Amanda Randolph
American actress and singer (1896–1967)
Amanda E. Randolph (September 2, 1896 – August 24, 1967) was an American actress and singer. She was the first African-American performer to star in a regularly scheduled network television show, appearing in DuMont's The Laytons.
Early life
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Randolph was the daughter of a Methodist minister and a teacher. She had a younger sister, Lillian who also became an actress.
Career
Music
The Randolph family moved frequently. At the age of 14, Randolph began earning extra money playing the piano and organ in Cleveland, Ohio.
Around 1919, she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she recorded several piano rolls of hot jazz and blues music for the Vocalstyle company of Cincinnati while working as a musician in Ohio's Lyric Theatre. These are the only known rolls recorded by a black female pianist. Randolph did her work for the company under the name Mandy Randolph. She is shown as the performer of "The Yellow Dog Blues", by W. C. Handy in 1919, Vocalstyle roll # 11562.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Amanda Randolph” as american actress and singer (1896–1967). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress and singer (1896–1967). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4739738. VIAF identifies the subject as 36234765. The Library of Congress control number is n98079543. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1967 and 1919.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amanda Randolph” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.