The life and legacy of Black magician Fetaque Sanders.

This magician has been a persistent source of inspiration for me, especially as my career takes me abroad. Learn more about Black magician Fetaque Sanders and his work introducing magic to unfamiliar communities.

Born on May 12, 1915, in a thirteen-room house at 1601 Heiman Street in Nashville, Tennessee, few could have predicted that little Fetaque Sanders would grow up to become America's most successful Black magician during the era of Jim Crow segregation. Yet for twenty-five years, Sanders toured the American South, bringing the wonder of magic to audiences who had never seen anything like it before.

Sanders' journey into magic began in childhood when he attended shows at Nashville's Bijou Theater, the city's Black theater. His fascination with the art was sparked after seeing a magician named Tricky Sam (Tatum). He traded a friend to get a dime-store magic set and learned quickly, soon hosting  neighborhood shows in his family's front yard.

His father, a community leader who directed the first segregated YMCA in Middle Tennessee, hoped his son would pursue a more prestigious career path. But magic had captured his son’s imagination completely. He devoured every magic book at the local library, then discovered a private collection in the back room of Cerruti's Tailoring Shop at 236½ Fourth Avenue North, where Nashville's exclusive magic club kept their library.

At fifteen, Sanders wrote to prominent magicians seeking advice about pursuing magic professionally. Frederick Eugene Powell, one of the era's most famous magicians, attempted to discourage him, warning that magic was "a long, hard road to travel with very doubtful success at the end." Rather than deterring the young performer, Powell's letter became a challenge Sanders was determined to meet.

His determination paid off when, at eighteen, he landed a job at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair in the Enchanted Island Children's Theatre. This breakthrough launched his professional career, and he would forever advertise himself as having performed "Direct from the Chicago World's Fair." His success so impressed management that what was supposed to be a two-week engagement stretched into two years.

After a brief stint with the Mighty Haag Circus in 1935, where he was billed as "Feta Sajii" and performed atop a camel wearing a turban – an experience that appalled his dignified father – Sanders decided this would be the last time he would disguise his race. He left the circus and began what would become his life's work: performing at segregated schools and churches throughout the South. As Sanders' friend Samuel Patrick Smith later wrote, this was "a Black man doing assembly shows in the South for poor audiences at segregated schools with no money" during the Depression, a testament to the love and admiration Sanders had for his community.

His performances were legendary during this time. He often used his signature line to start his shows: "Magic is mystery, and mystery's confusin'—but watch out, now, I'm gonna make it amusin'!"  It’s said that Sanders could drive audiences to near-hysteria. His advertisements promised spectacles like "shrinking the head of a living boy" and "chopping a girl's head off," all delivered with perfect timing and comic flair.

In 1942, Sanders married his childhood sweetheart, Irene Kennedy. Less than a year later, she died of pneumonia, leaving him devastated. The same week he received her death news, he was called to manage USO Camp Show Tabloid Troupe No. 65. Confused and grieving, he accepted.

For the next three years, during World War II, Sanders traveled by train entertaining more than three million soldiers across the country. His fellow performers included legendary entertainer Pearl Bailey and composer Eubie Blake, known for "I'm Just Wild About Harry." While with the USO, he met and married Mildred Reed. The day his daughter, Carolyn, was born became, in his words, "the happiest day of my life."

After the war, Sanders resumed touring segregated schools, performing in an average of two hundred cities a year. A talented craftsman, he built his own props, often featuring African motifs, and created all his advertising materials with the skill of a professional sign painter. His artistic mind was so visual that when making grocery lists, he drew sketches instead of writing words.

The constant travel through the Jim Crow South took its toll. Sanders often had difficulty finding hotels that would accommodate Black guests, so he pulled a trailer where his family could sleep. When ordering coffee, he would joke, "Make it the color of my skin," using humor to cope with the daily indignities of segregation.

In 1958, Sanders suffered a stroke that impaired his peripheral vision, forcing him to retire from extensive touring at age forty-three. He continued performing at nearby schools into the early 1960s but spent most of his remaining years at his Nashville home, surrounded by props and memorabilia from his remarkable career.

In his later years, Sanders mentored young magicians, most notably Samuel Patrick Smith and Scott Humston, who would visit him regularly. Even in declining health, his magic remained sharp. Shortly before his death on June 2, 1992, when his daughter Carolyn asked him to perform a coin trick, his hands steadied and he executed a flawless routine.

Sanders was posthumously elected to the Society of American Magicians Hall of Fame, recognition for a man who, in the face of systemic racism, brought wonder and joy to countless children who had never before witnessed professional entertainment. His legacy lives on in the magicians he inspired and the audiences whose lives he touched during America's most challenging era of racial division.