The Harlem Renaissance in New York City attracted African Americans from every part of the United States, the West Indies, and the African continent to participate in its massive production of art and literature. The Renaissance was Pan-African in scope, showcasing the scholarship of bibliophile Arthur Alfonso Schomburg from Puerto Rico, the literature of the Jamaican Claude McKay, and the novels of Baltimore’s Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, and Jessie Redmon Fauset all contributed to this outpouring of art and literature.
Out of nowhere it seemed, there appeared a handsome and talented teenage escape artist, Tommy Davis from Louisiana. Davis, also known as the Great Bromo, first became noticed in 1921 for his escape from a The Water Torture Cell created by Hungarian escape artist Harry Houdini in 1911.
Tommy Davis was one of the earliest true escape artists and described by many as “The Greatest Colored Performer in Vaudeville.” He worked with other Vaudeville performers who comprised a variety of individual unrelated touring acts. Those performers included exotic dancers, acrobats, jugglers, and voice demonstrators and magicians.
Davis became known as the Handcuff Expert. In his Prison Breaker Act, Davis was able to escape from the bondage of thick chains draped across his chest, a neck brace, handcuffs connecting his hands as well as legs, all of which were tied together with “Old-World Siberian Ankle Escape Chains.” Davis was not the only Black musician in Harlem at the time, but he became the most prominent, emerging in the early 1920s at the moment the Great Migration began in World War I. That migration lasted until the 1970s, bringing nearly one million people of African ancestry to New York City.
Magician Davis’s acts were not just about entertainment. They were a celebration of the New Negro in America; the name intellectuals and cultural leaders gave to the rising racial consciousness that came about because of the Great Migration. Davis’s acts, with their elaborate delusional conjuring, had a profound impact on the Harlem community. He also broke barriers at the time since he had a racially integrated following.
Despite achieving success and fame as an illusionist, Tommy Davis remained a mystery in many ways. Little is known about his exact date and place of birth or his family. Tommy Davis left New York City in the 1930s for Atlanta, Georgia and faded into obscurity.
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“Escape artist Tommy Davis, aka the Great Bromo, a first true escape artist,” https://africanamericanhistorychannelblog.home.blog/2021/05/02/escape-artist-tommy-davis-aka-the-great-bromo-first-true-escape-artist/; Jamy Ian Swiss, “Magical Heroes: The Lives and Legends of Great African American Magicians by Jim Magus,” a review, https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-book-reviews/magical-heroes-the-lives-and-legends-of-great-african-american-magicians; “Tommy L Davis in the 1940 Census,” https://www.ancestry.com/1940-census/usa/Georgia/Tommy-L-Davis_1sdgh0.
