Our Past Is Present June 20, 2018

June 20, 2018

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Today’s story is the first in a two part series about Ninth Street in Junction City. The information was taken from an article written for The Daily Union newspaper by our Executive Director, Katie Goerl, who got her information from a book written by Susan Lloyd Franzen, author of Behind the Façade of Fort Riley’s Hometown: The Inside Story of Junction City, Kansas.

            “In the 1860s, (Ninth Street in Junction City) was a German immigrant district.  By 1900, it was a street of brothels.  Its third and most famous incarnation was as an entertainment district for black soldiers, as Junction City was awaiting the return of the 9^th Cavalry Regiment from the Philippines in 1922.

            At that time both the town and army were racially segregated, and the form this discrimination took in Junction City determined the development of East Ninth Street. Mayor W.H. Thompson and the City Council were eager to provide facilities that would make the black soldiers feel welcome, but that would maintain separation and discourage incidents of violence.

            The system devised to accomplish this was what Kansas historian Randall Woods called “paralleled development”. In a sense, the businesses on East Ninth paralleled those on Washington Street at the turn of the 20^th century.  Examples were the Bridgeforth Hotel, which was a respectable rooming house.  Across the street from the Bridgeforth Hotel were jazz clubs, which were illegal, just as the saloons on Washington Street had been.” 

            Well that’s all of the time we have today.  Tomorrow we will continue our story with more on the early days of Ninth Street in Junction City on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.