My 2019 article on the origin story of Betty Boop, & the career of child vaudeville star Esther Jones has been featured in the newsletter for the Black & Latino History Project.

Subscribe to them HERE

As a cartoon, Betty Boop is an icon. She was the first female cartoon human, whose initial run of shorts, comics, and merchandise in the 1930s and 1940s made her a smash hit. But her creation has also become a symbol of white women's constant erasure of Black women and girls. For decades, the Black community has wondered about Betty Boop's origins. Is Betty Boop Black? Who voiced her? Is she based off a Black flapper? Even in trying to find the truth, so much fiction is being peddled as fact. But to understand how the beloved cartoon even came to be, we have to go back the days of vaudeville.

continue