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African-American Culture and Folklife in Louisville, Kentucky
by Blaine Hudson, University of Louisville
African-American culture was and remains a fusion of African heritage and
American experience. The African elements of African-American culture were
submerged and more often identified with the traditions and practices derived
from "slave culture"—most obviously in the domains of religion,
music, and folktales.
The American elements of this fusion were not so much imitative (of Euro-American forms) as adaptive (to horrific American conditions). In other words, beyond imitation and adaptation in areas such as family structure, language, and dress, African Americans would create genuinely new forms of cultural expression such as jazz, blues, and spirituals that would be distinctively "African American."
As an urban, border-state city Louisville posed unique problems for and offered
unique opportunities to African Americans. Urban slavery, with its relatively
greater freedom, was atypical in a largely agricultural state. Furthermore,
not all African Americans in Kentucky were enslaved—particularly in
Louisville. For example, between 1830 and 1860, the number of free people
of color living in the city increased by 726.3 percent, from 232 to 1,917,
creating the largest concentration of free people of color in the state. The
inner dynamics of the free black community were largely invisible to local
whites, but this "community of exclusion" became a "community
of inclusion" for African Americans, enslaved and free, and the focal
point for the development of early African-American institutions and urban
folk culture.After the Civil War, Louisville's black population increased
to 39,139 (19.1 percent of the city) by 1900. New black neighborhoods emerged
in the city, neighborhoods such as Smoketown, California, "Little Africa"
(western Parkland), as well as several small black hamlets in Jefferson County—the
rural communities of Berrytown and Griffytown near Anchorage, near Harrods
Creek in the northeastern section of the county, and the Newburg/Petersburg
area in the southwest, the origins of which date to the 1850s.
In these segregated, poor or working class "neighborhoods," cultural, social, and recreational life centered initially around formal institutions, many founded in the antebellum period. Local churches sponsored picnics, parades, occasional concerts, and other social events. Fraternal organizations such as the Masons, Odd Fellows, and the United Brothers of Friendship all served similar functions. Furthermore, certain occasions, such as Emancipation Day (January 1) were celebrated with community-wide parades and other ceremonies from 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, until the Great Depression.
The reservoir of folk culture from which Louisville African Americans drew their characteristic forms of expression was rich and deep—and often without fixed boundaries between the sacred and the secular. African-American folk music retained African rhythmic and melodic patterns, but, rather than expressing a "carefree" attitude toward life, this music more often met the need for consolation in the midst of sorrow and want. For example, the spirituals often heard in local churches emerged from a blending of Christianity with the "cry of the slave" and were popularized world-wide by groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1870s.
Lullabies, folksongs, work songs, and the blues were secular expressions of the same impulse and could be heard in homes, on the streets, by the riverside, and so on, well into this century.This more visible, public level of social and cultural expression was often structured by the standards of the larger community. There was, however, a less formal level of expression that centered, first, around the "grog shops" and brothels of the antebellum period. In such establishments, whites conducted illegal "business" of various kinds with blacks, enslaved and free. After the Civil War, African Americans developed a thriving network of their own saloons, brothels, pool halls, and so on. These businesses catered to the masses of semi-skilled and unskilled workers and others who supported themselves "by means unknown to their neighbors" and were the primary settings for the emergence of early blues, jazz, and "popular" dancing.
From the 1830s, African-American musicians such as James C. Cunningham and William Cole had led the most popular string and brass bands in the city. In 1867, the Louisville Colored Musical Association was formed and held band, orchestral, and choral concerts through the next several decades. Earl McDonald formed the Louisville Jug Band (later the Ballard Chefs) in 1902 and played for the Louisville elite for decades. Henry Miles was a member of the Ballard Chefs in the 1930s. He later formed the Henry Miles Jug Band and performed at the New York World's Fair in the 1960s and at the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife in 1974.
Some black Louisvillians emerged from this setting and became world famous. Most notably, in the 1920s and 30s, Ford Lee Washington and John William Sublett headlined at the Ziegfield Follies and other major venues as the incomparable song and dance team of "Buck and Bubbles." In 1923, Sylvester Weaver, born in Smoketown, became one of the first blues guitarists to record his music. John H. Wickliffe, a drummer, formed his first band in 1913, moved to Chicago in 1916, and became one of the early popularizers of jazz. He then returned to Louisville in 1926 and formed a band that included the best local black musicians.Louisville also produced Sara Martin, the "highest paid blues singer of the Roaring Twenties," who often returned to perform at the Lincoln Theatre at 814 West Walnut and Helen Humes, a major jazz singer for two generations. Among other noteworthy local artists were opera singer, Todd Duncan (1903-1998), the first "Porgy" in Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," and Joseph S. Cotter Sr. and Joseph S. Cotter Jr., who became well-known writers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Joseph Cotter Sr., shared African-American folktales with local children in weekly storytelling sessions at the Western Branch Library in the early 1900s.
By the 1920s, the center of African-American social and economic life was shifting from the Tenth and Chestnut area to several blocks extending west of Sixth Street along Walnut Street (now Muhammad Ali Boulevard). This "Old Walnut Street" area became legendary for its fast-paced night life and kept alive many of the community cultural traditions of previous generations. Although social clubs, social "events" in private facilities, and entertaining in private homes were as common for the more affluent minority as "street culture" was for the less affluent masses—all segments of the African-American community came together in the more popular establishments of Old Walnut Street such as the Top Hat. Unfortunately, this area, along with other older African-American neighborhoods, disappeared with the end of legal segregation and urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, something of the past remains. As a key example, one of the best-known Louisville nightspots—and one of the few contemporary links to the heyday of "Old Walnut Street"—is the Palm Room at 1821 West Jefferson Street. Originally owned by Dave Snyder (as Dave's Palm Room at Thirteenth and Magazine Streets), the nightclub became nationally famous as Joe's Palm Room under the ownership of Joseph B. Hammond (1916-1997). Hammond first managed and then in 1954 purchased the Palm Room from Snyder, and built the current structure in the late 1960s. The Palm Room became the quintessential "smoke-filled room," where business and political deals were often consummated and "everyone" from local politicians to Muhammad Ali to thousands of Derby guests paid obligatory visits. Apart from Hammond's elegant style and the plush appointments of the club itself, the Palm Room was best known for its live music, particularly the classic jazz combos of the 1960s and 1970s. Hammond sold the club in 1979, but, after some difficult years in the 1980s, the Palm Room has regained some of its former stature in the 1990s.
Finally, as the Palm Room illustrates, African-American culture is not fixed but is a continuing act of creation. The music and urban rhythms of Louisville today—in the movements of the dance, men playing checkers or dominoes in the afternoon sun, at family reunions and outdoor concerts in West End parks—bear witness to how the past lives on in the present, however changed.
