Identity politics and political will: Jeni Legon living in a great big way

Tap dance legend Jeni LeGon passed away on December 7, 2012. I originally learned about LeGon when doing research for my book on the Whitman Sisters, a black vaudeville troupe run completely by women of color performing at the beginning of the twentieth century. LeGon had performed with the Whitman Sisters briefly and was one of many early black professional dancers who I believe deserve more recognition. She is the focus of this essay in part because of her story and in part because of mine. Her story was that she led a remarkable life as an artist, and I hope not only to illuminate her accomplishments, but also to make an argument about her work vis-à-vis concepts of identity politics and political will. My story is one of the historian’s dilemma-the battle with time. Some of the challenges of our work are well articulated: We historians can never accurately, fully, objectively represent what happened in the past; we must take everything we read with a grain of salt (sometimes the whole shaker); we must consider the stakes for each informant; we must temper facts with truth. But, perhaps paradoxically, we are also in a never-ending quest-to understand the past as more people, places, and things slip into it. So although the Whitman Sisters were figures of the past, long gone, LeGon was a part of my present, however briefly, when I met her in 2005. But I lost the battle with time. I’m sorrowful that I didn’t get to see her again and talk more about her life. I regret not having gotten back to her sooner about writing about her. And as I mourn her passing, I also consider the shift in how I can attend to what she meant for African American performance. At the end of the day, though, historians must make claims about the significance of moments in time. I can still do that, even without direct quotes and specific answers to pointed questions from the interviews I had planned. It is a reminder that the work of the historian is part and parcel of history, historiography, and legacy.