Whitman, Albery A.
1851 – 1901
Albery Allson Whitman was born into slavery in Hart County, KY, on the Green River Plantation. Albery was the husband of Caddie Whitman (1857-1909), who was also from Kentucky. Albery was a poet and a Bishop of the Methodist Church. He was a graduate of Wilberforce College (now Wilberforce University) and served as Dean of Morris Brown College in Atlanta.
His published works include “Leelah Misled” in 1873, “Not a Man and Yet a Man” in 1877, and “The Rape of Florida” in 1884. His last work was published in 1901: “An Idyll of the South.”
His talent as a Negro poet has been described as between Phillis Wheatley and Paul L. Dunbar.
Albery A. Whitman was also the father of musician Caswell W. Whitman (1875-1936) and The Whitman Sisters, one of the most successful vaudeville troupes in the U.S. Albery taught his older daughters to dance when they were children, and for a brief period, they were managed by their mother, Caddie. The Whitman troupe first toured Kentucky in 1904. The Whitman Sisters were Mabel (1880-1962), Essie B. (1882-1963), Alberta (1887-1964), and Alice (1900-1969). Mabel directed the shows, Essie was a comic singer, Alberta was a flash dancer and did male drag, and Alice was an exceptional tap dancer. For more on Albery A. Whitman see Dictionary of American Negro Biography, by R. W. Logan and M. R. Winston; and Albery Allson Whitman (1851-1901), an epic poet of African American and Native American self-determination (thesis), by J. R. Hays.
The Whitman Sisters started their performances, in various combinations, already in the 1890’s and were, with their traveling road show of singers, dancers, comics and a complete music band, regarded as the best of black entertainment until the beginning of the 1940’s. In popularity they competed with the Smart Set Company, an innovative and popular black vaudeville show, and with The Black Patti Troubadours built around Sissieretta Jones, a pioneering African American concert singer who toured for more than two decades bringing both operatic arias alongside minstrel songs and vaudeville acts. The Whitman Sisters however were unique, not only because they outlasted the other black companies, but also because it was the sole company owned and managed by an African American woman, Mabel Whitman, the eldest of the four sisters.
Mabel Whitman
(source: Nadine George-Graves, 2000)
The Whitman Sisters Company, 1928
(source: Nadine George-Graves, 2000)
