Photograph of five performing showgirls

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A silver gelatin print depicting a black-and-white image of five (5) performing showgirls. Each is depicted in a slightly different dance pose, caught mid-routine. The women are wearing identical costumes with short, medium-toned skirts and white bodices with beaded embellishments that decorate the front of the bodice. They each wear halo-style headdresses with sweetheart shaped front brims, decorated with feather plumes and beaded embellishments on the brim. Each dancer also wears arm-length fingerless gloves, also detailed with beading. The five (5) women dance in the foreground and mid-ground with musicians behind bandstands and audience members behind the dancers in the background. Laura Cathrell is the dancer in the right foreground and Birdie Warfield Edison is at the center. A painted wall mural in the far background depicts five (5) dancing women and one (1) kneeling man.

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