Blackbirds of 1926

Blackbirds of 1926
Blackbirds of 1926 – Florence Mills, Johnny Hudgins and chorus girls rehearse on roof of the London Pavilion in September 1926
Music	George W. Meyer, Arthur Johnston
Lyrics	George W. Meyer, Grant Clarke, Roy Turk
Productions	1926 The Harlem Alhambra 1926 Les Ambassadeurs (Paris) 1926 Kursaal Ostend (Belgium) 1926 London Pavilion 1927 London Pavilion

Blackbirds of 1926, also known as Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1926 was a musical revue with an all African American cast created and produced by impresario Lew Leslie that starred Florence Mills, Edith Wilson, and Johnny Hudgins, with music by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston, and lyrics by Grant Clarke and Roy Turk. The Blackbirds were a continuation of Leslie’s Plantation Revue, and the 1926 show was the first and original of a series of revues that would continue for more than a decade. The show ran for two years, and was succeeded by a new show called Blackbirds of 1928, a Broadway hit. Leslie mounted a series of Blackbirds revues, which ran in 1926, 1928, 1930, 1933 and 1939. The series were named after Mills' theme song, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird," a thinly veiled protest against racial injustice, which she first sung in 1924.