Bert Williams

Bert Williams (born November 12, 1874, Nassau, Bahamas—died March 4, 1922, New York City) was a Bahamian-born American comedian and singer who portrayed the slow-witted, shuffling Black man that was then a standard, if racist, role in vaudeville.

Williams and his family moved from the Bahamas to the United States when he was ten. They made their way to California and worked in the mining and lumber camps of the West. In 1895 his partnership with George W. Walker began. They became one of the most successful comedy teams of their era; within a year they were appearing in New York City, where their song “Good Morning Carrie” became famous. In 1903 the partnership had graduated to full-scale musical comedy. The show, which featured a cast of only Black performers, In Dahomey was a Broadway success and in London the following year played a command performance at Buckingham Palace.

Other successes followed, notably Abyssinia (1906), Bandanna Land (1908), and Mr. Lode of Koal (1909). After Walker’s death in 1909, Williams became a regular comic in the shows of Florenz Ziegfeld, starring in the Follies from 1910 through 1919 and writing much of his own material. Of his many musical compositions, “Nobody” (1905), with its wry, fatalistic lyric, is probably the best example of his work.

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Williams, who became a U.S. citizen in 1918, continued performing until his death, which was reported on the front page of The New York Times; the article identified him as 46 years old and attributed his death to illness. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where his headstone uses 1875 as his year of birth.