“If I were to give advice to a young woman today, it would be to live your dreams, just like I did. If I could make it in a time when there was everything going against me – a teenaged African-American female in a highly competitive profession during racist times – you can do whatever it is you desire to do, too. Just remember me, Lottie the Body. If I could do it, you can, too.” Lotti “The Body” Graves
She was born in Syracuse, New York on October 31, 1930 and had her untimely passing on February 28, 2020 in Detroit where she called home.
She was indeed a remarkable woman and I remember her well because I got the chance to meet her long before ever knowing who she was and she was a “Girls Girl” because she taught me my very first lesson about men and money. “Don’t let nobody cheat you out of yo money.” The older male bartender was taking my tables and I was letting him.
I happened to be a very young girl with a sparkle in my eye that needed a job and I wanted to work downtown because it had easy bus terminal access. I saw a dingy old bar downtown in Detroit that sat on Gration between Broadway and Randolph. It of course is no longer there but when it was it was all black with white letters. It was a jazz club. I wish I could recall the name and I tried and tried to look it up even via old images but nothing came up of what my version of old Detroit once was as I remembered it.
Edit: I was able to find an old video that named the club and who she was because THAT is how i met her and I embedded it below. The club name was Bo Macs (Bo-Mac’s Lounge in Detroit 281 Gratiot).
I had the pleasure and privilege of working there when I was very very young. It wasn’t much to see but you just knew it was or used to be the place to be. By the time I got there, the allure of that area was going downhill and jazz was no longer in and it all got torn down a few years later.
The owner was a short, high yellow, older gentleman that was literally sweet as pie (RIP to him “Harry” as he was murdered a few years later in 2002).
The year back then was between 2000 or 2001 because it was before I finished high school. He gave me a chance but the hours were too late and the bus back to my house which was hours away cut off before I would have even left for the night so I had to quickly leave that position and luckily I found other employment closer to home. But in that time, I got the chance to meet that legend. I believe it was fate that we met and I should have stayed longer in that position because when she passed, though I didn’t know who she was then, I immediately knew when I saw that she had passed via a Metro Times article. It wasn’t her face I remembered though; it was her spirit. I had met a living legend.
Lottie ‘The Body’ Graves Claiborne
Lottie was renowned for her support of other exotic dancers, musicians, and entertainers. She was a classically trained American Burlesque dancer who performed from the late 1940’s to the early 1980s and was considered Detroit’s own Gypsy Rose Lee a name give to her by a resort town dubbed the “Black Eden of Michigan. Her parents’ home was listed in the “green book” for Black musicians and performers who couldn’t stay in hotels due to segregation in the 1940s.
Finding out that she was renowned for her support of other exotic dancers as I was researching her really made my day because she stayed true to herself even in old age. By the time I met her she was just a bar tender in that dingy old jazz club. I had heard though that at it’s time it was legendary.
She began as a swing dancer with a group called Whitely’s Lindy Hoppers which disbanded in 1942 when the men were drafted into WWII and it was at that time that exotic dancing became an option because choices were limited for African American Women during that time and she had to provide. She was known for crossing racial lines for her burlesque dancing that many black people during her time were denied. She performed her shows across the United States as well as internationally.
Lotti used Afro-Cuban music and choreography to accentuate her elaborate costumes she was known for alongside her routines. She studyied with accomplished choreographer Katherine Dunham, who worked with the likes of Eartha Kitt, and taught Lottie versatile dance styles from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
She never danced fully nude, only partially. At times she removed no clothing at all because it was er technique made her enormously popular, and she was in high demand. A racketeer in Indianapolis even built a nightclub for her, called the Pink Poodle.
She was the first Black woman to dance on television in Alaska and in spite of the racist times Lottie stated that she was mostly treated with respect by both black and white people, men and women alike. she felt that due to her career she was afforded some privileges that other Black Americans didn’t experience. (I as a sex worker discussed this even during my time ALL the time because it was apparent and true fame or not.)
She was well known to many popular performers – comedians, singers, musicians, and dancers during her time and supporting and mentoring other dancers was very important to her. When travelling with her husband of the Harlem Globetrotters she met Fidel Castro not knowing who he would become. She said he was a sweet little man. Lottie “the body” had been married twice. Once to an Air Force lieutenant and the second time to a Harlem Globe Trotter from Detroit.
By the time she turned 50, she had quit dancing and become an MC for Detroit night clubs which I gather is how she ended up at Bo-Macs where I met her quite a bit later after her retirement at the age of 61. Meaning I met her by chance 9 years later after her retirement. When she needed a walker later in life she laughed and said it was because she had done the splits too many times. She passed away at 89 years old in Detroit, Michigan.
