The kickoff was the musical “Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk” in 1898, with lyrics by the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The show was a smash. James Weldon Johnson, the Black Broadway lyricist who later led the N.A.A.C.P., reminisced that the “choruses and finales in ‘Clorindy,’ complete novelties as they were, sung by a lusty chorus, were simply breathtaking. Broadway had something entirely new.”