Blackbirds of 1926: History and Key Facts

Blackbirds of 1926, also known as Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1926, was a musical revue with an all African American cast created and produced by impresario Lew Leslie that starred Florence Mills, Edith Wilson, and Johnny Hudgins, with music by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston, and lyrics by Grant Clarke and Roy Turk. The Blackbirds were a continuation of Leslie's Plantation Revue, and the 1926 show was the first and original of a series of revues that would continue for more than a decade. The show ran for two years, and was succeeded by a new show called Blackbirds of 1928, a Broadway hit. Leslie mounted a series of Blackbirds revues, which ran in 1926, 1928, 1930, 1933 and 1939. The series were named after Mills' theme song, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird," a thinly veiled protest against racial injustice, which she first sang in 1924.

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