Lottie Williams (actress, born 1866)

Charlotte Louise Johnson, known as Lottie Williams and Lottie Thompson (1866 – March 17, 1929), was an American actress, singer, and dancer.^[1] A pioneering performer in African-American musical theater, she is best remembered for starring in several stage works with her second husband, Bert Williams, both on Broadway and in vaudeville. These included several musicals created by composer Will Marion Cook, lyricist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the playwright Jesse A. Shipp; including Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903), and Abyssinia (1906) among other works. In these musicals she portrayed mainly supporting character roles and was usually a featured singer and/or dancer. However, she portrayed the title role and the main protagonist in the Cook, Dunbar, and Shipp musical My Tom-Boy Girl (1905).

As a dancer, Williams was particularly associated with the cakewalk, and a sketch of her alongside her future husband in that dance was depicted on the front cover of the original sheet music for Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899. She retired from the stage in 1908, but continued to provide support for her husband and his career. While the Williamses had no biological children of their own, the couple became the adoptive parents of three of Lottie's nieces after the death of her sister in 1913. She died at her home in Harlem in 1929.