Joins the cast of "Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk"

On January 8, 1898, Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk, composed by Will Marion Cook with lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar, opened at the Casino Theatre Roof Garden in New York. This production was a landmark moment as one of the first musicals written, composed, and performed entirely by African Americans to reach a mainstream New York audience.

Aida Overton Walker, still a young performer at this time, was part of the vibrant company that helped bring the cakewalk—a dance originating among enslaved and formerly enslaved African Americans—into the mainstream of American popular culture. The production's success demonstrated that Black artists could create commercially successful, artistically ambitious work despite the pervasive racism and stereotyping of the minstrel tradition.

This early experience placed Overton Walker at the center of a cultural shift in American entertainment, where Black performers were beginning to assert creative control over how their culture was represented on stage. It set the stage for her subsequent, more prominent collaborations with Bert Williams and George Walker, and helped establish the cakewalk as a dance craze that swept both Black and white audiences across the United States and eventually Europe.