Bert Williams performed from the late 1890s through the 1920s and therefore had to cater to white and black audiences separately because of the inescapable presence of Jim Crow. White audiences’ perception of black performers and black people, in general, were heavily influenced by the character archetypes in blackface minstrelsy, the foolish Jim Crow and the ostentatious Zip Coon, as well as the popular “coon songs” (3). Even among black audiences, Williams faced different perspectives on how to address “the white gaze” (5). Black intelligentsia critiqued Williams for his conformity to comedy instead of the highly esteemed tragedy, but working-class blacks were enthralled by his performance, as he represented on stage the racial dynamics between white and black people that they encountered daily (5).  This racial polarization of the audience influenced Wiliams’ musicals as well, as he had to cut the black love story from In Dahomey in order to cater to his larger white audience. The racial prejudice of society infected the theater, and just as black people were segregated in society, they were in the theater as well. For example, Williams was not allowed to join the Actors’ Equity Guild until W. C. Fields pressured the organization, despite the fact that at the time Williams’ salary was greater than that of the President of the United States (1). Furthermore, Williams never felt part of a community as he did not even fit into the black and white binary in American society, as he was from the West Indies. Williams could not escape this environment of racial prejudice, and despairingly he resigned to the fact that social equality would not be achieved in his lifetime (1). Sadly, despite Williams’ efforts to fight social inequality, his use of blackface and traditional minstrel show formulas discredited his performance in the eyes of the black performers of the Harlem Renaissance, who tried to erase the work he did for the black community in the theater (5).