His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.

He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by black performers engaging with mainstream white culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice.

Robinson was a popular figure in both black and white entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers.

[6] At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies.

42  In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age.

45 On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing performance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day.

This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.[6]: pp.

98 Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the U.S. and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived.

166  In 1926 Robinson made a short tour of UK variety theatres, headlining at the Holborn Empire and, during the week of July 19, the Brighton Hippodrome.

From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem.

This production used an all-Black cast, including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse.

[21] They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later: Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine.

The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen.

"[27] In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.

188 Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience.

Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants.

Despite being the highest-paid black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, from heart failure.

Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects.

Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy.

Robinson was a popular figure in both black and white entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers.

The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the early solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.[5]: pp.

[31] Haskins' biography of Robinson states "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic.'"

[43] Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.

Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the newspaper The New York Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor.

[34] In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom.

In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality.

"[5]: 204  Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.

Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance.

[48] In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing Geneva Sawyer, a white dancer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937).