A Cakewalk might bring memories of childhood and carnivals, a game where players march or dance around a circle of numbers on the floor to music until it stops, leaving the dancers on a number the winning number drawn by the caller, so they can "take the cake." But what most people don’t know is that the cakewalk tells a complex story of racism from its origins.
As a performance by enslaved people on plantations to entertain the enslaving class, it was known as the “prize walk”--the prize a beautifully decorated cake. Couples would stand in a square formation and dance around a ballroom in stiff yet playful mimicry of the attitudes, clothing, and dances of white people. It was a popular form of entertainment, and came to be known as the cakewalk. Exceptional dancers formed troupes that performed all around, even in Europe. Ragtime was a musical form that evolved from the cakewalk, in turn evolving into Jazz. The cakewalk was also an important basis of the evolution of another particularly American form, tap dancing.
By the 1870’s the cakewalk morphed into a popular part of minstrel shows where white people would perform in costumes that were overly colorful and gaudy. The blackface performance mocked the dance as a ridiculous attempt to parallel white culture.& from minstrelsy, the cornerstones of racism like Jim Crow become fixed in popular culture. African American actors began to perform as minstrels, still donning blackface. Many African American performers attempted to reclaim the cakewalk, a move that historian Terry Waldo described as “Blacks imitating whites who were imitating Blacks who were imitating whites.”
After an amazing 70 years, the popularity of minstrels declined as new entertainments beguiled audiences. Eventually, the cakewalk became a common carnival game and people forgot its rich history and important role in the evolution of American music and dance.