Black History
Councilmember Seeks Plan for Former Pullman Porters’ Hotel Damaged in Fire
Richmond City Councilmember Doria Robinson is planning to hold a community meeting in the next few weeks to discuss possible plans for the fire-ravaged International Hotel property. The historic hotel at 396 Ethel Dotson St., which once housed Black porters who had been barred from staying at a nearby, since-demolished white-only hotel, was destroyed in a three-alarm fire in April.
The Richmond Standard
Richmond City Councilmember Doria Robinson is planning to hold a community meeting in the next few weeks to discuss possible plans for the fire-ravaged International Hotel property.
The historic hotel at 396 Ethel Dotson St., which once housed Black porters who had been barred from staying at a nearby, since-demolished white-only hotel, was destroyed in a three-alarm fire in April.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Robinson expressed a desire to preserve the rich Black history that arose from the privately-owned property.
“We still want to create something in that location,” she said. “I’ve been gathering information about what might be possible, who are the owners, what they’re willing to do. We want to have a community meeting in the next few weeks with Councilmember [Gayle] McLaughlin and folks from the southside to really bring together those ideas, so we can come up with a proposal and not forget about that really powerful Black history…in Richmond.”
Robinson said the community should look for upcoming notices about a meeting with the Pullman Neighborhood Council on this matter. Check the Councilmember’s website for updates.
According to city and the Pullman Neighborhood Council, A. Phillip Randolph built the International Hotel to house the black Pullman Porters who weren’t allowed to stay at the Pullman Hotel during the layovers while the Pullman railcars were being serviced. The International Hotel would also serve as an after-hours joint and night club, where celebrities would gather to entertain porters during the WWII era. It was also a site for much organizing and socializing that eventually led to the establishment of the national Brotherhood of Black Sleeping Car Railroad Porters Union.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of May 29 – June 4, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 29 – June 4, 2024
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Activism
Oakland Post: Week of May 22 – 28, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May May 22 – 28, 2024
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Black History
Book Review: ‘The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America’
Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping. They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping.
They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.
Louis Armstrong was born in 1900 or thereabouts in a “four-room frame house on an unpaved lane” in a section of New Orleans called “Back o’Town … the Blackest, swampiest, and most impoverished” area of the city. His mother was a “chippie,” and the boy grew up running barefoot and wild, the latter of which led to trouble. At age twelve, Armstrong was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for recalcitrant Black boys, and that changed his life. At the “home,” he found mentors, father-figures and love, and he discovered music.
For years, Bill “Count” Basie insisted that he’d grown up with “no-drama, no-mystery, and nobody’s business but his,” but the truth was “sanitized.” He hated school and dropped out in junior high, hoping to join the circus. Instead, he landed a job working in a “moving-picture theater” as a general worker. When the theater’s piano player didn’t come to work one day, Basie volunteered to sit in. He ultimately realized that “I had to get out … of Red Bank [New Jersey], and music was my ticket.”
Even as a young teenager, Edward Ellington insisted that he be treated like a superstar. By then, his friends had nicknamed him “Duke,” for his insistence on dressing elegantly and acting like he was royalty. And he surely was — to his mother, and to millions of swooning female fans later in his life.
Three men, born at roughly the same time, had more in common than their ages. Two of them had mothers “who doted” on them. All three were perform-aholics. And, for all three, “Race … fell away as America listened.”
Feel up to a time-trip back a century or more? You won’t even have to leave your seat, just grab “The Jazzmen” and hang on.
In his introduction, author Larry Tye explains why he so badly wanted to tell the story of these three giants of music and how Basie’s, Ellington’s, and Armstrong’s lives intersected and diverged as all three were near-simultaneously performing for audiences world-wide. Their stories fascinated him, and his excitement runs strong in this book. Among other allures, readers used to today’s star-powered gossip will enjoy learning about an almost-forgotten time when performers took the country by storm by bootstrapping without a retinue of dozens.
And the racism the three performers encountered disappeared like magic sometimes, and that’s a good tale all by itself.
This is a musician’s dream book, but it’s also a must-read story if you’ve never heard of Basie, Ellington, or Armstrong. “The Jazzmen” may send you searching your music library, so make note.
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