At the World Lindy Hop Day celebration in Singapore on May 26, my wonderful friend Sing Lim and I were asked to give a short presentation about Frankie Manning, as people who knew and studied under Frankie. Instead of just doing a fond remembrance of the man, we decided to expand our talk to dive deeper into the Black roots of lindy hop. For those of you wondering how to talk about the Black roots of lindy hop to your students, event participants and general public, I hope our experience is helpful.

It was a very challenging talk to give. The weight of trying to speak to the Black experience in lindy hop, the huge amount of history to try and encapsulate, and the short amount of time we had been given (about 20 minutes) were front of mind for us. But we also did not want to miss this opportunity to try and raise these important concerns of representation and historic accuracy for the participants at the event.

Our goal was to open people's minds to the incredible legacy of dance and music that African-Americans have left for us, and to inspire the audience to do their own explorations to deepen their appreciation of this awesome artform. We wanted to leave them with specific resources they could use to dive deeper into African-American vernacular dances.

We decided to open with a short clip of Frankie Manning and Ann Johnson dancing in "Hellzapoppin," which we knew would be recognizable to almost everyone there. This was a strong entry point for going deeper into what led of up to that iconic dance scene, including the implicit racism surrounding it.