Kansas City History Mon May 21, 2012 Reconsidering The Legacy Of
KC's Champion Cakewalker Every month, the staff of the Kansas
City Museum asks a local expert in some field to talk about a
piece from the museum's collection for its Community Curator
program. This month's talk is by Glenn North, the poet-in-
residence at the American Jazz Museum, and it focuses on a
painting that made North uncomfortable at first. The painting
depicts the champion cakewalker William Henry Joseph Cutter
Brown, known popularly in Kansas City as "Doc Brown."
(Cakewalking is a kind of dance that originated on slave
plantations in the 18th century, and was popular through the
19th – more about that in a bit.) The Portrait of Joseph "Doc"
Brown(1896), by local African American painter Millard C.
Haywood, depicts the former slave in a long suit, tipping his
top hat and smiling. "Initially, I was uncomfortable in that
part of African American history," North said. "We talk about
minstrelsy and some of the things that were forced on bla