Prepare for a visit to AAMLO with these special topic resource guides.
This resource guide is intended to help users locate holdings at AAMLO related to African American dance and dancers.
It highlights holdings in the following areas:
● Selected Library Material at AAMLO
● Selected Archival Collections at AAMLO
Other collections may contain relevant materials. Please contact AAMLO (aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org) with any questions or to schedule an appointment to view materials in person.
Selected Library Materials
Black Dance in the United States From 1619 to 1970 by Lynne Fauley Emery
Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance by Thomas DeFrantz
African-American Concert Dance: the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond by John O. Perpener
Jazz Dance: the Story of American Vernacular Dance by Marshall Winslow Stearns
The Black Dancing Body by Brenda Dixon Gottschild
Black Dance by Edward Thorpe
Katherine Dunham, a Biography by Ruth Beckford
Island Possessed by Katherine Dunham
Dancing in Blackness by Halifu Osumare
Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities edited by Kariamu Welsh
Selected Archival Collections
Ruth Beckford Papers. Dancer, teacher, and author Ruth Beckford (1925-2019) was born on December 7, 1925 in Oakland, California. At age 3, Beckford began taking dance lessons from Florelle Barsford and by age 8 she was performing professionally as a dancer in local vaudeville acts with her twin brothers, Felix W. and Felix Garvey Beckford. In 1943 during her senior year in high school, Beckford joined Katherine Dunham’s Company, training for three weeks before performing with the company at shows on the West Coast. After high school, she attended the University of California, Berkeley where she majored in Physical Education and studied modern dance with Caryl Cuddleback. While studying at the university, Beckford became the first African American member of the Orchesis Modern Dance Honor Society. After graduating in 1947, she found and directed the first recreational modern dance program in the country teaching dance classes for the Oakland Recreation Department at DeFremery Recreation Center. She would lead the dance program for twenty years while also performing with Anna Halprin and Welland Lathrop dance companies. In 1954 Beckford started her own dance company, Ruth Beckford African-Haitian Dance Company, which toured across the country performing African and Haitian dances. The company’s first performance was at the University of California, Berkeley’s Wheeler Auditorium. In the same year, Beckford opened dance studios in Oakland and San Francisco offering classes in African-Haitian dance using the Dunham technique. Beckford toured with her dance company, taught classes at her dance studio, and directed the Oakland Recreation Department’s Modern Dance Program until she retired from performing dance and disbanded her dance company in 1961 and retired from the City of Oakland in 1967. She continued teaching at her two dance studios until closing both in 1975. [Online items]
Eudora C. Proctor Papers. Eudora “Dodo” Proctor (1917-1993) was born on September 29, 1917 to Clyde Proctor and Ellen Proctor. After learning to dance from Bill Robinson’s radio programs, she began working at The Barbary Coast night club at age 12. While performing in the 1939 production of The Swing Mikado, Proctor and three other members of the production, Milton Lovett, Harry Villa, and Eloise Clay, formed their own song and dance group Lovett, Villa, and the Rhythm Queens. During the early 1940s, the group toured around the U.S. and Canada performing shows in night clubs with notable performers including Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Nat King Cole. In the early 1940s at the suggestion of Fats Waller, the group changed its name to The Four Kit Kats, and Proctor was promoting herself as the Queen of the Taps or the Queen of Rhythm. Following the war, Proctor continued to work as a performer and dance instructor, and she also worked as various positions as a nurse’s aide, clothing designer, and a beautician, eventually opening her own beauty parlor, Eudora’s House of Beauty, in Oakland in the 1950s.
Annette Starr Bruce Hudson Papers. Annette Starr Bruce Hudson (1920-2002) was born on March 16, 1920 to Elmer G. and Marguerite Starr in Oakland, California. After graduating from the Merle Norman Institute in 1953, she opened a Merle Norman Studio selling cosmetics and perfumes. In 1954, she opened a charm and modeling studio, Annette's Studio of Transformation, in Berkeley, California, which trained hundreds of graduates each year in personality development, voice and diction, wardrobe, modeling, makeup, hairstyling, figure control, visual poise, and social grace. In the 1950s, Hudson also wrote the social event column, "People!, Places!, and Things!," for the African American newspaper The California Voice.
Rhonda White-Warner Papers. Publisher and media consultant Rhonda White-Warner (1951-2014) was born on July 7, 1951 in Oakland, California. She began her career in the Oakland arts community in 1974 as a program director for the Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program coordinating and offering technical assistance to Alameda County cultural organizations. In 1977, she was hired as a public information specialist for the City of Oakland’s Office of Parks and Recreation writing press releases and advertising the department’s cultural and recreational programs. By 1981 she created her first media consulting and event planning agency, Authenic Vint’age Promotions, contracting with local artists to assist with graphic design, media advertising, and event planning. In 1988, she launched Rhonda White-Warner’s Tidbits, a magazine dedicated to promoting African American arts and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. The magazine featured articles, interviews, and an events calendar focused on the African American dance, theater, and visual arts community. The magazine was published until it ceased publication in 1993.
African American Museum & Library at Oakland Oral History Collection. Includes an oral history interview with Ruth Beckford (1925-2019) discussing her life and career. Also included is an interview with Geraldyne Washington discussing growing up in Oakland in the 1940s and popular dance in West Oakland during the 1940s-1950s.
Jay Payton Papers. The Jay Payton Papers consists of 2 quad videotapes of “The Jay Payton Show,” a weekly entertainment program on KEMO-TV Channel 20 that began in 1972 as the “Soul Is” show. Promoted as “the show that boasts about Bay Area entertainment being as good as you’re going to get,” it regularly featured national and Bay Area African American musicians and dancers such as Jackie Wilson, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and Lenny Williams, lead vocalist of Tower for Power. Directed by Drew Pfeiffer, the program was produced by Sal Watts and Jay Payton with dance coordinator Little André. Of special interest is a 1976 episode featuring the Black Resurgents dancing the Oakland Boogaloo. [View online]
African American Museum & Library at Oakland Vertical File Collection. Includes various newsletters, dance programs, performance flyers, correspondence and reports documenting African American dance and African American dancers in the Bay Area, circa 1940s-2000s. Selected items include programs and flyers related to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Ellen Webb Dance Company, Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Dimensions Dance Theater, Alice Arts Center, and many others.
Oakland Post Photograph Collection. Includes various photographs of dance performances and dancers appearing in the Oakland Post newspaper between 1963-2005. Selected photographs document the Children's Folk Dance Festival, Oakland Parks and Recreation Dept. Dance Concert Series, Iona Pear Dance Theatre, Stanze Peterson Dance Company, and many others.
Additional Information
Search the library using the catalog.
Consult AAMLO's finding aids in the Online Archive of California.
We are working to create new resource guides. Have an idea for a new guide? Contact us at aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org.
