Black History
If Beale Street could talk, it would tell Memphis to ‘copyright me’
NNPA NEWSWIRE — I will never forget the colorful characters of Beale Street: Men wearing coordinated suits, shoes and hats, with processed hair; curvaceous women walking with advertising gaits and long eye lashes; impromptu street concerts by bands and musicians; “barkers” pleading for customers to enter their stores and shops; shoe shine boys with their mobile shine parlors and the bustling crowds.
By Dr. L. LaSimba M. Gray Jr., Special to The New Tri-State Defender
When I first heard of the movie “If Beale Street Could Talk” I got excited about the possibility of seeing the legendary Beale Street of Memphis on the big screen. To my utter disappointment this movie has nothing to do with the 1.8-mile long street in Memphis.
My disappointment is rooted in my personal “Beale Street Experience.”
I was introduced to Beale Street by my father, the late Rev. Leo M. Gray Sr. Periodically, he would take my two brothers and myself to the New Daisy Theatre on Beale. I remember asking him why we were not going to the Princess on Main Street.
“At the New Daisy we don’t have to sit in the balcony, we can sit on the main floor,” he said.
Mr. Robert Morris managed the New Daisy Theatre and was my school principal. En route to the New Daisy, we were enthralled by the carnival atmosphere, the aroma of soul food and the eccentric characters of Beale Street. The music pouring out of the juke joints and cafes was captivating. The bass guitar and drums moved us to walk with a bounce. We had swag before we knew what swag was.
In 1956, an African-American entrepreneur called “Mr. Buck” would hire boys from our neighborhood to work the Cotton Carnival Parade on Main St. We sold popcorn and cotton candy from Main and Poplar to Main and Beale. Mr. Buck would meet us half way to collect the money and replenish our trays. When we reached Beale Street, we turned east and walked down to Fourth Street, where he would pick us up.
The Beale Street Experience began the minute we turned on Beale. On Main St., we could not walk on the sidewalk or look our customers in the face as we sold them our goods.
Mr. Buck was very stern as he taught the acceptable behavior for Main Street. We were to avoid prolonged encounters with white females and we were drilled on saying “yes sir” and “no ma’am.”
“Y’all do remember Emmett Till, don’t you?” he would ask.
Free on Beale Street, we joked and played with each other. We looked into people’s faces, walked on the sidewalks and popped our fingers to the hard-hitting rhythm and blues songs. We took advantage of the hot-dog specials and had plenty of the sizzling hamburgers, chitterlings and bar-b-que.
The Cotton Makers Jubilee Parade rolled down Beale Street. We saw African-Americans on floats and in fine decorated cars. On Main Street, African Americans pulled floats or swept up behind the horses.
On Beale Street, the Cotton Makers Jubilee Parade was an all African-American thing. The marching bands of local high schools competed. Their sonic sounds and high-stepping majorettes kept the parade-goers spellbound. The legendary Nat D. Williams, the first radio personality at WDIA Radio, amplified the excitement with commentary.
I will never forget the colorful characters of Beale Street: Men wearing coordinated suits, shoes and hats, with processed hair; curvaceous women walking with advertising gaits and long eye lashes; impromptu street concerts by bands and musicians; “barkers” pleading for customers to enter their stores and shops; shoe shine boys with their mobile shine parlors and the bustling crowds.
Along the eastward journey, professional blacks punctuated the landscape. There were lawyers, doctors, and dentists, printing shops, photographers, banks, insurance companies and benevolent organizations.
A massive and magnificent church, First Baptist Beale, greeted us at Fourth St. Neighboring to the east was Church Park and Church Auditorium. We could go into the park, which was revolutionary to me. I lived across the street from the Winchester Park and could not enter.
When our ride showed up, we scampered on to the truck and claimed our seats. Mr. Buck would collect from each worker and pay off. My first experience on Beale Street far exceeded my compensation; Beale Street had given me a sense of “somebodiness.”
As we drove off, a sense of longing for more filled my spirit from that day to now. I love Beale Street.
Through the annals of history, we realize that Beale Street does talk. It was a mecca for African Americans all over the South.
“Beale Street is a composite of colorful incidents,” the legendary Lt. George W. Lee once said.
Lee collaborated with W. C. Handy and Robert Church to make Beale Street the epic experience of African Americans. Hearing the moans and groans of African Americans vented in song and dance, Handy put pen to scale, the blues was born, and he became known as its father.
Church, the first millionaire of African descent in the South, was at home on Beale Street. He controlled political patronage for the “Negro: in the Mid-South from reconstruction through World War I. He was the go-to-person to mobilize the “negro vote” and to get a true reading of the temperament of the “negro.”
Church built a park and auditorium for his people when city fathers continued to make empty promises. In 1899, without a dime of tax money, he built a recreational oasis – second to none – in the midst of the desert of segregation. In “The Bright Side of Memphis,” G.P. Hamilton wrote this about Church Park: “lighted up at night, it looked like a fairy land or garden for the gods.”
Developed for African-Americans, Church Park was opened to all. President Theodore Roosevelt spoke there while Memphis was totally segregated.
Advocacy journalism was born on Beale Street when W.E.B. Dubois partnered with Henry Pace to organize and publish the Crisis Magazine that became the official journal of the NAACP. Ida B. Wells published the Memphis Free Press on Beale Street as she sought to expose the lynching of African Americans and to end the bastard acts of violence.
Run out of Memphis by daily threats on her life, Wells reemerged as a national leader and charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
And in 1892, Dr. M.V. Lynk published the Medical and Surgical Observer, the first medical journal for “Negro” physicians, on Beale Street.
Beale Street was an incubator for business development by and for African Americans – Universal Life Insurance Company, Hooks Brothers Photography, Robert Henry Promotions, the Solvent Savings Bank of Memphis and more.
On Beale Street, African Americans found a soul force to endure the pathos of a toxic society and the residue of slavery. That “soul force” is “somebodiness” and a positive self-regard.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin L. King Jr. in Memphis in 1968, Beale Street was dealt a morbid wound by the concepts of urban renewal in the 1970s. Buildings were gutted and abandoned. Bustling crowds were diminished to a scarce few.
The music stopped on Beale and relocated. The legendary Gate Mouth Moore visited his old stomping grounds in the early 70’s and wrote a song: “Beale Street is gone and Beale Street ain’t Beale Street no more.”
The kitchens were closed, lights were turned off and Memphis – erroneously – announced the death of Beale Street. The premature obituary notwithstanding, tourists kept coming and inquiring.
“What happened to Beale Street?”
Abe Schwab resolved to keep his dry goods store open and serve his loyal customers base. He was asked why.
“You have to understand, Beale Street is more than a destination,” he said. “Beale Street is an attitude.”
The attitude of defiance and determination sustained Beale Street through its most challenging time. In many instances, some of the city’s leaders acted like modern day Pontius Pilates. Like the biblical figure, they seemed to be trying to wash themselves of a martyr’s blood, in this case using urban removal.
However, the essence of Beale Street was not in the buildings. It was in the souls of all who drank from the refreshing waters of affirmation and transformation. That fountain was only on Beale Street for African Americans of the Greater Mid-South.
Beale Street still is talking. Today it stands with opened arms, beckoning the world to come, see and taste “Soul.”
Beale Street is too important to the history of African Americans to be trivialized in a movie title.
The false expectations created by the movie title, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” lead me to seriously propose to City Fathers and all stakeholders that the brand “Beale Street” be copyrighted – immediately.
Black History
IN MEMORIAM: Marcia Ann Gillespie, Editor of Essence and Ms. Magazines, Dies at 82
Marcia Ann Gillespie, the trailblazing journalist who served as the first editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, has died at age 82. After joining the publication at its inception in 1970, Gillespie spent a decade elevating the beauty and voices of Black women during a pivotal era of self-love and cultural revolution. She later broke barriers as the first Black woman to lead Ms. magazine, further solidifying her status as a titan of the publishing industry. Her expansive career also included authorship and teaching, leaving a profound impact on American media. Read more.
Marcia Anna Gillespie, the first editor in chief of Essence magazine, has died. She was 82.
Born in Rockville Centre, New York, in 1944. The daughter of a church sexton/small business owner and domestic worker/caterer, Gillespie parlayed her degree in American studies from Illinois’s Lake Forest College into a research job at Time-Life Books, Inc. in New York.
There she advocated for fairness and inclusion of Black life in its publications. When the owners of the standard bearer of Black life, Ebony magazine, ventured into creating a special publication for young, Black women, Gillespie was hired as managing editor in 1970, and became editor-in-chief a year later at the young age of 26.
At the time, the venture by the Johnson family – the owners of Ebony magazine and Jet – into creating a publication for young Black women met the growing revolution of self-love in the Black community.
In other words, the battle cry of the late 1960s, “Black is Beautiful,” had a place to be seen and not just heard.
Thousands of young women who had already abandoned straightening combs and European aesthetics learned more ways to wear their natural hair from Afros to cornrows. Young Black designers got a place in the spotlight not just in clothing but jewelry that expressed neo-African ideals. But one of the most important impacts was the magazine’s unapologetic elevation of the beauty of the dark-skinned Black female to the status she deserved.
Under Gillepie’s tenure, Essence championed storytelling that celebrated Black women’s identities, experiences, and contributions at a time when their voices were often overlooked in mainstream media,” Essence wrote in a statement posted to Instagram
For 10 years she steered the fledgling publication before joining Ms. Magazine as a contributor in 1980 later becoming the first Black woman to edit a mainstream American magazine when she took charge in 1992.
In 1998, she helped secure the publication’s future through a women-led ownership group. She stayed at Ms. In various capacities until 2001, during which time the magazine had the most diverse readership in its history.
She also mentored future Essence editor Susan L. Taylor and taught young journalists at SUNY Old Westbury.
Emmy-winning actor Sheryl Lee Ralph took to social media to honor Gillespie’s life.
“Rest in peace, dear Marcia Gillespie,” she wrote on Threads. “Your voice, your brilliance, and your commitment to lifting up Black women leaves a legacy that will continue to inspire me and so many others.”
A professor at SUNY Old Westbury and Bennett College, she also co-authored the authorized biography “Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration” in 2008.
According to Wikipedia, she also served on various boards as a director or advisor, including: “…the Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health, the Black & Jewish Women of New York, the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., Aspen Institute, …and the Studio Museum of Harlem. Gillespie is a member of the National Council of Negro Women and the American Association of Magazine Editors.”
She was the recipient of several awards, including: the Lake Forest College Outstanding Alumni Award (1973), the New York Women in Communications Matrix Award (1978); a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Association of Black Journalists for print journalism (1982); a ‘Top Ten Outstanding Women in Magazine Publishing’ recognition by the March of Dimes.
In later years she was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame (2002); the NAACP President’s Award (2006) and the Barbara Graves Legacy Award at the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit in 2017.
The conclusion for her online obituary reads: “She leaves behind a legacy written not just in the pages she edited, but in every editor, journalist, and reader who found themselves — finally — in the stories she chose to tell.”
Online sources for this report include “The History Makers,” The Washington Informer, Wikipedia, Essence magazine, Ms. Magazine and her obituary.
Black History
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi Honors local ‘Women of the Year’ at Annual Awards Ceremony
Congressman John Garamendi recently honored 52 remarkable women during his 13th annual Women of the Year ceremony in Benicia. The event recognized leaders from California’s 8th District for their significant contributions to public service, education, business, and community life. The honorees, including 16 women from West Contra Costa County, were officially commemorated in the Congressional Record for their dedication to the region. The diverse group includes veterans, educators, and community advocates who have shaped the local landscape through decades of service. Read more about these influential leaders.
Sixteen women from West Contra Costa County were among 52 honorees recognized by Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA-08) at his 13th annual Women of the Year ceremony in Benicia on Oct. 23.
The 2026 honorees from Solano and Contra Costa counties were recognized for contributions to public service, education, business and community life.
“Every year, I’m honored to recognize the remarkable women of California’s Eighth District who serve as the backbone of our community,” Garamendi said.
Their contributions were also recognized in the Congressional Record. The following profiles summarize the ceremony remarks and supporting biographies.
Richmond
King-Meredith was honored for six decades of community service. An engineer and project manager whose professional career included defense-industry work, she has served organizations including the North Richmond Municipal Advisory Council and Shields-Reid Neighborhood Council. Her contributions also include environmental justice advocacy and artwork addressing social injustice.
Bolds was recognized for supporting Richmond youth and families and organizing community events. She established the annual “Put the Guns Down” event about 20 years ago in response to neighborhood violence. Through her organization, Visions of Hope, she brings together families, service providers, community leaders and public safety partners to address bullying and violence prevention.
Martinez Luna was honored for her work supporting businesses and families along Richmond’s 23rd Street corridor. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, she became the first person in her family to graduate from high school. A longtime Rigo’s Auto Sales employee and secretary of the 23rd Street Merchants Association, she helps organize community events, supports immigration information forums and works with local partners on neighborhood concerns.
Dawkins-Padigela was recognized for her professional and community leadership. A U.S. Air Force veteran who served seven years as an aircraft mechanic, she later pursued graduate studies in marriage and family therapy and professional clinical counseling. As president of East Bay CAMFT, she supports professional education, networking and collaboration among mental health practitioners.
Padilla, a dean at Contra Costa College, was honored for advancing educational equity and student success. A Richmond High School graduate, she began her higher education at Contra Costa College before earning a bachelor’s degree in applied physics from UC Davis and a doctorate in neuroscience from UC Berkeley. She later returned to CCC to lead initiatives expanding opportunities for students pursuing STEM careers.
Milam was recognized for a public service career that began as a teenager with the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership. As crime prevention manager for the Richmond Police Department, she has worked with government and community partners on violence prevention and homelessness response. Her congressional tribute credits her with helping secure nearly $30 million for outreach, shelter, treatment, encampment resolution and pathways to housing.
Nmereole was honored for supporting immigrant communities, young people and elderly residents throughout Contra Costa County and the greater Bay Area. Her volunteer work includes GED tutoring, vocational nursing exam preparation, computer instruction and youth mentorship. She also helps immigrants navigate services and assists elderly residents with transportation, prescriptions and groceries.
Curl was recognized for more than two decades of service to Richmond, beginning with the city’s redevelopment agency. She became interim city manager in November 2021 and permanent city manager in April 2022 before retiring in 2026. Garamendi credited her with helping secure more than $300 million in grants for infrastructure, housing and education, strengthening city finances and helping Richmond exit the state auditor’s high-risk designation.
Black History
HISTORY MADE: Keisha Lance Bottoms Becomes First Black Woman Elected Governor in American History
ATLANTA DAILY WORLD — History has been made in Georgia. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, has been elected governor of Georgia, becoming the first Black woman in American history to win the highest executive office in any state.
History has been made in Georgia. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, has been elected governor of Georgia, becoming the first Black woman in American history to win the highest executive office in any state.
Bottoms’ victory over Republican businessman Rick Jackson represents a defining moment in American politics, breaking a barrier that has stood since the nation’s founding and placing Georgia at the center of a historic political transformation.
For generations, Black women have played a critical role in American democracy, organizing communities, leading movements, mobilizing voters and shaping public policy. Yet despite their contributions, no Black woman had ever been elected governor of a U.S. state.
Until now.
Bottoms’ election also makes her the first woman and first Black person elected governor of Georgia, a state whose political history has been deeply shaped by slavery, segregation, the civil rights movement and the long struggle for equal representation.
Her victory carries particular significance in a state where Black women have been among the most influential forces in voter registration, political organizing and Democratic electoral success.
A fifth-generation Georgian, Bottoms previously served as Atlanta’s 60th mayor from 2018 to 2022. During her administration, she led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic, nationwide protests over racial injustice and a period of significant economic and population growth.
Following her time as mayor, Bottoms served as a senior adviser in President Joe Biden’s administration before returning to Georgia politics to pursue the governorship.
Her campaign focused on expanding access to health care, strengthening public education, increasing wages and addressing the rising cost of living. She also advocated for expanding Medicaid, raising Georgia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and increasing compensation for teachers and other public employees.
Bottoms faced Jackson, a wealthy health care executive who invested heavily in his campaign and positioned himself as a political outsider. The contest drew national attention as Democrats sought to reclaim the Georgia governor’s office after more than two decades of Republican control.
The historic nature of Bottoms’ victory extends well beyond party politics.
Georgia, once at the center of some of America’s most consequential civil rights battles, has now elected a Black woman to lead its state government. It is a milestone that reflects generations of political participation, organizing and leadership by Black Georgians.
For Atlanta, the moment is especially significant. A former mayor of the city that helped shape the modern civil rights movement will now lead the entire state.
Bottoms’ election opens a new chapter in Georgia’s political history and establishes a milestone that will be remembered far beyond the 2026 election.
For continuing election coverage and results, visit AtlantaDailyWorld.com/election26.
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