[African Americana]: [Missouri]: Beau Brummel Minstrels:

Souvenir Program Beau Brummel Minstrels Presented by the Beau Brummel Club of Greater Kansas City [wrapper title].

[Kansas City, Mo. 1947]. [8]pp. Quarto. Original illustrated wrappers, stapled. Wrappers and text printed in blue. Minor wear and dust-soiling, some creasing, short closed tear to front wrapper. Very good. Item #4436

A seemingly-unrecorded program for a performance of the Beau Brummell Minstrels in Kansas City on May 5, 1947. The program includes the schedule of events for the evening, which saw performances from notables such as Marlene Jones, Cornelius Groves, Jr., and Edward Dilliard, among many others. The emcee for the evening was the multi-faceted entertainer Pinkney Roberts. More than half of the real estate devoted to each page of the program, however, is devoted to commercial listings, compliments, and well wishes by a variety of local residents and businesses. In total, this provides historical documentation of dozens of people and companies supportive of the Black community in Kansas City during the Jim Crow era. The event and the program were produced by the Beau Brummel Club of Greater Kansas City, a social club for African Americans in Kansas City. We could locate no other copies of this program, in OCLC, auction history, or elsewhere. The program is accompanied by a promotional photograph of an unidentified African American entertainer.

From the Kansas City Star: "The Beau Brummel Club was founded in 1918 by Roy Dorsey, a tailor who also pitched a couple of games for the Negro Leagues' Kansas City (Kansas) Giants, Percy Lee, a teacher at the Attucks School and Felix Payne, a club owner and politician with ties to Tom Pendergast. Dorsey conceived of the club as a way of entertaining Black soldiers visiting on leave from nearby military bases and Black soldiers returning from the war. Originally called the 'Bon Vivants,' they later renamed the club after Beau Brummell, the famed British fashion influencer of the early 1800s. Like the Brummel Club in Tucson, Arizona, which also catered to Black residents, it dropped the second 'l' in Brummell. The new Beau Brummel Club took its place among other Kansas City area Black social clubs like the Cheerio Boys, the Kewpie Klub, the Harmony Art and Literary Club, the Sans Souci Club, and 'Les Cinq Cents Miraculeux,' or The Miraculous Five Hundred."

Price: $350