The Great Depression and WWII’s Impact on The Chitlin’ Circuit
kaylie st.pierre staff On a Saturday night in South Louisiana, sounds of saxophones, laughter and dancing filled the air, regardless of the tough times and uncertain future. The local nightclubs offered the only entertainment around, promising memories and good music for just fifty cents. The Chitlin’ Circuit thrived during the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1939, and World War II, from 1939 to 1945. These time periods marked growth for the circuit due to the limited entertainment opportunities in the South. “Chitlin Circuit and the Road To Rock ‘N Roll” author Preston Lauterbach says the lack of entertainment and affordability of the Circuit helped it flourish. “There wasn’t a lot going on. People didn’t have TV. There was very limited access to radio and other media. A popular band coming through a town and playing for 50 cents was a pretty good deal, it was worth it for people.” Preston Lauterbach The Depression assisted in migration, making it easier for people to leave harsh discrimination in the South. A local musician, Thomas Lyons, says the Great Depression spurred musicians to migrate to Northern areas where they developed their own music cultures. “People had disposable income, and they wanted to have a good time,” Lyons says. “So the Circuit and booking agents sprung up because they could make money doing it.” WWII provided jobs for African Americans, resulting in better income. More venue owners established Black nightclubs, giving musicians job opportunities to perform. “For the first time in American history, African American people reached almost total employment,” says Lauterbach. “Everybody had jobs due to the war and the war effort.” WWII brought positive and negative impacts to the Circuit, like providing jobs and creating challenges of rationing and the draft. Rationing became a concern due to supply and demand issues, as well as the focus on military needs. “Americans could only use so much of certain products like gasoline and rubber because those items had to go towards the Army and towards the war effort,” says Lauterbach. Throughout these hard times of World War II and The Great Depression, African Americans found comfort in blues music. Margie Scoby, president of the Finding Our Roots African American History Museum in Houma, says music was their way of expressing themselves. The post-war blues was their way of recovering from what they had experienced. “They always had a way of expressing feelings and thoughts and messages,” she says. “They always had a way for one to help the other.” 1942 DUKW Truck used in WWII with ammunition and supplies List of Casualties from WWII from Lafourche Parish Model Plane of Second Lieutenant Augustus G. Brown Song Books Issued to Soldiers while in WWII WWII Registration Card
Podcast Series: Community Memories
jaci remondet staff Jerry Jones former Lafourche Parish Councilman Thomas Lyons raised in Houma and moved to Thibodaux for college Harvey Hill Chitlin’ Circuit venue owner Hosea Hill’s grandson
C.M. Washington: Educating the Community
jennifer marts staff In 1902, a Black woman named Cordelia Matthews Washington pioneered the Negro Corporation Training School in “back of town” Thibodaux, Louisiana. African American children traveled lengthy distances from Cut Off to Houma and even Napoleonville to attend this all-Black school. “I had to make a round trip of 70 miles a day, because I decided I wanted a high school education. It was such a long trip to and from school, I tried to do some of my work on the bus.” Marilyn Marts, a Larose native The vision for the school began with Washington’s passion for education, driving her to create the first African American educational institution within the tri-parish area. “The best education I got was going to the all-Black C.M. Washington High School,” says 1963 graduate Donald Johnson. “The teachers really cared about the students, and they made you learn.” In 1942 the school board changed the name to C.M. Washington Elementary and High School in honor of the founder. After integration in 1968, the school’s name changed to South Thibodaux Elementary School despite pushback from the community and the school’s alumni association. “Our goal was to get the name (C.M. Washington) returned to at least one of the schools in the area,” says Marian Ellis, a 1959 graduate of C.M. Washington and member of the school’s alumni association. With pressure from the alumni association, the Thibodaux City Council changed the school’s name back to C.M. Washington in 2019. “The vote was unanimous,” says Ellis. A century after Washington started the school, current principal, Gina Johnson, says the school is still serving the area’s children. “The teachers here work really, really hard and their main focus is doing what’s best for our kids and putting things in place to motivate them, challenge them, and keep them abreast academically as well as socially and emotionally.” Gina Johnson Washington left an educational legacy along Bayou Lafourche that built a foundation for the Black community. Ellis says, “I am proud to be a graduate of C.M. Washington.” Born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana in January 1876, Cordelia Matthews Washington was an educational pioneer who championed a school for the Black children of the Bayou Region. Side of School Back View of the School C.M. Washington Sign C.M. Washington Cheerleaders from 1964-1968 C.M. Washington High School A Current Classroom Current Classroom Decoration More Classroom Decoration C.M. Washington Female Teachers First Building of C.M. Washington Elementary Graduating Senior Class Homecoming Flyer from 1958 of C.M. Washington Alma Mater in 1953 lyrics C.M. Washington School Marker Today’s School Decoration Mrs. Marion Rhodes Fleming Street C.M. Washington is on Gina Johnson, Principal of C.M. Washington Football Team Poster The Proclamation of C.M. Washington
Podcast Series: Artists From The Circuit
hannah robert podcast editor Tony Hall about being an artist on the Chitlin’ Circuit Bobby Rush about being an artist on the Chitlin’ Circuit
A Traveling Guide: The Green Book
skylar neal staff Other Green Book Travel Guides During Segregation
Guitar Slim: A Musical Legend
gabrielle chaisson staff
The Rose Club
kaylie st. pierre staff The grand opening of The Rose Club in the 1950s was the beginning of years of dancing, music and memories for the South Louisiana residents of Verdunville. The Rose Club was a dance hall that welcomed many talented Black artists, starting during the grand opening with Hosea Hill’s Serenaders. The Serenaders were a house band of The Sugar Bowl, a popular bar on the Chitlin’ Circuit in Thibodaux near Verdunville. The owner of The Sugar Bowl, Hosea Hill, started the band. Rose and Curtis Martin originally owned the club, located at the intersection of Highway 182 and Prairie Road. Originally a store and gas station in the 1930s, it became the Rose Club in the 1950s. Their grandson Billy Martin has fond childhood memories of the club. “In the ’50s, Popsi bricked it and redone inside,” says Billy Martin. “It was awesome as a little kid to go inside. I stayed on the pinball machines.” This venue offered dining and dancing every night, except Mondays from 6 p.m. to midnight. The menu had a variety of items from steaks and fried chicken to seafood. A highlight was live music on Saturdays and air conditioning. The Rose Club hosted a variety of orchestras and bands. Thomas Lyons, a Thibodaux resident, always had a love for music. In 1972, he discovered a local Black zydeco artist named Clifton Chenier. Years later, Lyons got word of Clifton performing with his brother, Cleveland at The Rose Club. He took a trip to Verdunville for Chenier. “I had this transcendent experience because Clifton Chenier was playing,” Lyons says. “I am fixated on Cleveland playing the washboard to this day.” Rose Martin, great-granddaughter of Rose and Curtis, says her family’s venue inspires her. “I’ve heard many beautiful stories about the club — how fated relationships were created there; family outings were spent there and nothing but good times were a big hit at the club.” Rose Martin In 1981, a fire destroyed The Rose Club. Although the venue is no longer, its memory remains. Rose Martin says, “I can only hope that one day our little community can have something like that again.” Photos courtesy of Rose Martin A ticket to The Rose Club Grand Opening night when Hosea Hill’s Serenaders opened The Rose Club as a Dance Club. The Rose Club after it was redone as a club. The Rose Filling Station in 1933 as a gas station, before it was the dance club called The Rose Club. The interior of The Rose Club The interior of The Rose Club. Billy Martin, whose grandparents Rose and Curtis Martin Sr owned the Rose Club, posing in front of the Rose Club before it was a dance hall. Rose Martin, the owner of The Rose Club, with her two daughters.
The Secret Code of the Chitlin’ Circuit
sally-anne torres staff During segregation, Blacks came up with ways to tell each other where to go so they could be safe and enjoy activities. The “Chitlin’ Code” represents how they knew what venues to visit or where to perform. The world of Black music existed separately from the entertainment nearly everyone listened to at the time, says Preston Lauterbach, author of The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘N’ Roll. On the circuit, Blacks could safely attend various establishments, including theaters, juke joints, nightclubs and restaurants, spread throughout the southern U.S. “Due to segregation in this country, African American people did not have access to mainstream America,” Lauterbach says. But venues serving chitlins signified that it was a safe space for Black performers to sing or act for their audiences, says Jackie Avery, a musician from the circuit. “Most of those places [venues] were considered people’s houses,” Avery says. Chitlins, short for chitterlings or animal intestines, is a dish that dates back to slavery and plantation life, Lauterbach says. “If there was a slave owner who had the hog butchered, the master is going to keep the pork chops, ham, bacon and all of the more desirable cuts. And the slaves will be left with pigs feet, snout, ears and the entrails.” Preston Lauterbach Venues also could not always pay in cash and would pay with food instead, according to Lloyd “Teddy” Johnson, owner of Teddy’s Juke Joint. “You always feed the band because most of the time, they’re homeless,” he says. According to Lauterbach, this “code” might be viewed more as a variation of the Green Book rather than an actual code. The Green Book was a published book that served as a guide for Blacks, indicating places that welcomed them. The book featured places like the Dew Drop Inn, the Chicago, and the Apex Club. Lauterbach also says that the Chitlin’ Circuit was a safe space for Black musicians because it coincided with their history and culture with slavery and plantations. “African American people came to understand how the circuit worked,” Lauterbach says. Segregation laws made it illegal for Blacks and whites to patronize the same places during the Jim Crow era. So Blacks took the initiative to create safe spaces of their own. Spaces like the Chitlin’ Circuit where they could cultivate and appreciate music and theater despite the restrictions.
Teddy’s Juke Joint: Keep the Chitlin’ Circuit Alive
sally-anne torres staff
Breaking the Rules: Leroy Martin and the Sugar Bowl
gabrielle chaisson staff In a time when Jim Crow laws banned whites and Blacks from integrating, a white Golden Meadow native broke the rules for the love of music. Leroy Martin was born on Aug. 4, 1929, in Golden Meadow, Louisiana, and served as a Lafourche Parish assessor, a disc jockey for KTIB radio station in Thibodaux and a friend of Sugar Bowl owner Hosea Hill. As a child, Martin’s family moved to New Orleans for his father’s job, and during this time, he noticed the racist treatment of Black people, says his daughter Lisa Martin. “My dad lived in New Orleans for two years, and I remember him telling me that Black people had to sit in the back of the bus,” she says. “It was unreal to him… He wanted to tell them that they could sit with him.” He was a “historian by choice,” Lisa Martin says, so he wrote a weekly column for The Lafourche Gazette titled “In A Small Pond,” where he shared stories from his life. In one column posted on Oct. 28, 2015, Leroy Martin shares his experience visiting the exclusively Black Sugar Bowl club in Thibodaux, Louisiana. He and his station manager, Hal Benson, met with Hill and presented a plan to get into the club, according to his column. Martin recalls Hill saying the plan “broke no law, just bent them a little.” “Hosea’s plan was to stack beer cases next to [a wall opening looking out from the kitchen to the stage], technically hiding and segregating us…and arrange holes into the stacks big enough to see and hear the bands…We were in the presence of greatness,” Martin wrote in the column. Martin saw artists like Lloyd Price, Tina Turner, Guitar Slim, Fats Domino and Allan Toussaint perform here before they became the big names of today, according to his column. Martin was always passionate about music and became a popular musician whose style contained elements of blues, jazz and Cajun music, says his daughter. He performed across Louisiana, Canada and even at the Grand Ole Opry. Martin also produced songs for other artists like Jimmy Donlay at Cosmos Studios in New Orleans, according to friend and local musician Tommy Lyons. Martin’s opposition to the racist laws and his love of music brought him into the club, according to his column. “Were we breaking the law? That law was later overturned and declared illegal by the Supreme Court, so, therefore, you cannot break an illegal law. Makes sense to me. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. BYE NOW!” Leroy Martin Although Leroy Martin died on Sept. 12, 2019, his column continues to shine a light on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Leroy Martin as a Child Leroy Martin on the Far Right Performing in a Band Leroy Martin at KTIB Radio Station Leroy Martin’s Column on The Sugar Bowl in The Lafourche Gazette