Peekskill magician Margaret Steele had a magical moment recently with the launch of her historical book The Great Boomsky: The Many Lives of Magic’s First Black Superstar.

The upstate New York native has lived in Peekskill since 2010 when she fell in love with an artist loft. She has performed magic all over the world for the past 30 years, both at local children’s parties as Magical Margo, and on-stage, including Hollywood’s exclusive Magic Castle club. The Juilliard-trained oboist played on Broadway and taught classical music programs to children before devoting her efforts to writing The Great Boomsky.

“I believe that this is the greatest untold story in the history of magic,” says Steele, who published the book in May through her company Floating Lady Publishing. “It’s a great story, and a fun story. It provides an historical connection that wasn’t there before.”

Steel’s interest in magic began as a child when she watched a magician at school. “There are people who say that magicians are born and not made,” she says. “I was always interested, but as a child I had no way to find out about magic. There was no internet then.”

Nonetheless, Steele managed to find a book and learn a few tricks to intrigue friends, like making a ring magically appear on a string. In her early 30s, attending a professional magic show with beautiful props — feathers, fans, masks, and colors – further fascinated her about the world of magic. “That’s the kind of magic I do,” she says. Because of her background in music, her silent magic shows are set to music, and bring an element of surprise.

Steele pursued the trade through mentorship from great magicians like Jeff McBride. “That’s how most magicians are trained,” she adds. “The magic world is interesting because when you meet someone who can mentor you, they grab your hand and pull you through the magic window. I was lucky to find teachers who showed me sleight of hand and had incredible magicians teaching me. Magicians are always teaching each other how to be deceptive,” she says with a smile. Steele is now giving back by mentoring a female student.

But perhaps she learned the most from the subject of her book – Alexander Herrmann, who she says was the most famous magician of his time, more than Houdini. The French-born magician of German descent performed with his wife, Adelaide, beginning his career in Europe in the 1860s, later coming to the United States and vaudeville. The son of a magician, Herrmann the Great learned from his older brother Carl,  who often used Alexander, as young as 8, as an assistant in his magic shows.

This schtick worked, according to Steele, because the audience wouldn’t expect a child to be working slyly behind the scenes in plain sight. As an adult performing on his own, Alexander sought similar child assistants because the act worked so well in his brother’s shows. He began training protégés, African American teens to be his assistants. Steele says Herrmann called the assistants Boomskys, who would fall on top hats and drop trays of borrowed watches to distract the audience with laughter.

Steele’s website notes: “The Boomsky role was a training ground and launching pad for at least seven successful, world-class Black magicians, a phenomenon during the Jim Crow segregationist era, with its near-complete lack of opportunity for African Americans.” Among the most famous Boomskys were Isaac Willis, Black Carl, James Willis, and others who went on to become magicians.

Steele, who edited and published in 2011 Aelaide’s lost memoir, Adelaide Herrmann Queen of Magic: Memoirs, Published Writings and Collected Ephemera, was fascinated by the Herrmanns’ story. Her role model was Adelaide, who had a unique performance style, and the first great female magician in a male-dominated business.

The Boomskys were especially inspiring, says Steele, who refers to them as magic’s first black superstars. “I love the history,” says Steele, whose dad was a college professor and mom a genealogy buff. “I’ve always been interested in it. I love making connections between the past and now.” In her 404 pages, Steele shares the stories of the Boomsky’s including Milton Hudson Everett, who at 13 years old was a beloved character.

While Steele began writing the book in 2019, she had researched the subject for more than 20 years, digging through archives, old newspapers, records, internet searches, and talking to scholars to learn about the Boomskys.

Modern-day renowned magician David Copperfield provided a blurb on the books’ back cover: “Margaret Steele has restored an important lost chapter form the Golden Age of magic in a thoroughly researched, entertaining take that reads like an adventure novel, rare magic, indeed.”

To celebrate her work, Steele signed books at the Artist’s Spot in Peekskill, and presented at Field Library in late May. She also arranged a local magic show featuring African American Ran’D Shine, one of the top magicians in the country. Actor/magician Hiawatha Johnson Jr., who wrote Steel’s foreword, and is known for his work in Desperate Acts of Magic, helped her with the show.

Her next endeavor is a book for female magicians. With a tentative title of Femm Magic, Steele hopes it will provide women with tips on how to adapt magic from a man’s perspective, she says, since all the books are written for men. “I’ve been adapting magic for myself my entire career.”

Still a largely male-dominated business, Steele says women have made career advances. “We’ve made tremendous advances and are making more all the time,” she says, citing magicians like Connie Boyd and Shezam. “It’s still a very misogynistic world, and we have challenges.” Many women don’t last long in the business, she adds.

“Hermann thought magic was a healing art. When you can take people out of their everyday lives and give them a magical experience it helps their mind, body and spirit. Magic also gives people childlike wonder.”

The Great Boomsky can be purchased on Amazon and here.