Browse Items (24 total)

This well-appointed bar in the Two Spot nightclub served dancers, musicians, and partygoers at social events in Jacksonville’s 45th & Moncrief neighborhood. The exceptionally large Two Spot Club was an ideal performance and gathering space for this…

The Two Spot was one of the largest and most unique stops on the Circuit. This aerial view from the 1940s or 1950s depicts the entertainment complex’s spacious dance hall, annex, cabins, and racetrack. Spaces like this offered numerous opportunities…

Internationally renowned performers toured the Circuit from the 1930s until the 1970s. Clubs in the Jim Crow South often catered to diverse audiences at the peak of jazz’s popularity in the 1940s. This image of Cab Calloway was taken in the Clover…

Music on the Southern Circuit returned to the grittier roots of the blues with eclectic new styles like boogie-woogie and rhythm & blues in the 1950s. African American popular musicians in the 1950s expressed a new, aggressive stance in keeping with…

The Red Bird Café was situated at the center of the historic Frenchtown neighborhood in Tallahassee throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A popular dance club and bar, the Red Bird Café hosted both local acts and groups touring the Circuit. Activists held…

The Circuit and politics were linked in African American communities and existed side-by-side on newspaper pages. Comedians performed regularly on the Circuit. This ad promotes comedian Slappy White, who later appeared on Sanford and Son and other…

On July 30, 1967, a confrontation between police and two African American men at a popular night spot in Riviera Beach escalated to a full-scale riot. The riot lasted through the night, and a local lumber company was set ablaze. Local leaders called…

Performance and politics meet in two ways in this 1971 photo, as “Daddy Twofoot” performs for a political rally crowd outside of the Red Bird Café in Tallahassee’s Frenchtown neighborhood. By the 1970s, many artists on the Circuit were overtly…

Reverend C.K. Steele speaks at a rally outside of the Red Bird Café in Tallahassee’s Frenchtown neighborhood in 1971. Reverend Steele was an important leader in the Tallahassee civil rights movement. As head of the Inter-Civic Council, an…

This cartoon appeared in the November 2, 1971 issue of the Florida Sentinel Bulletin, an African American newspaper in Tampa. The artist’s depiction of an African American family watching a white family on television highlights the political…