The way we do the things we do: How popular dance in the Africana community offered Black women freedom of expression in Twentieth‐Century America.

The article examines African American popular dance in the 20th-century and highlights the ability of African American women to use dance as a form of freedom of expression and cultural communication and social grounding in the African American community. Topics discussed are African retentionism in popular dance, cakewalk as the first popular dance in the African American community which found its way to mainstream White society, and emergence of rhythm and blues and the Funky Broadway.