Dancing Darky Boy is a silent short film of 1897, directed by William Heise. Short films depicting children were immediately very popular. To the brothers Lumiere in France the play and daily life of children had offered inexhaustible inspirations in films such as Le Repas de bébé or Baignade en mar. The brothers Skladanowsky in Germany had rather turned their attention to the world of small street artists, in Italianischer Bauerntanz and Akrobatisches Potpourri. The director William Heise was the first in the United States to follow the example of the latter, taking back some small artists among the many who then earned their lives by exhibiting on the streets. Here is an African-American child engaged in a type-tap dance. In A Street Arab (1898) it will be the turn of a contortionist boy from New York.The film is also one of the first performances of African Americans, who racist prejudice made appear as caricatures and primitive figures, eternal children ("pickaninnies") engaged as wild dancers, "cocamore eaters", uneducated, good manners and led to excessive feelings.Despite all this, almost challenging the strongly stereotyped and caricatured context in which he is represented, the small protagonist (whose identity is unknown) shows himself to possess considerable talent and interprets himself in front of the camera with extreme naturality, dignity and mastery of his own means.