George snowden biography

African-American dancer

For the American sculptor, see George Holburn Snowden. For the Pennsylvania lawyer and military officer, see George R.

Snowden.

George "Shorty" Snowden (July 4, 1904 – May 1982) was an African American dancer in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s. He and his partner Mattie Purnell invented the Harlem Lindy Hop in the dance marathon at Harlem's Rockland Palace between June and July 1928.

Snowden and Purnell's invention was based on the breakaway pattern which they practically rediscovered via an accident in the dance marathon.^[1]

There existed various Lindy Hop dances around the U.S.

since Charles Lindbergh's flight over the Atlantic Ocean in May 1927, which were not connected to the Harlem dance. The Harlem Lindy Hop was not the first of the Lindy Hop dances, but it was probably the only one which survived in the long run.^[2]

Snowden is sometimes inaccurately credited with coining the name 'Lindy Hop' for a