With music and dancing, D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library kicked off the opening of a new lobby exhibit on “The Negro Motorist Green Book” — the pre-civil rights guidebook for African American families to find safe spaces during the era of segregation.
The library, collaborating with the African American Music Association, chose to celebrate the exhibit opening with a dance party on the library’s top floor, saluting “Teenarama Dance Party” — a historic D.C. TV program.
“‘Teenarama’ was a teen television dance show that was created for Black teens here in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s when they were not allowed to dance on ‘The Milt Grant Show.’ ‘The Milt Grant show’ was where the white teenagers dance,” said Beverly Lindsay-Johnson, board member of the African American Music Association and the organizer of Sunday’s dance party at the library.
“If you weren’t on the show, you ran home every day and watched the show,” said Lindsay-Johnson.
Many of those who turned out Sunday for the library dance party were original dancers on “Teenarama.”
“I was on ‘Teenarama’ in 1963 … for like 6 months … it was a phenomenal experience because we didn’t get a chance to see other Black kids on TV only once a week, but we got a chance to see them every day, Mondays through Fridays,” said Maxine Grant, of Southeast D.C., one of the show’s original teen dancers.
The show began on radio and moved to TV.
“They made the ‘Teenarama Radio Show’ into the ‘Teenarama Dance Party’ television show and it was on from 1963 to 1970,” said Lindsay-Johnson, who was also producer/director of the 2007 Emmy Award-winning documentary “Dance Party — The Teenarama Story.”
The white-casted “Milt Grant Show” aired on channel 5 WTTG TV. The “Teenarama Dance Party” aired on channel 14 WOOK TV.
The library dance party celebrated the legendary D.C. TV program, that presaged the nationally broadcast Soul Train a decade later. The “Teenarama” show, like the Green Book, existed during the period of segregation. The Green Book lobby exhibit, created by the Smithsonian Institution, is on display until March 2.
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