Intermission Number Three

The final of three “intermissions,” this chapter explores the early years of the “roaring twenties,” when the Charleston and “black bottom” dance crazes took hold. Harlem Renaissance poet Effie Lee Newsome, writing in the NAACP publication The Crisis, relates a short coming-of-age piece about a beguiling young woman, Mayetta, who irons clothes as part of her daily chores. During the story, the young woman relates a dance game which includes “Goodbye Liza Jane.” Many miles away in Winnipeg, the advice columnist Betty Vincent replies to a lovelorn young woman who had sought help with a “problem of the heart.” As it turns out, the young woman had signed her letter “Little Liza Jane.” These two pieces underscore the continuing popularity of the “Liza Jane” songs, including their essential courtship narratives, across both “the color line” and national borders.