It opened on February 18, 1903, at the New York Theatre, starring George Walker and Bert Williams, two iconic figures of vaudeville entertainment at the time.

[5] Produced by McVon Hurtig and Harry Seamon, In Dahomey was the first to star African-American performers George Walker and Bert Williams, two of the leading comedians in America at the time.

[11] Featuring the renowned comic pair of Bert Williams and George W. Walker, the show was the first to introduce a critical discourse of African Imperialism into the vaudeville theatre scene.

[12] Walker and Williams were said to have emphasized some of the most important components of early 20th-century Black musicals: fast-changing scenery using tableaux (presumably painted backdrops), improvisation, traditional Black-facing, heavy pantomime, and interpolation of songs borrowed from other original source-texts.

The story tells of two conmen from Boston who, having found a pot of gold, devise a plan to move to Africa to colonize Dahomey (present-day Benin) with a group of poor American blacks.

[13][14] Having suffered bad luck, the conmen, Shylock Homestead (played by Bert Williams) and Rareback Pinkerton (George Walker) are sent to Florida to con Cicero Lightfoot (Pete Hampton),[15] the president of a colonization society.

[14] In other sources, In Dahomey is described as following the attempts of two con men (played by Bert Williams and George Walker) charged with recovering a lost heirloom to be flipped for profit.

The recovered synopsis reads: An old Southern negro, Lightfoot by name, president of the Dahomey Colonization Society, loses a silver casket, which, to use his language, has a cat scratched on its back.

Shylock Homestead and Rareback Pinkerton (Williams and Walker), the detectives in the case, failing to find the casket at Gatorville, Florida, Lightfoot's home, accompany the colonists to Dahomey.

Shylock and Rareback, having free access to the syndicate's stock of whiskey, present the King of Dahomey with three barrels of appreciation and in return are made Caboceers (Governors of a Province).

The new Caboceers, after supplying the King with his third barrel of appreciation whiskey), secure his consent to liberate the colonists after which an honor is conferred on Rareback and Shylock, which causes them to decide "There's No Place Like Home.

"[18] Significantly, the production of In Dahomey marked the first full-length African American musical to be staged in an indoor venue on Broadway, premiering at the New York Theatre on February 18, 1903.

One New York Times report mentioned "troublemakers" who had warned for the play being the initiation of a potential race war, stressing in its mostly positive review that "the Negroes were in heaven".

Many songs, such as "Brown-Skin Baby Mine", "My Castle on the Nile", "Evah Dahkey Is a King", "When It's All Goin' Out and Nothin' Comin In", and "Good Evenin'", have been performed in other vaudevillian Broadway shows.

[16] In its entirety, In Dahomey featured plenty more secondary characters than its opening stage at the Harry de Jur theatre could comfortably hold.

[25] Having learned of the use of African and other foreign people in exhibits at the fairs, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote a song, "In Dahomey", for their 1927 musical, Show Boat.

Intended as the last number in Act II, Scene I, "In Dahomey" is performed by a purported group of African natives featured in an exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.