"Amanda Thorp was a theater entrepreneur influential in bringing Black vaudeville and early movie theaters to Richmond, Virginia, and more widely to the southeastern US. Thorp, a White woman, opened theaters and nickelodeons exclusively for Black patrons during a period of entrenched segregation and outright opposition to Black patronage in the South. And though Thorp's mission was not expressly philanthropic, she nonetheless expanded access to early movies when demand for the silver screen had just begun to rival the theater business. Wong sheds light on Thorp's early life in Ohio, her travel to a culturally nascent Richmond, and her remarkable contributions to theater culture in the South"-- Provided by publisher.

"In an era of online streaming, it may be difficult to recognize the importance of a woman who in 1908 established the first silent movie theater in Richmond, Virginia: the Dixie nickelodeon. But Amanda Thorp, an independent, self-made woman, was on the ground floor of a popular culture that would grow to be enormously influential in our modern era. In Nickelodeons and Black Vaudeville: The Forgotten Story of Amanda Thorp, Kathi Clark Wong's extensive archival research uncovers Thorp's impressive contributions not only to moviegoing and its growth in America, but also perhaps even more surprisingly, Thorp's support of early Black vaudeville in the Jim Crow South. Movie theater entrepreneurs like Thorp, who got her start at her Wonderland Theater in Bucyrus, Ohio, helped create our culture's insatiable appetite for film. But it was after she established the Dixie in Richmond, that Thorp-a White woman-also saw a market for providing Black-centric entertainment. She converted the Dixie to all-Black patronage and began to bring in scores of Black vaudeville acts. Later, she built the Hippodrome Theater, in the heart of Richmond's now-historic Jackson Ward, expressly for Black entertainment. Though she eventually left the field of Black entertainment behind, Thorp developed other movie venues in Richmond that brought in tens of thousands of (White) moviegoers over the years and which were widely admired for their elaborate trappings. Thanks to Wong's research, contemporary readers can now benefit from the story of Amanda Thorp, a woman who amidst severe gender role constraints not only claimed social capacity on the crest of a rapidly growing industry but also, almost inadvertently, contributed to the success of early Black vaudeville, a subject which thus far has not received the scholarly attention it deserves"-- Provided by publisher.