Siobhan Brooks, "Dancing Towards Freedom"

In the article " Dancing Toward Freedom," Siobhan Brooks argued that racism still exists in various places such as the Lusty Lady, where she worked. During college Brooks worked at the Lusty Lady to pay her way through school. She felt relieved to know that her show director, Josephine Baker, is also a woman of color because most workers at the Lusty Lady were white women. The Lusty Lady shattered stereotypes of strippers, as Brooks states, "Most of the women at the Lusty Lady are students, artists, or both; they are very intelligent and creative, refuting the stereotypes of the brainless sex bunnies" (Brooks 252). Although she felt a sense of a family relationship with her Lusty Lady co-workers, she still felt the racism that existed. She witnessed the racism that existed within the workers and the customers, especially when white customers lost interest in her performances. Brooks had noticed that black dancers did not get to dance in the private pleasure booth, and brought up the issue with Baker, only to get shot down because white customers had little interest in the black dancers. She realized from this experience that "all the Black women at the Lusty Lady were attractive, we just did not do as well economically as other dancers" (Brooks 253). Because of this issue, she wanted to unite and organize amongst Black dancers to bring forth the issues of the unfair treatment of the Black dancers. What led her to unite and organize was that although she felt like the Lusty Lady is supposed to be like a family, the relationship between the white and colored dancers were like, what she calls a "melting pot' theory-we were all supposed to get along without any dialogue about racism, even though we were clearly being discriminated against because of our race" (Brooks 254). Although uniting and organizing did not solve the issues of fair scheduling in the private pleasure booth, it did help the colored dancers get more money per hour. From this experience, as a black woman, she had learned that she will continue to fight against issues of racism and that she does not stand alone on these issues.