So in the last film history I've wrote about how blacks really had it a bit rough when it came to being on film, most blacks were not allowed to be showed in a movie and if they were then they had to have these character traits or stereotypes that were common back in the day and very rarely would these black actors or actress would ever reach the famous mark to the point where even both black and white audiences would love an respect them, but between 1890s and 1910s we would have our first popular black actor on both stage and in movies named Bert Williams. He was born on November 12, 1874 and started performing for both black and white audiences in minstrel shows along with his good friend, George Walker. They would perform in blackface and used common stereotypes that were known to most audiences at the time, but they did gain a lot of recognizing and did many firsts during their acting career including performing in the first ever all African-American musical play in Broadway, In Dahomey made by Will Marion Cook and it became a huge hit in both US and in the UK so much that it also became the first time that a black musical would have a score published in the UK, but not so much in the US as even though these guys were popular, they were still met with hostility because of their skin color and they still faced racial discrimination.
Still, even though he was facing harsh discrimination in America and after his best friend George Walker passed away in 1911, Williams continue his life as an entertainer and got another major success in Flo Ziegfeld's Follies. At first, the white people didn't want a black guy being in an all white cast play, but Ziegfeld wanted Williams in the role, even going so far to say that he can replace every single one of them, except Williams. Thankfully thought, the Broadway was a big hit and once again Williams became a household name to both black and white audience, he was such a big star that he later continued to be in all of Ziegfeld's Follies throughout 1910-1919, while he was staring the Broadway play, he was also chosen to be an actor in some silent films for Biograph, sadly most of them are lost and only two of them survive and can be seen on YouTube. He then later retired from being a filmmaker after he became frustrated with the limitations of primitive and also because Biograph was about to go out of business at this point. After his time in the film industry he went back to later Follies shows and continue to make some more songs, he even made some songs that dealt with Prohibition such as another hit song called The Moon Shines on the Moonshine.
He finally passed away on February 27, 1922 at the age of 47. Now while Williams stilled faced a lot of racism and discrimination, he was one of the few African Americans that was very popular among both black and white audiences and his songs were smash hits, so much so that some music artist, like Phil Harris and Johnny Cash would perform some of his hit songs like Nobody and while Williams is not as famous or well remember more than other famous Black actors, like Sidney Potter and Denzel Washington, he did help paved the way for other blacks to join in on the film business and hopefully create and direct their own films and shed some light to the audiences on what the black community is actually like.