1.   After all, musical talent is often considered highly linked to mathematical ability, except when discussing black performers.

2.   Alvin had never seen black performers at the Biltmore or even expected he might see them there.

3.   All were recorded under the sort of royalty-free record deals most black performers of the time were given.

4.   And black performers were making inroads, though small, in the segregated casting of other Broadway shows.

5.   And is Europe also easier for black performers?

6.   And yet sifting through this collection brings one face to face with a stark fact about the way theater worked for black performers in decades past.

7.   Besides that, there was societal resistance to the music, particularly if done by black performers.

8.   A black performer, he moved on to minstrel shows and then carnivals, later joining a circuit that took black performers to black theaters throughout the United States.

9.   Ailey responded by putting together a group of black performers who became the core of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

10.   But black performers still encountered mainstream resistance.