but certain themes emerge: it was percussive, expressive, varied in tempo, and at times lightning-fast. The dance likely incorporated both European folk steps, such as the Irish jig, and African-derived steps used by plantation slaves, such as the walkaround. Before Juba's career, the dance of blackface performance was more faithful to black culture than its other aspects, but as blackfaced clowns and minstrels adopted elements of his style, Juba further enhanced this authenticity.