Our Past Is Present June 21, 2018

June 21, 2018

            You are reading “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Today’s story is the second in a two part series about Ninth Street in Junction City.

            Yesterday, we ended our story about Ninth Street with information about the “Parallel Development” on that street and Washington Street.  Some of the businesses were illegal in both places, but they operated on the “fine system” and were tolerated by the city government.  There was prostitution, often with women coming from Kansas City on payday.  There were white-owned businesses on Ninth Street, just as there was a black-owned shoe repair shop and dry cleaner in the white business district.

            It was the jazz clubs that were the proudest feature of the street.  They were on the Kansas City jazz circuit and featured most of the famous jazz musicians, which included Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald.  Isaac Bridgeforth recalled that the jazz musicians liked to play in Junction City because of the cosmopolitan nature of the business district which led black people to call Junction City “the small town with big city ways.”

            In 1940, the 10^th Cavalry joined the 9^th at Fort Riley and the business on Ninth Street doubled.  After the cavalry was disbanded in 1946, Kansas ended Prohibition in 1948 and the army was racially integrated in 1948.  Black infantrymen replaced black cavalrymen in the clubs on East Ninth.  That didn’t end the need for a black district, because it took a long time for custom to catch up with the law. Public accommodations were still segregated for many years. 

            And… that’s today’s story on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.