A few Black artists performed as themselves to white audiences before the Civil War

Evidence

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, an accomplished soprano who performed for all-white audiences in the United States and Europe, singing the gamut from Handel to Foster. Her refulgence baffled audiences accustomed to minstrelsy’s inelegance. The dexterous cornetist, fiddler, and pioneering bandleader Frank Johnson, who remains all but unknown, was one of the most acclaimed Black musicians of the nineteenth century. He helped stage the country’s first integrated concerts and, in the middle of 1843, along with his all-Black male troupe, endured a stoning in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, by local white thugs. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1120

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete evidence supporting the reframing argument — Black achievement existed despite, not because of, the structures that constrained it.