Billie Thomas first appeared in the 1934
Our Gang shorts ''
For Pete's Sake!,
The First Round-Up,
and Washee Ironee as a background player. The "Buckwheat" character was a girl at this time, portrayed by Our Gang'' kid
Matthew "Stymie" Beard's younger sister Carlena in ''
For Pete's Sake!'', and by Willie Mae Walton in three other shorts. Thomas began appearing as "Buckwheat" with 1935's ''
Mama's Little Pirate''. Despite Thomas being a boy, the Buckwheat character remained a girl—dressed as a
Topsy-esque image of the African-American "
pickaninny" stereotype with bowed pigtails, a large hand-me-down sweater and oversized boots. After Stymie's departure from the series later in 1935, the Buckwheat character slowly morphed into a boy, first referred to definitively as a "he" in 1936's
The Pinch Singer. This is similar to the initial handling of another African-American
Our Gang member,
Allen "Farina" Hoskins, who worked in the series during the silent and early sound eras. Despite the change in the Buckwheat character's gender, Billie Thomas's androgynous costuming was not changed until his appearance in the 1936 film
Pay as You Exit. This new costuming – overalls, striped shirt, oversized shoes, and a large unkempt
afro – was retained for the series until the end. The reason for the change in appearance was so he could portray, in the 1936
Our Gang feature film
General Spanky, a five-year-old slave asking men on a
riverboat and, subsequently, shoeshine boy Spanky, "You be my master?". Thomas remained in
Our Gang for ten years, appearing in all but one of the shorts, ''
Feed 'em and Weep (due to sickness; fellow child actor Philip Hurlic filled in for him), made from Washee Ironee'' in 1934 through the series' end in 1944. During the first half of his
Our Gang tenure, Thomas's Buckwheat character was often paired with
Eugene "Porky" Lee as a tag-along team of "little kids" rallying against (and often outsmarting) the "big kids",
George "Spanky" McFarland and
Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer. Thomas had a
speech impairment as a young child, as did Lee, who became Thomas's friend both on the set and off. The "Buckwheat" and "Porky" characters both became known for their collective garbled dialogue, in particular their catchphrase, "O-tay!" originally uttered by Porky, but soon used by both characters. However, the work of Thomas and the other
black cast members as actors is credited with helping the cause of race relations by playing alongside white children and going to school with them as equals in a desegregated show during the height of the
Jim Crow Era. According to
Julia Lee, author of
Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals, Thomas and the others were "considered saviors in many ways" by the black community as the most popular black stars in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. ==Later life==