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The Impresarios of Beale Street: African American and Italian American Theatre Managers in Memphis, 1900–1915

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2013

Stephen Huff
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Extract

Music scholars Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have researched what they call “a deep African American vaudeville theater tradition” in Memphis during the first decade of the twentieth century that helped lead the way to the commercialization of the blues. Their body of work provides a very useful and fascinating historical overview of the black vaudeville scene of the time on the national level. This article seeks to broaden that overview, using a much more focused, microhistorical perspective on the history of theatre management on one particular street in one particular, midsized southern city. It argues that in Memphis, the story of African American and Italian American theatre managers shows that realities were often much more complex than histories that portray a rigid and heavily drawn color line have suggested.

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Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 22 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2013 

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References

Endnotes

1. Abbott, Lynn and Seroff, Doug, “‘They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me’: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues,” American Music 14.4 (1996): 402–54, at 426CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reprinted in Ramblin’ on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, ed. Evans, David (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 49–104Google Scholar.

2. See also Abbott, Lynn and Seroff, Doug, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007)Google Scholar; and Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002)Google Scholar.

3. Burial Permit 21926, Fred A. Barrasso, 27 June 1911, Memphis, TN, Shelby County Archives.

4. Burial Permit 25349, Robert R. Church, 29 August 1912, Memphis, TN, Shelby County Archives.

5. Londré, Felicia Hardison, The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, 1870–1930 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 2Google Scholar.

6. Ginzburg, Carlo, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” translated by Tedeschi, John and Tedeschi, Anne C., Critical Inquiry 20.1 (1993): 10–35, at 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Brewer, John, “Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life,” Cultural and Social History 7.1 (2010): 87–109, at 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Ibid., 96.

9. Lepore, Jill, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History 88.1 (2001): 129–44, at 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Even other national African American newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender and the New York Age, rarely focused in any detail on Memphis, although they maintained significant coverage of theatrical happenings. Unlike these papers, the “Stage” sections of the Indianapolis Freeman contained advertisements from theatres all over the country (not just Chicago and New York) and covered events in Memphis regularly.

11. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that Memphis was the city with the largest proportion of blacks in both 1900 (48.8 percent) and 1910 (40 percent); Statistical Atlas of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 38. O. F. Vedder had also made this claim as early as 1888; see Keating, J. M. and Vedder, O. F., History of the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 2 vols. (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1888), 2:62Google Scholar. By 1920, the proportion of African Americans in the city had fallen a bit; however, the number of African Americans in the city increased more between 1910 and 1920 than between 1900 and 1910. See Donald, Henderson H., “The Negro Migration of 1916–1918,” Journal of Negro History 6.4 (1921): 393–498, at 477CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Kelley, Robin D. G., Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), 36Google Scholar. On African Americans in Memphis during this period, see Christopher Caplinger, “Conflict and Community: Racial Segregation in a New South City, 1860–1914” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 2003); Church, Roberta and Walter, Ronald, Nineteenth-Century Memphis Families of Color, 1850–1900, ed. Crawford, Charles M. (Memphis: Church–Walter, 1987)Google Scholar; Dernoral Davis, “Against the Odds: Postbellum Growth and Development in a Southern Black Urban Community, 1865–1900” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1987); Goings, Kenneth W. and Smith, Gerald L., “‘Unhidden Transcripts’: Memphis and African American Agency, 1862–1920,” Journal of Urban History 21.3 (1995): 372–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Goings and, “Duty of the Hour: African American Communities in Memphis, 1862–1923,” in Trial and Triumph: Essays in Tennessee's African American History, ed. West, Carroll Van (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 227–43Google Scholar; Jenkins, Earnestine Lovelle, African Americans in Memphis (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2009)Google Scholar; Lamon, Lester C., Black Tennesseans, 1900–1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Gloria Brown Melton, “Blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, 1920–1955: A Historical Study” (Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1982); and Tucker, David M., Lieutenant Lee of Beale Street (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

13. See, for example, Bond, Beverly G. and Sherman, Janann, Memphis in Black & White (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003), 74Google Scholar; and Sigafoos, Robert Alan, Cotton Row to Beale Street: A Business History of Memphis (Memphis: Memphis State University, 1979), 98Google Scholar.

14. Wrenn, Lynette Boney, Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis: Elite Rule in a Gilded Age City (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 10–11Google Scholar.

15. Gibson, Campbell J. and Lennon, Emily, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850–1990” (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1999)Google Scholar, table 19, Nativity of the Population for the 50 Largest Urban Places: 1870 to 1990, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab19.html, accessed 23 June 2013.

16. For more on this subject, see Canonici, Paul V., The Delta Italians: Their Pursuit of “The Better Life” and Their Struggle against Mosquitos, Floods, and Prejudice (Madison, MS: P. V. Canonici, 2003)Google Scholar.

17. “Fred DeLuca,” Commercial Appeal, 12 September 1967. Mercurio Maceri's death certificate indicates that he was born in Terrasini; see Certificate of Death, Mercurio Maceri, File No. 2618, 6 January 1933, Memphis, TN, Shelby County Archives.

18. Church, Annette E. and Church, Roberta, The Robert R. Churches of Memphis: A Father and Son Who Achieved in Spite of Race (Memphis: A. E. Church, 1974), 3–26Google Scholar; Wrenn, 77, 182n22. For more on Church, see Church and Walter, 16–19; and the Robert R. Church Family Papers, Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries, Memphis, TN (hereafter Church Family Papers).

19. The reference to Beale Street as the “Main Street of Negro America” comes from Lee, George Washington, Beale Street: Where the Blues Began (New York: R. O. Ballou, 1934), 13Google Scholar.

20. “Memphis Chronicles,” Indianapolis Freeman, 9 February 1901.

21. Indianapolis Freeman, 16 February 1901, 1.

22. “Memphis Chronicles.” The phrase “buzzard roost” was often used by both blacks and whites during this period to indicate the segregated upper gallery of the theatre where African Americans were forced to sit.

23. Gatewood, Willard B., Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 23Google Scholar.

24. Ibid.

25. “Business Life at Memphis,” New York Age, 3 October 1907.

26. Barrett, James R. and Roediger, David, “Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and the ‘New Immigrant’ Working Class,” Journal of American Ethnic History 16.3 (1997): 3–44, at 8Google Scholar.

27. Ibid., 20.

28. Guglielmo, Thomas A., White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. See also Guglielmo's and the other excellent essays in Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America, ed. Guglielmo, Jennifer and Salerno, Salvatore (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.

29. Some sources report that Church's Auditorium opened in 1899. However, an article in the Freeman on 2 February 1901 indicates that the auditorium was not yet finished at that time. It is not listed in the city directory until 1901. There is an article about Church and the auditorium in a white publication out of Montgomery, Alabama called North and South, but this was not published until December 1901; see “Representative Business Firms, Robert R. Church,” North and South 1.5 (1901): 7Google Scholar, quoted in Church and Church, 14. I have found no other primary source to indicate that the theatre opened before 1901. It could be that Church bought the land in 1899 and the auditorium was finished in 1901.

30. Abbott and Seroff, “‘They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me,’” 426.

31. Indianapolis Freeman, 4 May 1901, 5; “From Ben Hunn” and “Letter from a Manager to Dramatic Dep't. The Freeman,” Indianapolis Freeman, 29 June 1901; Indianapolis Freeman, 27 July 1901, 5; Indianapolis Freeman, 31 August 1901, 5.

32. Indianapolis Freeman, 4 May 1901, 5; Indianapolis Freeman, 31 August 1901, 5; “Warranty Deed from Bridget Turner, et. al., to James Kinnane,” 9 December 1899, Shelby County, TN, Book 272, p. 590, Shelby County Archives. Kinnane is listed as president of this saloon, which appears to have had an entrance around the corner on Winchester Street. See Polk, R. L. & Co., R. L. Polk & Co.’s Memphis City Directory 1901 (Memphis: R. L. Polk & Co., 1901), 804Google Scholar. [Hereafter, Polk directories will be cited as Memphis City Directory and the year.]

33. Miller, William D., Memphis during the Progressive Era, 1900–1917 (Memphis State University Press, and Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957), 88 and 211n9Google Scholar. His source is U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of Cities, 1902–1903, Census Bureau Bulletin 20 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 76.

34. See, for example, “A Heavy Hand Needed,” Commercial Appeal, 12 December 1901.

35. Miller, 95.

36. “Memphi Theatre Gutted by Fire,” Commercial Appeal, 30 September 1905; “To Rebuild the Memphi,” Commercial Appeal, 18 November 1905. For the gambling raid and its aftermath, see the Commercial Appeal, 12–15 July 1904.

37. A list of Church's properties includes several houses on the block of Gayoso Street between Hernando (later Third) and DeSoto (later Fourth) Streets, which was known for its brothels. Church Family Papers.

38. “Memphis Herald,” Indianapolis Freeman, 10 August 1901.

39. “Down in Tennessee,” Indianapolis Freeman, 28 September 1901.

40. Indianapolis Freeman, 9 November 1901, 5.

41. Ibid.

42. Abbott and Seroff state that Tick's Tivoli was relocated to the corner of South Fourth Street and Gayoso and renamed Tick's Big Vaudeville in 1905. Actually, the theatre stayed put; it was the street name and numbers that changed. They acknowledge that DeSoto became South Fourth around 1907, but they seem to have been unaware that all of the street numbers in Memphis were changed in 1905, so that by 1907 what had been 81 DeSoto was 121 South Fourth. See Abbott and Seroff, “‘They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me,’” 450n151.

43. Memphis City Directory 1903, 1142; National Police Gazette, 19 April 1902, 14; “Leading Saloonist,” National Police Gazette, 13 November 1903.

44. Memphis City Directory 1902, 1050.

45. Salem Tutt Whitney, “‘The Show's the Thing’: Southern Playhouses,” Indianapolis Freeman, 1 October 1910.

46. “Memphis Theater Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, 23 January 1909.

47. Memphis City Directory 1903, 1142; Memphis City Directory 1906, 1537; Memphis City Directory 1907, 1739; Memphis City Directory 1908, 1648; Memphis City Directory 1909, 1696.

48. “Tick Huston's [sic] Theater, Corner of Gayosa and Desota [sic],” Indianapolis Freeman, 28 November 1908.

49. “Barrasso” (obituary for Fred Barrasso), Commercial Appeal, 26 June 1911; “Genoroso Barrasso Is Taken by Death,” Commercial Appeal, 8 July 1935; “Mrs. Rosa Barraso [sic], 79, Dies at Home,” Evening Scimitar, 26 December 1938; “A. J. Barrasso Dies After Long Illness,” Commercial Appeal, 28 August 1967.

50. Abbot and Seroff, “‘They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me,’” 428–31. See also “Profession at Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, 29 January 1910.

51. Riis, Thomas L., “Pink Morton's Theater, Black Vaudeville, and the TOBA: Recovering the History, 1910–30,” in New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern, ed. Wright, Josephine (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1992), 229–43, at 235Google Scholar; “Where You Find Colored Theatres: Real Play Houses That Are Owned and Managed by Negroes,” Indianapolis Freeman, 21 May 1910.

52. “Tick Houston Theater, Louisville,” Indianapolis Freeman, 1 October 1910.

53. “Eleventh Annual Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, 24 December 1910.

54. Krasner, David, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Abbott and Seroff, “‘They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me,’” 434.

56. Michael Miklos notes the scholarly confusion over this issue in his entry on the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Wintz, Cary D. and Finkelman, Paul, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2:1172Google Scholar.

57. Indianapolis Freeman, 22 February 1902, 5; Peter Dunbaugh Smith, “Ashley Street Blues: Racial Uplift and the Commodification of Vernacular Performance in La Villa, Florida, 1896–1916” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2006), 45–6.

58. “Of Much Importance,” Indianapolis Freeman, 5 November 1910.

59. Indianapolis Freeman, 6 May–18 November 1910.

60. “Dudley Wants to Know,” Indianapolis Freeman, 20 January 1912.

61. These kinds of theatres offered cheap popular entertainment to the masses all across the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name derives from the fact that the lowest-priced tickets cost ten cents and the highest were thirty cents.

62. “Dudley Wants to Know,” Indianapolis Freeman, 20 January 1912.

63. “Says Chain of Colored Theaters Should Be Established,” Indianapolis Freeman, 3 February 1912.

64. Knight, Athelia, “In Retrospect: Sherman H. Dudley—He Paved the Way for T.O.B.A.,” Black Perspective in Music 15.2 (1987): 153–81, at 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. “Mr. Dudley Answered,” Indianapolis Freeman, 9 March 1912.

66. Lamon, 168.

67. Knight notes that the “What's What” feature began on 20 July 1912 (160). She also lists the cities from the Freeman article (“Dudley's Enterprise!” 28 December 1912) in which Dudley circuit theatres were located, but she mistakenly cites Philadelphia twice and does not mention Memphis.

68. Sylvester Russell, “Warning to Southern Managers,” Indianapolis Freeman, 23 December 1911.

69. Indianapolis Freeman, 20 December 1913, 5.

70. Memphis Sun, 27 December 1913, Church Family Papers.

71. “Memphis’ Great Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, 27 December 1913.

72. The Gem, the Royal, the Pekin, and the Amuse U had all disappeared from the Memphis City Directory by 1912. The Savoy appeared in the directory until 1913, so there may have been a bit of overlap, but there do not appear to have been any ads in the Freeman for this theatre after 1912.

73. “Metropolitan Theater, Memphis, Tenn., Week of the 7th—Mule Bradford Packing Them to the Streets,” Indianapolis Freeman, 12 September 1914. This article refers to the Savoy as “new,” which suggests that it had been closed but that a reopening was planned.

74. Church and Church, 63–86; Sewell, George A. and Dwight, Margaret L., Mississippi Black History Makers (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984), 55Google Scholar.

75. “Robert Church Theatre Now Open,” Indianapolis Freeman, 28 November 1914.

76. Bond and Sherman, 86.

77. “Conditions Are Bad in Memphis, Tenn.,” Chicago Defender, 11 August 1917.

78. Ibid.

79. For a detailed account of this conflict, see Knight, 165–72.

80. “A Note or Two,” Chicago Defender, 14 September 1918.

81. Frank Montgomery, “Frank in South,” Chicago Defender, 20 November 1920; “Frank's Dope,” Chicago Defender, 30 April 1921.

82. According to Elizabeth Gritter, “a writer in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World gave Church this nickname.” See Elizabeth Gritter, “Black Politics in the Age of Jim Crow: Memphis, Tennessee, 1865 to 1954” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010), 101n352. She cites Lee, George Washington, Beale Street: Where the Blues Began (New York: Robert O. Ballou, 1934), 254Google Scholar; “National Affairs: G. O. P., South,” Time, 18 February 1929, 10.