Before Dancing with the Stars or modern dance marathons, 19th-century America was captivated by a cutthroat, highly competitive sporting event: challenge dancing. In this episode of Books & Looks, Blaine sits down with historian Dr. April F. Masten to explore the raucous history behind her new book, “Diamond and Juba.” Listeners will discover the hidden origins of American competitive dance and learn how two teenage prodigies from marginalized backgrounds unexpectedly shaped the nation’s entire entertainment landscape.
Dr. Masten reveals how Irish-American John Diamond and African-American William Henry Lane (known as Juba) rose from busking in waterfront taverns to becoming international sensations under the exploitative eye of a young P.T. Barnum. The conversation unpacks the fascinating “eel economy,” where working-class performers bartered jig dancing for plates of food, and explores how the blending of Irish and African steps created a distinctly creolized American art form. You’ll hear the surprising truth about how these historic 19th-century public contests mirrored bare-knuckle boxing – complete with heavy betting, strict judges, and intense rivalries – but you’ll have to listen to find out how a chance encounter with Charles Dickens ultimately changed the trajectory of Juba’s career forever.
If you enjoyed this historical deep dive, be sure to subscribe to Books & Looks and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Episode Resources:
- “Diamond and Juba” by Dr. April F. Masten
- Charles Dickens’ American Notes (Chapter 6)
- Listen to Not So Much to Want by April F. Masten
- The Lost Museum Digital Archive
- Biography of William Henry Lane (Master Juba)
Introduction to Challenge Dancing
Blaine DeSantis:
Welcome to Books & Looks, where we do a deep dive with authors to help you discover your next great read. We love dance contests. Today we’re going to be looking at the earliest form of dance contests here in the United States.
It’s called challenge dancing. There are things like dance marathons, tango and ballroom dance competitions, as well as Dancing with the Stars, all of which are outgrowths from challenge dancing.
Challenge dancing in the 1800s was treated like sports. They were reported in the newspapers, there was prize money, there were trophies, belts, and an avid betting public.
I’m Blaine DeSantis, and today we’re talking with Dr. April F. Masten about her new non-fiction book, Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing. April F. Masten, welcome to Books & Looks.
April F. Masten:
Thank you so much for having me, Blaine. I’m so happy to be here.
April F. Masten’s Journey as a Historian
Blaine DeSantis:
Well, I’m so glad you could join us today. Friends, April is a professor, and luckily this is a day that she didn’t have a class.
We were able to squeeze this in, and I’m glad she did because this is one great book. We’re talking about the book Diamond and Juba. Before we get into it, April, tell us a little bit about you. Where are you at? What’s your profession? What are you teaching? What drew you to this story?
April F. Masten:
I didn’t start out as a historian or wanting to be a historian. I was a music major in college, and then I became a singer-songwriter when I got out of college. I thought, “This is really hard. I don’t know how people make their livings doing this.”
I was fortunate just before I graduated to go to a seminar held by the National Endowment for the Humanities in New York. I was living in California and it was run by a historian named Herbert Gutman.
He was a labor historian who taught us that everybody has a history. I only went because I tagged along with my husband, who was a journalist for the Longshoremen’s Union. Gutman showed us how all of our families have a history. I had Dust Bowl migrants on one side and Boston Brahmins on the other.
I decided to go back to graduate school and look into the arts as a form of labor. My first book was on women artists. In the 1850s, there were thousands of women artists in New York City that no one knows about.
By looking at the arts as a form of labor, I’m able to find things that nobody else sees. I’m not just rehashing what everybody else says about women artists—that there were none—or about dancers, suggesting they enjoy their work so it’s not really work.
I wanted to show something new. I went back to school to be able to do that, and then I was fortunate to get a job at Stony Brook University teaching social and cultural history. That’s where I still am.
Researching Diamond and Juba
Blaine DeSantis:
How did you find out about Diamond and Juba?
April F. Masten:
Other historians have studied Juba, an African-American dancer, to show where American dance comes from. Diamond is an Irish American who is usually studied by scholars of blackface minstrelsy.
I read a little article written way back in 1950 that talked about a grand public contest between Diamond and Juba. I wondered who they were and what that was.
I had heard about Juba and was interested to see an African-American being publicized in the newspapers. That’s how it started. That interest in finding out about that grand public contest led me to places that were unbelievable.
Blaine DeSantis:
Where it led you was to a lot of research. Friends, you’re not going to believe when she tells you this. April, how long did you research this book?
April F. Masten:
I saw that grand public contest advertisement back around 2005. I got the idea 20 years ago, finished my first book, and as soon as that was done, I started researching this one. It’s been over 15 years to get it finished.
Blaine DeSantis:
What perseverance. Unbelievable.
April F. Masten:
I love my topic. I love those boys, so I wanted to know about them.
Who Were Diamond and Juba?
Blaine DeSantis:
We’ve mentioned Diamond and Juba, but tell us who they are and what period this book covers.
April F. Masten:
The book covers the Jacksonian era, which is about 1820 to 1857 in my case. Juba was an African-American dancer named William Henry Lane.
He was made famous by Charles Dickens, who saw him perform in a cellar tavern in New York City back in 1842. That’s where Juba comes into the story.
Diamond was an Irish-American dancer picked up by P.T. Barnum and put on the stage. Barnum at that time was an entertainment entrepreneur, not a circus person yet.
They are both little boys in the beginning of my story. They were both put on the stage, taken into taverns, or put on the street to dance when they were about eight years old.
That’s how their working-class parents made money. They were fortunate to be seen by people already in the public eye, which helped them start careers as dancers.
Blaine DeSantis:
Was Diamond the gentleman’s last name, or was that just a nickname?
April F. Masten:
His name is John Diamond, though it was spelled D-I-M-O-N-D in the Irish way because his father was an immigrant. When Barnum picks him up, he calls him Diamond, like the beautiful star. He calls him Master Diamond.
Actually, they both are called Master Diamond and Master Juba. Juba does not dance as Juba when he’s a boy; he dances as Master Rattler, Master Champion, and other names.
He doesn’t pick up Juba until he’s known. The word “Master” just meant that these are boys, not men, who are dancing. That was the title for boys on the stage.
The Eel Economy and Cultural Mixing
Blaine DeSantis:
Dancing was very popular among the Irish and among Black people, but there’s something in here which I learned called the eel economy. What is this eel economy all about?
April F. Masten:
I thought it was cute that you called it the eel economy. It is a working-class economy where people who labored for a living didn’t make very much money. They were willing to barter or take things like food in exchange for their work.
African-Americans would go down to the docks in New York, Philadelphia, and other places to dance against each other in competitions for eels. Everybody ate eels in the 1830s and 1840s; it was a common food because Long Island had eels in all the rivers.
The same was true with oysters. They were not a delicacy; they were everywhere. Eels became the recompense. If you went into a tavern and performed on your banjo or did a little dance, the owner might give you a plate of eels as payment.
It was a form of recompense because people danced for food. It might be fish, catfish, or other food, and they danced for small change. It was a kind of busking.
Blaine DeSantis:
But the whites didn’t dance for eels, did they? Weren’t they dancing for different awards or prizes?
April F. Masten:
The interesting thing about this kind of dancing is that it’s not strictly African-American or Irish-American. In Ireland, these kinds of dances were called cake dances, and people danced for cake.
They brought that tradition to the United States when they immigrated and shared it with African-Americans. Even enslaved people were dancing with Irish-Americans because they had been indentured early on and worked together.
What they’re dancing is an absolutely creolized, mixed form of dance. They called it jig dancing or sometimes Negro dancing. It had elements that were Irish and elements that were African-American.
I was interested in looking at this because traditionally, the relationship between Irish and Black people in America has been written as a competition for jobs. They were both poor and sent to the same neighborhoods.
Everybody assumed they were always at each other’s throats. While the dancing was a competition between the two groups, the fact that they danced the same steps and tried to better each other means they had been mixing together.
There was a kind of community between them. That’s what I went to look for. American culture comes from this mixing on this soil to make it American and not European or African.
P.T. Barnum and the Business of Dance
Blaine DeSantis:
These young men start as youngsters and eventually get discovered. P.T. Barnum comes to employ Diamond. What does Diamond get out of this, and what do the parents get?
April F. Masten:
He ends up employing both of them, but differently. Diamond is the first boy he picks up. His parents are immigrants with many children. Barnum sees him dancing in a tavern near the waterfront and takes him on as an apprentice.
In that day, an apprenticeship was like an indenture; he became an indentured worker. That was good because dancing on the streets for small change is intermittent work. When you work for an entrepreneur like P.T. Barnum, you have regular work.
The family was happy to have the boy employed, and it was good for the boy because he got to dance all the time. However, that relationship was not good because apprenticeships were declining.
Barnum wasn’t teaching him a skill in return for work; he was exploiting his labor and making sure he had room and board. Eventually, Diamond runs away because he thinks he can do better elsewhere.
Barnum comes back to New York and looks for another dancer to take his place. That’s when he hires William Henry Lane and calls him Master Rattler.
He eventually gets Diamond back because Diamond’s father dies, and he gets indentured to him through a contract because he’s under age. In the meantime, Barnum has put Juba on the stage, and he’s also gotten quite famous.
Blaine DeSantis:
Did the parents get paid money to get their children signed up?
April F. Masten:
I don’t have any indication that John Diamond’s parents got anything from this except one less child to support. He might have brought some wages home initially, but he really didn’t make much.
On the other hand, Juba’s parents kept control of his career. They would have made money when he worked at a pleasure garden called Vauxhall Gardens for P.T. Barnum.
The Evolution of Variety Shows
Blaine DeSantis:
Everybody thinks of P.T. Barnum as the circus, but before that, didn’t he have a museum where he would have acts on display? Is that where Diamond would be working?
April F. Masten:
At first, Barnum was itinerant. He hired Diamond out to theaters and circuses. After he loses Diamond and then gets Juba, he rents his own place called the Vauxhall Garden Saloon.
He puts on shows there. He’s one of the first people to develop what is called a variety show. Instead of having dancers hired by theaters to perform between plays, he takes all those acts and puts them together into one show.
The Impact of Charles Dickens
Blaine DeSantis:
Charles Dickens really got this whole thing rolling in terms of dance competitions and legitimizing Juba and Black dancers. Why was Dickens in New York, and how big a deal was he in this situation?
April F. Masten:
He is significant because he legitimizes African-American dancers and culture as a form of American culture. He was highly criticized at the time for paying attention to them.
He goes down into the cellars to an African-American run dance house where he sees Juba dance. He doesn’t name him Juba at the time, but he says he sees “the greatest dancer known.”
He gives a wonderful description of the dance. Juba is dancing against a female partner doing Irish set dancing in an African-American style.
Dickens’ description in 1842 puts Juba in the public eye. Diamond has already been dancing mock challenges for Barnum and was also considered the greatest dancer known. Eventually, they had to come together.
The Mechanics of Challenge Dancing
Blaine DeSantis:
They do eventually have these dances together. How many times did they compete against each other in these challenge dances?
April F. Masten:
I only have evidence that they came together in huge public contests three or four times. The first time was in a cellar tavern, described by an eyewitness who talked about it later.
That contest was so popular that they put on a grand public contest a year later. In the meantime, they were both working for minstrel companies and spreading their names.
They had another contest in Boston. It kept the ball rolling and made their names not just as dancers, but as competitive dancers.
Blaine DeSantis:
Friends, these dances lasted over an hour. Am I reading this right?
April F. Masten:
Yes. One would dance as long as he could, then the other person would dance as long as he could. They were trying to out-dance each other with more steps.
It was also interesting for the musicians because they had to keep passing off the tunes as long as the dancer was moving. At these contests, they danced close to an hour each.
When they became famous performers, they would dance 15-minute sets. That’s a long time to do this energetic tap and other kinds of dancing.
Blaine DeSantis:
They were the main event. People wanted to see Diamond or Juba, so they had to put on 20 minutes or the audience would feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth.
April F. Masten:
That’s absolutely right. We know a lot about minstrelsy because it was a horrible form of culture, but I see how important the minstrel troupes were for these dancers.
Minstrelsy was not immediately popular. It was four musicians singing in four-part harmony, which was a big movement in the 1840s called “music for the million.”
How did they make people come to their shows? They put a dancer in front of them. Without the dancer, those troupes might not have been as popular. They had dancers all the way through, even after the Civil War.
Blackface, Minstrelsy, and Identity
Blaine DeSantis:
Why did it have to be blackface? Wouldn’t people come to see regular minstrelsy? And even Juba corked up his face, if I’m not mistaken.
April F. Masten:
Yes, he did. Blackface did different things for different people. It was a terrible caricature, but it was also a form of costume.
You had Ethiopian dancing, but you also had Scottish Highlander and Andalusian dancing. Part of the tradition was dressing up as an African-American.
These jig dances came from the British Isles. How do you make that American? When African-Americans dance it, it is absolutely American.
For someone like Diamond, to get his dancing recognized as American rather than Irish, he wears blackface. Juba wears it because he can dance on any stage if he’s wearing blackface; nobody knows he’s African-American.
The more I looked, the more I found African-Americans in circuses and on the stage that we didn’t know about because they were wearing blackface or were called “the A-number-one colored performer.”
Blaine DeSantis:
I found it interesting that they were still called the “Ethiopian troupe” or “Ethiopian music.” Why was it Ethiopian?
April F. Masten:
When you said “Ethiopian,” it meant mixed. It meant it was not African dancing. People knew what African dancing was from seeing imported slaves in New Orleans.
African-American dancing was called Ethiopian because it was a mix of white European culture and African culture. In the Bible, Ethiopian refers to Christianized Africans.
Working-class people in the 19th century were quite educated. They knew Greek words and things like what “Ethiopian” meant. They had what Lawrence Levine calls a shared public culture that was really broad.
Barnum’s Humbugs and Public Wagers
Blaine DeSantis:
You talked about humbugging and mock challenges. What is a humbug?
April F. Masten:
P.T. Barnum was the number one humbug. He believed that people liked to be deceived and that they enjoyed being in on the joke.
He picks up little John Diamond and brings in another little boy to put them into a competition. They would wager $500, which was a whole year’s wages.
They had to publish challenges in the newspapers so people would come. Barnum published it all himself with no intention of putting up a wager or giving that money to his dancers. He just paid them a usual wage.
People didn’t care if it was fake; they came because they also danced those dances and could tell if they were good. They wanted the boys to get the money because they knew they were working-class kids.
Rules and Judging of Dance Contests
Blaine DeSantis:
Who were the judges on these challenge dances, and was there a standard to determine the winners?
April F. Masten:
After the boys get away from Barnum, they put on their own competitions. Competitive dance was already a working-class recreation in taverns.
To prove what they were doing was real, they followed the protocol of boxing. They published a challenge, put down a forfeit, and made rules.
They judged by who danced the longest with the greatest variety of steps. A step in a jig dance is 16 measures long, and you had to be able to dance it on one foot and then the other.
You couldn’t repeat a step and you had to stay in “truth in time” with the music. Judges were chosen—one by each dancer and one by those two judges—to count steps and look for mistakes. Every time there was a mistake, they made a chalk mark. They also judged by audience participation.
Blaine DeSantis:
You compare this to bare-knuckle boxing. Diamond was white and Juba was black. The leading bare-knuckle boxers were also white and black. Did they have a similar audience?
April F. Masten:
Yes, they did. You’re talking about Tom Molyneaux and Tom Cribb, who had a huge tournament in England around 1811. Boxing began and continues as an integrated sport.
Our two guys were following that tradition by saying their tournament was more interesting because one was black and one was white. Nobody ever pretended Juba wasn’t black.
Some boxers danced and some dancers boxed. They were sporting men, and sporting men were interested in those similar things.
Women in Challenge Dancing and Social Stigma
Blaine DeSantis:
That brings me to women. Women have been dancing, but unfortunately, there is a stigma attached when they do. Tell us about that.
April F. Masten:
Challenge dancing starts in set dancing, which is danced by men and women as partners. At the end of the set, you have the moment of competition where the man and woman show off for each other.
You’ve always had female champions. The fact that they do this in taverns is where the stigma comes in. Taverns were the public place for working people. They were heated by a stove, so you didn’t have to heat your apartment.
During the rise of the middle class in the 1820s, people distinguished themselves through domesticity. The wife stayed at home, and the man went to work. This showed you weren’t working-class.
In a working-class family, everybody works. Because middle-class women didn’t socialize in public, the fact that these women were in public socializing stigmatized them as possible prostitutes.
The idea that if you dance, you must be a prostitute was a problem. You got fewer women dancing in public places; they generally stayed in more private areas.
Blaine DeSantis:
You wouldn’t be a very good prostitute if you spend all your time learning dance steps, would you?
April F. Masten:
That’s the problem I bring up in the book. If you’re a poor person, you do whatever work you can find. A poor woman was paid much less than a man, and if she went without work, she became destitute.
One of the things she could barter was sex. Does a woman selling sex when she’s destitute make her a prostitute? It was just one of the services she could make money from.
Some women became professional prostitutes, but many only did it to make it through hard times. I like to think about why we identify people by their sexual activity rather than their other activities.
I talk about Nance Holmes and Stus Bryant, who were recognized as prostitutes by historians. But when they’re dancing their competition, they are challenge dancers. They are well described, and it was great to find a real challenge taking place between women.
Blaine DeSantis:
Friends, you don’t realize how big this was. There were betting odds, prizes, belts, and money. This was a huge sporting event.
April F. Masten:
Among the people who did it, it was as popular as boxing, even though boxing was illegal in America at this period. These challenge dancers brought in big crowds and used publicity to get people to come.
These two rose to the top of the heap, which is why I followed them, but I do mention others as well.
From Vaudeville to Modern Television
Blaine DeSantis:
I’m picking up a connection regarding venues. P.T. Barnum starts with a circus, which leads to minstrelsy, then vaudeville, and eventually the Ed Sullivan variety show. Is there a connection there?
April F. Masten:
You’re right. Minstrel troupes eventually open their own theaters. Circuses start small and then create circuits. That’s where vaudeville takes over.
Vaudeville comes right out of these variety theaters that Barnum and others owned in the 1840s. However, the Civil War changed everything.
Minstrelsy is not the same after the Civil War. It’s far more racist and violent because people didn’t know what to do with African-Americans as equals.
You don’t have the same mixing in clubs or taverns. You start to see male-only places to drink, and sports become a male thing. But the Ed Sullivan show absolutely comes out of vaudeville and variety theater.
Blaine DeSantis:
Do you remember the guy who spun the plates on the Ed Sullivan show? Barnum’s very first exhibit was a plate spinner named Antonio Vivalla. Then you had Topo Gigio, then a dancer, then a singer. I was thinking, “This is vaudeville.”
April F. Masten:
You are absolutely in the ballpark.
Blaine DeSantis:
Regarding the dancing, you have challenge dancing, which leads to dance marathons, which leads to ballroom dancing contests and Dancing with the Stars. Am I on the right track?
April F. Masten:
I think all dance competitions come from that. These contests between two people continued at the level of the working person.
African-Americans created juke joints and tap dance competitions. You also have Irish dance competitions starting at the end of the 19th century with the Gaelic League. Any time you see people deciding to compete, it comes right out of my guys.
The Legacy and Final Days of the Dancers
Blaine DeSantis:
Diamond and Juba ended up in bad health and basically broke when they died, if I’m not mistaken.
April F. Masten:
Juba was fortunate enough to go to England just before the Mexican-American War. He was away when the Fugitive Slave Act put all African-Americans in jeopardy, so he never returned.
He became Boz’s Juba—Boz meaning Dickens—and was very famous there for a while. Diamond worked with minstrel troupes and theaters in Philadelphia. They stayed in places where they could be themselves.
The problem for a dancer in a tavern atmosphere is that you’re breathing in germs, smoke from oil lamps, and fumes from fireplaces. You’re getting sweaty and then going outside into the snow.
They were very susceptible to lung disease. Both died in their 30s of tuberculosis, which was called consumption. If you didn’t have family to care for you, you were put into a public institution. They both died in almshouses.
Future Projects and Closing Remarks
Blaine DeSantis:
What’s coming up next for April F. Masten?
April F. Masten:
My first book was on visual artists and the second was on dancers. I thought I should do a triumvirate of visual art, dance, and music.
When I first got out of school, I was a singer-songwriter in the 1980s during the rise of women’s music. I might look at that phenomenon and why a women’s music business rose up then.
I’m interested in looking at art as labor and why that female entrepreneurial creativity was happening. I also made an album during that time, so I can use myself as one of my sources.
Blaine DeSantis:
Is your album out there where I can hear you singing?
April F. Masten:
Yes, my album is on YouTube and Spotify. It’s called Not So Much to Want.
Blaine DeSantis:
I’m going to check that out. April F. Masten, thank you so very much for this amazing look at 1830s and 40s challenge dancing and Diamond and Juba. You’ve been a delight to chat with.
April F. Masten:
The honor is mine. Thank you so much for having me.
Blaine DeSantis:
I had a great time talking with April and learning about these two young men. I’m actually tired; all this dancing has worn me out.
I’m going to take a couple of weeks before my next show. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I have. On behalf of our partners and friends at BookTrib.com, this is Blaine DeSantis for Books & Looks, saying: may all your leaves be pages in a book.
