the Unsung: Black History Month day 15- Ada “Bricktop” Smith
As a companion piece to yesterday’s primer on Josephine Baker, today we’re going to explore the history of a larger than life woman who associated with her, but blazed her own unique path through the early 1900s- Ada “Bricktop” Smith.
Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith, the woman more commonly referred to as “Bricktop” so named because of her atypical bright red curly hair) was born in Alderson, West Virginia in 1849. Regarding her long list of names one of her biographies says the following:
It was no surprise that Ada Smith was born light-skinned and freckled with a shock of brick-red hair on the top of her head. “I was the talk of the town,” she writes, “the first red-haired baby, Negro or white, born in that area in many a year.” Several members of the Alderson community wanted a hand in naming such an extraordinary-looking child. The local pharmacist even supposedly offered free soap to the family if they would name her Louise. As an act of accommodation, The Smiths simply folded several of the top requests together, naming the baby Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith.
Smith and her family were moved to Chicago after her father’s death. In Chicago Smith was drawn to the nightlife of the saloon scene. Smith’s mother Hattie opened a boarding house which catered to vaudville performers and working men. Vaudeville, an unpretentious stage show that featured a variety of light acts was increasingly popular compared to stuffier high class theater during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Smith inevitably began taking parts and later touring with vaudeville performance companies after she left school at 16. Her first tour was a disaster, and she learned that touring was an unreliable way to earn money. She eventually returned to Chicago finding more stability in saloon performing.
She traveled, performing in saloons this way throughout the Eastern sea board. She met and worked around jazz great Cole Porter in Harlem. Then Smith made plans to travel to reconnect with her mother who was visiting DC and met Sammy Richardson, a successful Black performer in Europe. He invited her to Paris, and Smith jumped at the opportunity. It was on her first day in Paris she met Langston Hughes, who would become one of the Harlem Renaissance's most noted poets, who was also working at the Grand de Luc.
As referenced in yesterday’s Josephine Baker entry, there were very few Black women performing in Paris at the time and she and Baker were en vogue. She and Baker had an alleged affair at the early period of their friendship. During this period, Smith also befriended a group of patrons of the Grand de Luc that included F. Scott Fitzgerald at its center.
In her memoir, Smith said of her fast friendship with Fitzgerald:
“It was impossible not to like him,” writes Bricktop. “He was a little boy in a man’s body. He hadn’t grown up and he didn’t intend to, and I liked that… When Scott got drunk, he was never mean or malicious. He just got more playful. He’d deliberately do things to get people excited or annoyed, but not bad, bad things.”
Among the group the Fitzgeralds brought to the Grand de Luc were Hemingway and Pablo Picasso in the nascent period of their artistic stardom. Cole Porter reappeared in these Paris circles and hired Smith on to perform and teach the popular Harlem dances at his lavish parties. She was suddenly teaching Harlem dances to the Prince of Wales and other wealthy elites.
Never one to miss a chance, Bricktop turned her newfound fame among the upper class into a business opportunity. She opened her own club in Paris, calling it Chez Bricktop, and staffed it with the finest musicians and waiters she could find in the city. It was an instant success. The Prince of Wales held parties there. European, American, and Argentine millionaires packed the tables during the tourist season. Cole Porter sometimes took to the stage in the early morning to practice new songs in front of the last stragglers at the bar. Duke Ellington visited the place during his first trip to Europe, as did Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. Bricktop actually introduced the two and they became friends.
In addition to “Chez Bricktop” , Smith took on management of other clubs, including the Grand de Luc where she got her Paris start. She ran these establishments for years, and conducted a radio program for the French government in 1938–39. She closed her clubs during German occupation during WWII when she relocated to Mexico City in 1944. She then returned to Europe and opened another nightclub in Rome, where she entertained Martin Luther King and Hollywood celebs.
She had attempted to return to post WWII Paris but found it a very changed place:
The city had been devastated by war and culturally altered by the influence of occupation. First, by Hitler’s Germany. Then by the American military which was scandalized over allegations of rape and theft during the liberation of France. Paris was simultaneously resentful of the American occupation and quickly adopting American attitudes about race relations. Her return lasted less than a year.
She supported civil rights causes steadfastly, was a member of the NAACP and ran integrated establishments. Smith retired at the age of 61, closed her club and returned to America, saying “Honey, I’m tired. Tired of staying up till dawn everyday.” She didn’t slow down much. She performed sporadically and opened another Chez Bricktop in Beirut. Smith died in 1984 at the age of 89 and in eulogy was memorialized lovingly by T.S Elliott “who said of her humble roots and success ‘to her thorn she gave a rose.’”
