"Vintage-P.T. Wright's, Original Nashville Student Poster
Black business man and proprietor, P.T. Wright's, Original Nashville Students, were not ever students at all. But a highly gifted and very highly successful all black minstrel troupe. They were lauded and praised by white and colored people of every category in their day. They played in wild west towns such as Deadwood, South Dakotah, to the bright city lights of New York City! However, even though these black performers became stars within the broad African-American community, they were largely ignored or condemned by the black bourgeoisie. James Monroe Trotter—a middle class African American who had contempt for their "disgusting caricaturing" but admired their "highly musical culture"—wrote in 1882 that "few… who condemned black minstrels for giving 'aid and comfort to the enemy'" had ever seen them perform.
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