Gathering has been a cornerstone of Ernest and Marva Davis’s life. And one of his favorite haunts was the famous Plaza Hotel, a prime stop on the Chitlin Circuit.
Gathering has been a cornerstone of Ernest and Marva Davis’s life. And one of his favorite haunts was the famous Plaza Hotel, a prime stop on the Chitlin Circuit.
heardofem.com
elizabethrivertrail.org
nps.gov/locations/chesapeakebaywatershed/grants.htm
virginiahumanities.org
(Sounds of a street, cars driving by)
Mr. Ernest Davis: My name is Ernest Davis and I was born in the city of Norfolk in 1941.
I was born on a street that's not even there anymore. They renamed the street in Norfolk St. Paul, but it's not the street that I was born on, because of the renovation and the replacement, the projects and stuff.
In my area, we were some of the first people that were placed in projects. And that's what they were projects.
The main thing when you are displaced is not to be disconnected with your family.
(Car sounds crossfade into jazz plays under the following)
I could stand at Princess Anne Road and Church Street on a Saturday and see 75 or 80% of every Black person in this area because we wasn't spread out. Church Street was the Mecca. Church Street on the Saturday would be the supplier of all of what we need. You had your beauty shops, you had your haircut place, you had a hardware store, Blocks Hardware. Because we couldn't go down Granby Street.
Our dollar value wasn't that good that we were accepted in those places. But Church Street was everything that we need.
(Music ends)
The Plaza Hotel had all of the Black entertainers, they were called the Chitlin Circut, that Black entertainers would come and would stay at the Plaza Hotel.
Nichole Hill: They called it the Chitlin Circuit, and the name is doing more work than people realize. “Chitlins,” short for chitterlings, pig intestines, are the parts the pig certain people never wanted… the parts enslaved Blacks learned to clean, season, and turn into supper.
This circuit was built the same way.
(Jazz plays under the following)
In a segregated country, Black artists needed places that would let them in, feed them, pay them, and let them leave safely. The Chitlin Circuit turned what mainstream America refused to call the main stage into a place where Black performers, livelihood, and joy could still exist.
(Jazz ends)
Mr. Ernest Davis: Duke Ellington people that they wasn't famous then, but they became big-name people, Red Fox, Duke Ellington, Jackie Wilson, they would play at the Attucks Theater but they would stay down 18th Street, down to the Plaza Hotel.
The white people that worked for 'em stayed at the creme de la creme on Granby Street, the Monticello Hotel. They worked for those people. They worked for Jackie Wilson, but Jackie Wilson and Red Fox, they couldn't go down there and stay.
And the Plaza Hotel was owned by a woman named Bonnie McEachin, and it was known as Bonnie's Place.
She, uh, catered to all those Black people. They came and they stayed at the hotel. She bought a Cadillac every year, a pink Cadillac. Every year she would have a pink Cadillac.
(Snazzy jazz and the sound of old camera's clicking)
Nichole Hill: Who’s the boss? Bad B… Bonnie. She practiced hospitality before it had language.
Impeccably dressed.
Always prepared.
Always in control of the room.
Nation-Wide Hotel Association’s Woman of the Year
Nation's 10 Best Dressed Women according the Amsterdam News, a Black-owned newspaper in New York City
First Vice-President of the National Hotel Association
Not because she was charming… but because she was exact… ‘bout her business.
Her secret? As documented by a writer in the ‘Richmond Afro American’ newspaper, she had none--unless you consider hard work and determination a secret.
(Sound of people talking and a hip beat play under the sound of cars arriving)
Mr. Ernest Davis: They had like a lounge, a New York style lounge, and with Blacks that wasn't we, we didn't have lounges. We had bars. We didn't have cocktails. We had beer. You know? You had to kinda like know somebody to even go in there.
They just didn't cater to anybody. You had to dress on some occasions to go in there, and Bonnie McEachin would be in there, and she was a perfect host. She would come out. And she would greet people.
We would try to time it so that if we heard that there was gonna be a show at the Attucks Theater, we would always go there because we knew that if we sat in the dining room long enough, we see, we sitting there drinking cocktails, we gonna see Jackie Wilson walk through to come down eat.
We going see Red Fox come in there, and so t that experience was, was good for me because it helped me, you know, to see, you know, people. And they weren't really major stars then. They were just names that was on the Chitlin' Circuit.
They went to Mississippi, Georgia, they went to some states that maybe wasn't kind to entertainers, but the Chitlin' Circuit was a whole bunch of people. And I think they, they figured there was safety in numbers.
So they traveled together, and they did things together.
It was important that I could meet the people. Because they were people that I admired. I liked Wilson Pickett. I liked Jackie Wilson. I liked to see him entertain him for me to, to see 'em, and to be able to go and say hi to 'em. It was a big thing to me.
I went there, uh, on a couple of occasions, and they would have like a Blue Monday and we would go in there--One time there was, uh, Peg Leg Bates.
He was dancing with a peg leg. I remember going over to him, and I remember talking to him, and I remember sitting down, and they were telling me some of the woes and pros and cons of their travel and what they ran into, and how welcome that the city had made them.
(Cowbell beat drops, with guitar strumming)
But the Plaza, you dress for it. You dress to impress.
I would dress for it, and I would try to be impressive, you know, because I was, I was out there. (Laughs)
Usually with my leisure suit. And you don't even know what a leisure suit is, do you? It was, it was a suit.
And I said, I used to dress with my platform shoes, and put on my green leisure suit, my collar, and my disco shirt. And I was out there, man. And you would do that to go into Plaza Hotel because I would have to be kinda stylish because you would hang with the people that were stylish, you know? In order to get in there, you know, because you had to be with the people, you know.
(Beat ends and transitions to jazzy lounge music)
Mr. Ernest Davis: The Plaza Hotel was sipping music. You sip and you chill when you want to whisper in her ear and it's kind of quiet. And the lights were like that. It was a place that we didn't experience because it wasn't that many in the area for us.
You had to be, not yourself, you know, you kind of, you know, but we love hand dancing. Well, hand dancing wasn't permitted in the Plaza Hotel.
So you couldn't go there expecting, you know, you, you did the ballroom thing if, you know, they let you, you know, but we used to like to let loose and let our hands dance.
(Music transitions to hand-dancing music)
I don't know how to describe it. It's not like it is today, you know? Today it's non-touching. You just get out on the floor and you do your thing.
But hand dancing when you hold hands and you rock and you rock and twist and you turn and you turn, you turn and you do all of that. That's, that's, you never heard of that before?
You would have dance contests, you would have DJs and stuff like that. I remember a couple of times we would win like $50 for as a prize, you know, and we would turn right around and spin right back at the bar. But we were excellent hand dancers. We love hand dances, you know, and we were good at it. We were really good!
Nichole Hill: Church Street… a safe place for joy
(Music fades out, maybe echoes out…)
Mr. Ernest Davis: The city tore all that down and, they revamped all of that land back there. I guess they sold it off, but it was the city that did it.
Nichole Hill: Let's be specific, shall we? Following the end of "Seperate But Equal", many Black folks naturally began to expand their boundaries, taking their spending dollar with them. This led to the decline of once-great pockets of connection, now susceptible to being labeled as "blighted". The Housing Act of 1949 allowed the City of Norfolk to purchase this area under Eminent Domain for an UN-fair market value. With no choice but to sell and take the low price, many were pushed out, usually into the projects.
The mayor of Norfolk at the time, Fred Duckworth, lead the charge on Urban Renewal. Norfolk was the first city in the nation to receive big grant money--starting with $25 million dollars in 1949--most of which was spent on Industrial parks, widening roads like St. Paul’s Boulevard, the medical center complex, and public housing "projects" (like Tidewater Gardens), which effectively re-segregated the displaced Black folks.
None of that money was used to revitalize Church Street.
Mr. Ernest Davis: Church Street is nowhere near like it was.
(Street sounds)
Once they say they're gonna do it, it's nothing really. You can go there and have a last, last beer or last gathering, but it's nothing you can do when the city–They didn't have to ask you to do it, they just did it. We going to take your land, we gonna give you this, what it's worth. You got 30 days to do whatever you gotta do.
(Gentle piano underscores the following)
We had to find solace in each other because without that we were lost. If we didn't have each other, because we had no other place to go.
When I lost all that, and other places, Bombardis Pool Parlor, I couldn't shoot no pool no more. Eureka. We couldn't hand dance no more. Prairie's Lounge. We couldn't do nothing--none of that no more. I felt devastated because I, where else was I going?
I couldn't go down Granby Street and have a good time. I mean, not be welcomed. Things were breaking then, but you could feel the hostility. Like it's some of it's still there today. I don't wanna go no place and order steak and you got, gotta bring it out back--what you did to it? And you don't want me there.
And that's the way I, that's way I felt with all of our entertainment, because they didn't replace it with nothing.
They spent millions and millions of dollars on Granby Street renovating.
They didn't do it on Church Street. They tore 'em down, They tore 'em down. They put houses up there. They put houses up there, but they didn't put a gathering place.
(Saxaphone swells)
Nichole Hill: Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends.
This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn, and our work has been supported by the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation through a National Park Service Chesapeake Gateways Grant as well as by a grant from Virginia Humanities. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Mr. Earnest Davis!