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(upbeat electronic music) - [announcer] majorfunding provided by the arkansashumanities council and the moving image trust fund. - [detroit johnny]ladies and gentlemen, including thepeople like myself, we wanna thank you for comingto the dreamland ballroom. we want you to come backtonight, tomorrow night, and from now on.

we wanna have fun hereat the dreamland ballroom here in the lowlands, thank you. (audience applauds) (blues music) - [l.t.] people wouldcome from miles around to come to 9th street justto see what it was like. - i'm saying this was themecca of entertainment in the south. - [singer] i'm gonna blowthe roof off of this sucka!

(shouting) - we thought we was on topof the world then, man. you couldn't tell us nothing. - it was home, it waseverything you would wish for. - i mean, all the topbands came through here. - they would come here. this was the place tocome, it's 9th street. ♪ i want you toride with me, baby - this is somethingthat belongs to us.

this is our place. - it was a wide open community. some said too wide open. ♪ i want you to rock me any day - they did whatthey wanted to do to destroy a black community. - 9th street becamenothing, no buildings on it, all the businesses were gone. - i can't see thatthere isn't some intent

when it happened everywhere. ♪ oh yeah (metal clinking) - when i firstbought this building, i just fell in lovewith the building. i just fell in lovewith the architecture. it just looked likea grand old building that would be a wonderful placeto put a flag business in. flags are very, veryemotional products.

when 9/11 happened,everybody wanted a flag, and they want it that day. who goes and gets inthe flag business? i got in the flag businessfrom a series of bad luck. how i ended uphere is beyond me. and how i'm so successfulat it when most flag dealers are not, and how i endedup saving this building without even knowing thehistory of this building. when i first started lookingat it, i never even dreamed

that i would ever havea reason to buy it or a way to buy it, butit just called to me and i just ended up cominginto this broken down old building that was abandoned, and then the old-timerswould come by to visit me to see who that ladywas that had restored the taborian hall. i would spend time with them,and write down their notes and talk to 'em, andthat's when i began to find

the history of thebuilding, and i began to really realize thati had been entrusted with something more thanjust saving an old building but also with carrying thestory, the oral histories on. (sad soul music) - to understand the whole story, you have to understandthe birth of this street. this was an africanamerican community, west ninth street was,for one hundred years.

this was the heart of not only little rock's africanamerican community. this was the capital city,i guess you could say of the african americancommunities in arkansas. this was a community thatwas born out of emancipation. this area was originallya federal encampment where emancipated slavescame, they flocked here. - the union army occupied littlerock on september 10, 1863, and, when that happened,thousands of blacks started

to pour into little rock. - in fact, a lot of southernplantation owners were so mad, they loaded up their slavesand they just drove them to little rock in theirwagons and dumped them off. and they might have a littlebundle of maybe some food, maybe a few belongings,but that's it. - they're liberating themselves. they're liberatingthemselves with their feet. they know uniontroops are nearby.

they know slaverynever worked for them, so they're going to theseplaces where they can begin to make sense out of lifeand to begin to live life as freed people. - the us military commanderswere so overwhelmed. they didn't reallyknow what to do. suddenly, they had toprovide housing and care for all these, at thetime they were referred to as refugees.

- they created a temporarylittle shanty town, and it consisted oftents and shacks, and this is where theyput the former slaves. - [john] blissvillebasically became the core for the early blackcommercial district. it was established reallyjust west of what's where mount holly cemeteryis right in close proximity to 9th street. something new was happeningin arkansas in terms

of just societal change. - the republicansgained control, passeda new constitution, which meant thatafrican americans nowfor the first time, african americanmales of course, would be able to vote. comes as a surpriseto a lot of people, but there were twentyafrican americans in the arkansas legislature. sixteen of themwere in the house

and there were four senators. of course, we've never hadthat many african americans in arkansaslegislature since then. - [john] for the first timein the history of arkansas, we had a new kind of type ofafrican american living here, a black urban middle class. - you know, you're talkingabout people who understand very well that they haveto be self sufficient, that they have tobe self-contained.

we're also talking about peoplewho are very intelligent. they understand well thetimes in which they live and the things that they needto do in order to survive. and also, when we'retalking about people who may have beenformally enslaved, that doesn't mean everybody was in the field picking cotton. some of these people had skills. - [john] the 1870sand 1880s businesses

were being establishedespecially from broadway, which was kind ofanchored the east end of the west ninth streetbusiness district a all the way down to ringostreet, and in that kind of six block area, themajority were operated by african americans. by 1890, actually one sixthof the white population of little rock was foreign born. over half of the peopleliving in the city

of little rock had beenborn in northern states, and i think this in itselfwas important in so far as race relations wereconcerned because it did mean you had a morecosmopolitan racial mix. - a lot of peopleleft other areas of the south to come toarkansas and to places like little rockbecause they did think it was more progressiveand more moderate. i think they understand thatthey have to deal with racism,

but not to the extentmaybe they'd have to in mississippi or alabama. - little rock was consideredfor a time to be more tolerant of the races. over time, that will change. when former confederateswere pardoned, they quickly swept all ofthe different elections, almost all of the positionsof authority in the south. and so they gained controlof the south again.

they couldn't take awaytheir freedom that was given with the 13th amendment,but they could circumvent. jim crow laws madethat pretty apparent. - say, i have an idea. - yes, sir? - you be around here abouta half hour before the show. - you mean you gonnalet me watch up close? - jim crow, you'll practicallybe right on the stage. - whoo!

- [cherisse] jim crowwas a minstrel character that was performed by a guynamed thomas daddy rice. and this caricature camearound i think about in the 1830s somewhere in there. ♪ wheel about and turnabout and do just so ♪ every time i wheelabout, i jump jim crow and minstrel characters,these are people who would perform in blackface and they would perform in ways that stereotyped andstigmatized african americans.

later on, the term was co-optedto mean racial segregation. it meant that increasingly,the black community found itselfisolated, found itself being increasingly controlled. - and once the state hadestablished its official cache of authority, to this practiceof separating the races, then the practice startedto spread much more in the private sector as well. - [berna] it was very costly.

there had to be a blackhospital and a white hospital. there had to be a blackcemetery and a white cemetery. - a lot of things that arenecessary to grow an economy and grow a communitywere not really available to black people at that timejust post-reconstruction. and the way that it wasprovided by was the formation of fraternal organizations. - they existed becauseblack people couldn't expect to be admittedinto predominantly

white fraternal organizations. and so what's happeningon 9th street is happening in black communitiesall over the country. they're forming mutualaid kinds of societies to help each other outin difficult times. - the knights anddaughters of tabor, that is one of manyfraternal organizations that we had in arkansas. it is a national and eventuallyinternational organization

just like the mosaic templars. - the official nameof the taborians was the order of thetwelve the knights and daughters of tabor. they were founded in 1872by the reverend moses dixon. he was a minister at the africanmethodist episcopal church. he died in 1901. his successor was scipio jordan. - scipio africanusjordan was a mail carrier

here in little rock. he was an exemplary leaderof knights and daughters of tabor, very progressive man. he's the one thatspearheaded organizing and getting this building built. this was the grand templeand tabernacle of the knights and daughters of tabor. it was black built andpaid for with contributions from arkansans fromchapters all over arkansas.

and it wasn't cheap. it was 65 thousand dollarswhen that was a lot of money. the late teens and earlytwenties this was a golden era for african americandevelopment. you know, they even hadthe label in little rock, the prosperous race. they were doing really well. - there were every kindof business imaginable it was operating.

you had confectioners. you would have barber shops. you would have stable yards. you name it. almost any kind ofbusiness you can imagine would be operating hereon west 9th street. - and all the localpeople called it the line because the linewas the boundary between black and whitesocieties in little rock.

- we had been ruledby race in arkansas. whites sought to dominateand control african americans through a really a retellingof our history in a way that justified andrationalized white supremacy. - then increasingly as weget up to the wwi years, there are african americanswho are questioning what is democracy? what does all of this mean? (cannons booming)

should african americansstand behind the war effort? should african americansgo fight overseas? you know, how are you goingto ask people to go abroad and fight for that causewhen it's not happening here in the united states? but a lot of africanamericans do go serve. - after the first world war,african americans came back to arkansas expectingthere to be some changes in the way they were treated.

(fire crackling) - [berna] we see the riseof the kkk in arkansas that had reinvented itselfas being moral protestants that are upholdingfamily values. - racial tensions are at anall time high at this point because people are emboldened. they're saying i havefought for this nation. now, will this nation beall that it says it is? and again, somepeople are saying,

"well, i don't care what youfought for and i don't care "what this nationis supposed to be. "you're black. "you're at the bottom ofthe racial hierarchy." one of the ways they reinforcedthat is by killing people. - in 1927 in may,there was this child named floella mcdonald. her body was foundin the bell tower of the firstpresbyterian church.

eventually lonnie dixon wascharged with the murder. he was able to be gottenout of little rock in the rumble seat of astudebaker and sent thousands of people into, just, a frenzy. (people shouting) the people in little rockneeded to find somebody to take revenge on. what happened to johncarter was that he was in the wrong placeat the wrong time.

(camera flash clicking) he was alleged to haveattacked two white women. - a white possechased down carter. they found him in the woods. - so they beat him, and theybeat him, and they beat him - strung him up and forcedhim to jump off a car. - they hung his bodyfrom a telephone pole, used his body astarget practice. - tied him behind atruck and drug him down

from broadway tochester and back. - the very center ofblack life in little rock. - there used to sit abig, beautiful church. the church was called bethel. they broke into betheland got some pews, and they built this big bonfirein the middle of 9th street. then, they took john carter'sbody, placed it in the fire. - at one point, somebodydragged his arm off, and directed trafficwith it that night.

the amount of intimidationthat this caused in the african americancommunity was enormous. and we still don't knowhow many african americans left little rock as aresult of what happened that night in 1927. - [berna] you know, ourlabel of being tolerant kind of went away by thatperiod of time, yeah. - [narrator] onlya few years ago, we were a discouraged peoplebecause we were the first

to lose our jobs when oldman depression came along, and the last to get them back. we struggled vainlyto regain our bearings while depression, fear, andfailure stalked the nation. - [john] in the 1930s,things were not looking that good for west 9th street. - the great depression really impacted africanamericans on the line. as a matter of fact, itimpacted every single

fraternal organization,and we're gonna see them close the doors of alot of their businesses. the knights and daughtersof tabor are going to lose this building becauseof the great depression. so what we see isa reorganizationof west 9th street. - [john] when that happened,the kind of center of life, though, moved down the streetto the dreamland ballroom. - when dreamland becamedreamland is unclear, but we do know in 1933,it already had a name.

they were already making alittle heart shaped invitation with modernistic club,the dreamland ballroom. then, in 1936, the chicagodefender newspaper starts writing about the dreamlandballroom and how it's going to be this music epicenter for all these musicalacts that are coming through little rock. (upbeat jazz music) - in the unitedstates of america,

it would appear thatmusic was the true freedom for the negro race of people. - we're soul people. we got soul within our souls. - you hear the music playing, it just light yoursoul right up. - [berna] the dreamlandballroom was one of the most beautifulvenues for these dances and for theseperformances in the south.

everybody talked about it. - you could dress realnice, you could just go and relax, and enjoy life. it was beautiful down hereon a hot summer night. - they was outthere cutting rugs. - people would have on theirfinest threads in the world. - looking good, from head totoe, and they would come out and they would partyall night long. - we were jitterbuggin.

we weren't doing charlestonnow, charleston was out. that was old. - [berna] one of the bestpromoters was sw tucker, and he's going to holdthe lease on this place for a long, long periodof time, and he kind of set the stage tobring those big acts to the dreamland ballroom. after they finished playingat the robinson auditorium, they were coming downto the line because this

is the only placethey could come. - they would do thatgig, and then after that, they would come to theballroom for the real party - and musicians arenotorious about playing until the sun came up. - every week, there wassome name entertainer at the dreamland ballroom. you name it, i'veseen it, lil' green. tiny bradshaw.

duke ellington. count basie. - [man] count basie. - [woman] lloyd armon. - [man] b.b. king band. - [man] b. b. king. - [man] cab calloway' - [woman] cab calloway. - [man] roy miltonand his solid senders

- the ink spots, mills brothers. - roy brown and hismighty, mighty men. al hibbler. lucky millinder. - [berna] ella fitzgerald,addison dean senior - [man] louis jordan,dina washington. - ray charles. - billy eckstine. - [berna] littlerichard, etta james.

- oh, gee, so manybands that i can't even remember how many. - this night life herewas the greatest life. - and at night, i wouldcrawl up the fire escape and sit in there andpeep in the window while they were playing. i was too young to go in. i did that for years. - the place would becrowded, people coming in.

we'd sneak in and justmingle with the crowd. after a while, they'dforget all about you. - [billy] being able togo there and be exposed to all those musicians, that was the heightof our growing up. - for a young person, that kindof opened you up to things. things you hear about thatwas happening in new york was happening right here. whatever you were sadabout, when you got here

and the music playing,it was, that all would be put to rest. come in and have a good time. - it was a hell of a show, man. - i could care lessabout anything else. (crowd applauding) - and i remember theywould come here to have what they call thebattle of the bands. this band would playlike four or five songs,

this band come up andplay four or five songs. then they'd rotate. everybody had a good, good time. ("take the a train"by duke ellington) - this was a musician'shangout, this whole street because there were a lot ofvenues where they could play. - we were on what youcall a chitlin' circuit. - [john] it's where most ofthe black performers traveled. here, nashville, beale streetin memphis, birmingham.

they called it thechitlin' circuit. - [berna] i have readabout some of the events that took place here,and they had 700 people crowded into this space. - there was a vibrant kindof mentality down there that probably didn't existanywhere in the white community, but it was the blackculture that really made it into a real happeningplace to be. - a lot of this music is,you know, very reflective

of difficult times. but then, on the other hand, a lot of this music is meantto celebrate their creativity. it's origins are inthese predominantly african american spaces. - ninth street wasthe mecca of economy, for black people, anddreamland ballroom was the vehiclethat carried them. - [john] world warii, and that brought

about a dramatic revival. it, in some sense,rescued west 9th street because you had all the blackservicemen at camp robinson, and they would come to westninth street for the cafes and the restaurants andthe night clubs and a uso was in the taborianhall from 1942 onward. and the servicemen hadmoney in their wallets. suddenly the number ofvacancies on the street starts to diminish and that was whenthe good times really rolled.

- [l.t.] a youngsoldier in his twenties? naturally, he wantsto come to 9th street. - lights were on, peopleare having a good time, everything is hustlebustle, moving. - [l.t.] it is like a scenein a movie, but it was real. - at night, everything washanging out on the street. everything. - [john] it was justa wild, swinging time. - [l.t.] you leave thisplace, you go to that place.

you leave that place,you go to the next place. - it's an all night thing. and then, you slept allday, trying to get ready for the next night. - it had so many characters,it was unbelievable. - popeye. - pistol pete. - we called him chicken. - killer pete.

- the guy's name was pain. - everybody calledher miss bobby. - a little guy they called fat. fat used to run the pool hall. - there was a guynamed black mac. - we called him boo. - they called him red. - he called himself "hardto beat" because he thought he was a great pool shooter,

but he really couldn'tshoot pool. (laughs) i could beat him. it wasn't called main street. it was 9th street, butfor african americans, it was main street. - it was our own town. - we couldn't go tothe white restaurants. we couldn't go tothe white hospitals, stay in the white hotels.

we had nowhere else to go. we were segregated. - so it was two differentcities in the one. little rock had a rule. ninth street had a rule. and everyone liked9th street rule better than the little rock rule. - so when you're outthere in the world outside of that space, it canbe a very cold place.

you have to constantlymonitor what you say, guard your actions,guard your inner actions with other people. it can become incrediblystressful to have to do that. - but you came to 9thstreet, all those things you couldn't do, you could do. - [billy] if it's justto go down and sit in a restaurant andhave your favorite meal, cooked the way you like it.

- you can exhale. you can exhale on fridaynight or saturday night. you can find yourself again. you can be who you truly arewhen you are in a safe space. (upbeat jazz) (audience cheers) (guns firing) - the war tended tobring out the worst and the best of people.

the line, west 9thstreet, was the only place that african americansoldiers could go. and then we had white policemenand white mps that were, you know, trying to keep thepeace in this area as well. a lot of times youhad the attitude, just because you'rewearing a uniform doesn't mean you're equal to me. - and there was a lot of policebrutality that took place, and there was anafrican american soldier

who was killed bya white policeman. - [berna] sergeant thomasfoster, he got into it with a white police officer,and the police officer shot him five times. it caused almost a rioton west 9th street. - [grif] and thisbrought blacks together in a way that they hadnever been together. - change is afoot, alright,things are happening, people arechallenging the system

and anytime anybodychallenges the system, that's when yousee people really enforcing those jim crow laws. - the realization that we aregoing to have this change, it is going to happen, washard for a lot of arkansans to take because even if youwere the poorest arkansan, and i hope i'm not offensiveto anyone, they still thought of themselves as betterthan any african american. do you understand that?

- just about all themachinery is original. this kind of equipmentlasts you a lifetime. it never wears out. you might replace a part ortwo, but it just keeps going. this is back when they werereally building machinery. (laughs) my dad owned his ownshoe repair shop right behind the house in john barrow. he had a nickname.

they called him red. red rodgers. he was, he was quite a fella. he was born andraised right here in little rock just like myself. and, the shoebusiness was his life. well, he and my mothersplit up, separated, and he moved his locationdown on 9th street where the bulk of the blackbusiness was at the time.

on a typical saturday,it was real busy. his door openedevery 30 seconds. that was a boom area, boom time. the money stayed in theneighborhood, and it flowed. it just flowed from one businessto the next on 9th street. it's like 9th street was allinterconnected at the time, kept the community together. community would have stayedtogether with the exception of the urban renewal,and that just kind of

broke everything up,and displaced them,all areas of town. when you separated like that,then you lost your power, you lose quite a bit,if not everything. (film projector clicking) - [soldier] company, halt! - [minnijean] theyreally didn't expect that we were gonna do it, and that's what ithink is kind of fun, is that their expectationwas that they were gonna

put all these obstacles, andthat we weren't gonna do it. - the separate butequal was never equal. integration was the way togo and now the law supported that as long as africanamericans kind ofkept to themselves and knew their place,things were okay. but when they starteddemanding their civil rights, which they were entitled to,that's when there was push back from the largerwhite society. - jim crow south.

wow. heartbreaking. demoralizing. destructive. and sometimes, you haveto have your heart broken to be mad enough tosay, you broke my heart, but you're not, youhaven't broken me. - by 1957, it's likeuncle richard say, "ain't gonna be like that."

we done all got wiser. we had done the separation, andwe had tried to accommodate. it burst forth, socialboil, that folks said, "i'm equal to anybody,and i'm not going "to take second class nothing." education. jobs. movement. this is a government ofthe people, by the people,

and for the people,and i'm a people. - jim crow is startingto come to an end and break down at the same time that more geographicalsegregation isbeginning to increase. - in little rock,well into the 1950s, in the centraldowntown neighborhoods, you still had whites andblacks living together on the same residential blocks. that started to changeafter school integration,

and, when thathappened, sad but true, there was aconscious effort made by the little rock housingauthorities and urban renewal to basically carry out aprogram of negro removal as it's come to be called. - [narrator] at thebeginning of 1959, alarmed at the threat ofa decaying downtown area, the city board of directorsauthorized the housing authority to prepare andfile an application

with the urbanrenewal administration for federal participationin the renewal of the entire downtown. - well, when the cityof little rock started to put into effect its slumclearings in urban renewal, it was supposedly acolor blind thing, but the big complaint veryquickly came that slum clearings in urban renewal were not justabout beautifying the city, but they were explicitlyracial in their nature.

the allegations are that,you know, whole areas were flattened becausethey were african american rather than becausethey were blighted, and that a few blightedhomes were used as an excuse to just kind ofraze complete areas of african american residence. - [graves] areas, wholeareas of, you know, where you had had integratedhousing were demolished. new public housing projectswere established like the one

at granite mountain for examplein southeast little rock, but they were deliberatelyplaced far away from white neighborhoods. there was a consciouseffort to basically kind of segregatehousing in the city. - and you see that inperfect intersection with the schools inthe brown v. board of education decision. the first thing thatthe school district does

is to create new schoolsin areas which are clearly demarcated africanamerican and white. it actually relabelscentral high, tellingly, as central high school. at the same time, they buildhorace mann high school in the east end of the city in a growing africanamerican neighborhood, and they locate hall highschool in the extreme west of the city right out inthe white neighborhoods.

so they provide basicallytwo new segregated schools as a response to desegregation. - why would you build aschool far east of the city, which was horace mann, andthen a white school far west? what kind of thinking is that? - manipulation through publicpolicy by giving an advantage to whites to get away fromintegration and desegregation, you left a group of folkswho were left to be back segregated by housing patterns.

(chainsaw roaring) - one of the things thaturban renewal does is to build new publichousing, which are nicer, which are more modern, andall those kinds of things, and use those, you know,incentives, as instruments to move the black populationaway from traditional areas of residence into newareas of residence. there's all kinds of waysof manipulating things once you kind of break upthe natural housing patterns.

- not only the housing changed. the marketplace changed. not only the marketplacechanged, the schools changed. not only the schools changed,the ownership was changing. and that was aboutthe time what i call the engines ofinstitutional racism. - people were awareof it at the time. people in africanamerican neighborhoods and white neighborhoods wereaware of what was going on,

but there's not muchyou can do about it. little rock's known throughoutthe united states as being at the forefrontof urban renewal, and being verysuccessful in getting that federal money tocome into the city. because there's millionsof dollars at stake here. millions of dollars offederal money on the table to bring to your city tohelp create better homes. west 9th street was based alot on those neighborhoods

that surrounded it,particularly dunbar, connected at the end withphilander smith college, one of the key benchmarkinstitutions in that community. but if you gut thoseneighborhoods aroundwest 9th street, then basically, you takeout all of its clientele and all of the people whouse it on a regular basis. so slum clearings andurban renewal certainly doesn't help west 9thstreet in any way. - that impacted thebusinesses that relied upon

these dollars to flowdown to 9th street in a very negative way. you have to make money. the dreamland ballroomclosed its doors in '59 and immediately, anotherclub went in here, but it didn't last. they were gone by '65. - these decisions have beenmade about these communities, but the people who livethere have not been sitting

at the table along withthe decision makers. and once things startrolling, it's often incredibly difficult to stop it. so, your entire communityis gone in one sweep, and all you're leftwith are memories. - [graves] then, inaddition, an example of really horrendouspublic policy, little rock housingauthority in the state of arkansas collaborated in

building theeast-west expressway. what became, eventually,interstate 630. - [kirk] you know, one ofthe things that i-630 does that it drives abig concrete wedge between west 9th streetand philander smith college and the dunbar neighborhoodthat's behind it. so it really hardensthe lines of what's going on with urban renewal. - the urban renewalefforts and the building

of the interstate systemput people in cars, gave them accessto suburban land, and suburban americabegan to grow and develop in a remarkable way inthe late 50s and 60s, and we now have thephysical makeup of a city like little rock vastlydifferent than 1950. - [berna] we seea white flight out of central little rock movingto more of the suburban areas. - so the i-630 is really akind of suburban expressway

as it becomes to getpeople from particularly west little rocksuburban neighborhoods to downtown where they work. - [newscaster] now, you'removing into the downtown area, but you have a problemthere don't you? - yes, the downtown areais a real problem, jim. the problem there, ofcourse, is right of way. the housing authorityis acquiring muchof the right of way through the highstreet project which is

from broadway to bishop. and then, of course, you stillhave the construction costs and the schedulingof the construction by the highway department. the plans have beenpretty well completed, and if we had the right of way,they could move right ahead on it depending of courseon the matching money from the federal government. - and that freeway phenomenoncalled urban renewal

or whatever is consistentacross the country, and i can't see thatthere isn't some intent - they did exactly whatthey wanted to do was cause see, they lied tothose black entrepreneurs that were on 9th streetwhen they told them, "we finna build a freeway,and it's gonna come directly "on 9th street." some of 'em said, "well,i might as well take "my business elsewhere."

you know, and those that didn't, they threatened 'emwith eminent domain. - well, they was gonnatear all this out. this was gonna bethe through way. it was gonna takeover all of this. there wasn't gonna beanymore 9th street. but, as you can see, thefreeway is over there. part of 9th street is stillhere, and you had places that should have been keptand saved on this street,

but it did not happen. see, 9th street becamea place of blight, glass, boarded up buildings,and it became a place that you would reallybe sick to see it. - [kenneth] and as fastas those people moved out of those buildings, they started tearing them down. one by one, they startedtearing them down. - you know, i don't thinkanybody ever even dreamed

of 9th street ever going down. we didn't even thinkabout that, thought it would always be there. - i'll never understand that. why? it was designed to destroy that. it had to be. - it's gone and all the peoplewho were connected with it. laid to rest.

that's history. (lights clicking off) - you know, when they toredown these structures, they just cleared itoff surface clearing. they didn't dig down into it. there might have been basementsthat are just covered in. you never know. so that would take an efforti think that needs to occur to really identify the, thesort of the hidden parts

of this street. these sidewalks are original. wide sidewalks. are as they were in 1950,1960, or even before. this is more than likely added. this was a saw cut, and theyplaced this plaque embedded in concrete at that location. it means arkansas highwaydepartment right of way. so this is how theydetermined the boundaries.

this is how they, this iswhat they used probably to survey the new expresswaythat came through the town. so, this is just othersymbols of a street that has historic value. i think. if therewas not an i-630, if there was not urbanrenewal, you would have had really historicbuildings that would have created a situationthat might be similar to beale street in memphis.

there may have beenmore restaurants, more places to attract people, more from anentertainment standpoint. it would have been a plusfor the city of little rock to have a district, adistinctive district. you had the mosaic templarson one end of 9th street, you have the taborianhall on the other end. so you had traffic, youhad circulation going between these two anchors,the anchors of 9th street.

the land is still here. the street is still here. the opportunity to buildback this, this street in a manner thatwould be consistent with the historic heritage,it's still possible. so i would assume thegoal would be let's fill in the blank. let's fill in the spacebetween the anchors. - in 1988, the city of littlerock announced it was planning

to demolish buildings allalong west 9th street. the arkansas historicpreservation office basically did get the city to agree notto demolish the taborian hall. later, in the early 1990s,it was sold to kerry mccoy, who really began amajor renovation, restoration of the building. - she bought this building,which was supposed to be demolished because itbecame a desert of utility what used to be there.

- i don't know, justwhen i first saw it, i was just in love with it. i came in that front door,which i have a picture of, i came in the front doorand there was debris from the front doorall the way back. the debris wasliterally a foot deep. i tried to come in a coupleof times and didn't get there, and, after about thesecond or third time, i found a path tothe third floor.

it was kind of a tunnel,and, when i came out, and turned around, andlooked at the ballroom, it was just beautiful. i cannot tell you howbeautiful it looked. i cannot believe thati'm crying over it. it was like, it was likea spiritual experience. seriously. it is a moment in time,and it has seen so much, and you can feel it.

you absolutely can feel it. - [l.t.] right herewhere we're sitting, so many starsparticipated right here. and there were enoughpeople to keep this going. - she bought it. and she had a visionof what it can be. and, as a result ofthat, she brought back, through the history ofthe past, a renaissance of what used to bein that building.

- i don't want to change it. i don't want to takeit back to being, to its original grandeur. i want it to be exactly likeit is with its chipping paint, with its walls that cantalk, with its box seats that aren't perfect, with itsbalcony that's not perfect, with its floorsthat aren't perfect, with its ceilingthat's not perfect. i wanna save it.

i'm spending my energy on it, and so the missionis let's save it. - all this should havebeen a part of history. just like she's revitalizingthis building, she being kerry. it took a lot of effort,time, and money to come and redo this, tokeep history alive. - this building isintrinsically important to, to arkansas history,and to all of us. - this is a part ofthe american story,

i mean we need to knowabout these communities, we need to understand thatthe communities were complex, the people were educated,that people had money, that people owned businesses,that they established and maintainedimportant institutionsin these communities. these are stories thatpeople aren't getting. - really, if we don'tunderstand how we got to where we are today, wecan't really have any say in sort of the mistakeswe made, the things

that we got right intrying to forge a policy for moving forwardinto the future. - the whole communitydid this to these people, so the whole communityhas some responsibility it seems to me throughsocial policies to try to redress these ancient wrongs. - i think we, many of uswish we could, you know, go back and play out thestory a very different way, yes, but the story's beenplayed out the way it is,

and now it's thinkingabout how do we, how do we overcome thedivision that, you know, folks a couple of generationsago helped to create for us. - we are still threesteps behind everybody. the black community is, andmost of it is our fault. it's our fault. we hold each other back. - i want to have communityand family, and i want to love on one another, and we don'thave that togetherness anymore.

and i'm not surewhat we can do about coming back togetheras a community. - if they could do itthen, going through all of what they went through,with so little. and today we have so much, andwe can't even come together. it's hurtful. it's hurtful, man. - [l.t.] ninth streetsticks in your mind. freedom again, that,that sense of freedom.

i go out there now andstand on that corner and think about how itwas sixty years ago. it was, it was great. the things that youcould do on 9th street should've never been ceased. it should be aliveand well right today. yeah, what's, what'sgone now is sad. it's sad, though, what'sgone, and what it is now is just one buildingsitting here.

and this one buildingbrings back the memories of thousands andthousands of people. this one building. this is the memory right here. this is the hub of 9th street. - you can have everythingthere now again that once was there if youlearn to appreciate it, and try to help people tobridge that gap of then and now and they'llbe so they'll

get a littleappreciation for it. once you taste it,you may like it. got it? (slow jazz music) ("god bless the child") ♪ them that's got shall have ♪ them that's not shall lose ♪ so, the bible saysand it still is news ♪ mama may have

♪ papa may have ♪ but, god bless thechild that's got his own ♪ that's got his own ♪ yes, the strong get smart ♪ while the weak ones fade ♪ empty pockets don'tever make the grade ♪ papa, he may have ♪ but god bless thechild that's got his own and the moving image trust fund.

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