Shuffle Along Creates a Template for Black Broadway Musical Comedy

The 1921 Broadway success of 'Shuffle Along' by Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Flournoy Miller, and Aubrey Lyles—the first Black-written, Black-produced, and Black-performed musical on Broadway since the Reconstruction era—created immediate demand for Black musical theater. Its innovations in syncopated rhythm, jazz-inflected songs (including 'I'm Just Wild About Harry'), and energetic choreography influenced not only subsequent Black musicals but Broadway musical form generally. It launched the careers of Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson.