Jittering Jitterbugs
1943
Artist
Designer Unknown
DIMENSIONS
11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
OBJECT NUMBER
PH.2025.2304
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
United States
CREDIT LINE
Poster House Permanent Collection
KEYWORDS
Black, Entertainment, Film

Keep Punching is an all-Black boxing movie starring real-life boxing champion Henry Armstrong who is sabotaged by both his childhood friend and his lover before a major fight. The film includes a scene of a dance competition featuring the famous Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers (billed here as Arthur White’s Lindy Hoppers). The scene was so well received that it was rereleased in 1943 as a stand-alone short under the title Jittering Jitterbugs. The Lindy Hop was a dance created by Black Americans in “juke joints” (a Black American term for a small, informal club featuring music and dancing) in the late 1920s and further popularized in venues like the Savoy Ballroom, a renowned nightclub in Harlem. The term “Jitterbug” was originally used as a pejorative to describe the rapid movement of white people as they performed the dance but soon evolved to cover swing dancing in general and lost its negative connotation. 

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