It was from and around THIS building, late at night, during the time that Ralph Waldo Ellison worked as a soda-jerk in Randolph Drug, that many of his late-in-life memories sprang. From interviews of Ellison and Jimmy Stewart, John Perry of the Oklahoman penned an exquisite pair of articles in 1993, the 1st being his magnificent January 8, 1993, "Deep Second Still Lives In Dreams", excerpts from which are shown below.
"My early emotions found existence in Oklahoma City," Ellison had told me by telephone from his eighth-floor Manhattan apartment that overlooks the Hudson River ...
"In houses and in drugstores and barbershops and downtown, all of the scenes, the sights, the localities that are meaningful to me are in that city; my father's buried there, and of course all the people who were heroes to me as a kid, my role models."
Stewart is one of Ellison's connections to Oklahoma City. The two men met in the third grade and renewed their acquaintance in 1953 when Stewart was elected to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's national board. During quarterly trips to New York, Stewart brought Ellison news and barbecue from Oklahoma City. "Most of the time we would reminisce, talk about people and things that happened back when," Stewart tells me.
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At the vortex of this swirl of activity sat the Slaughter Building. On Sunday afternoons, young men escorted their young women to the of soda fountain in Randolph's Drugs on the ground floor for malted milks and banana splits. Ellison worked there as a soda jerk and delivery boy.
Slaughter's Hall occupied the entire third floor. Big-name bands from Kansas City, as well as local bands, played there nightly and at Saturday breakfast and Sunday matinee dances while Ellison, Stewart and their friends danced the glide, the one-step, the two-step and the waltz over the cornmeal-polished wood floor.
In summer, music poured from open windows and saturated the air for blocks around. When Ellison lived on Second Street, just before he left for college, he could lie awake at night and listen to the music.
"You couldn't escape it. That was one of the delights," Ellison had said.
To read Perry's other article, his interview with Ralph Waldo Ellison, click here.
If you've done a little reading on the history of Deep Deuce, the above type of hearfelt nostalgia is probably what you've seen most often. But, I said at the beginning of this article, the Slaughter Building meant much much more to this community than entertainment. I said that the building was "the center of the community" and a search through the Oklahoman's archives gives a representative sampling of other types of activities that occurred in the building. Dates shown are Oklahoman publication dates. |
- December 12, 1921: Opening of the Dunbar Library, a branch of the Carnegie library in the Slaughter Building
- December 6, 1931: With regard to the "Manchurian situation," an anti-war mass meeting with speakers addressing world peace problems
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November 5, 1932: Last Negro Democratic election rally on eve of the general election
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December 14, 1932: Bob Pierce, an Oklahoma City man who had for a year been making a study of conditions among workers in the Soviet Union, addressed a group at Slaughter's Hall, according to J.I. Whidden, an Okc Communist leader in the city; in 1934, Whidden was the Communist party candidate for Sheriff — what's that, you didn't know that the Communist Party was active right here in Oklahoma City? See this August 3, 1933 Oklahoman article.
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June 4, 1934: Business sessions of/for 1,500 visitors during the 3-day ninth annual convention of the Middle Western Association of Negro Elks and its women's auxiliary, attending from seven states, concluding with a grand ball from 2 to 5 a.m. on Wednesday
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April 23, 1936: Meeting of Oklahoma County Negro Democrats rally featuring beer, barbecue and praise of Democrats, with music provided by the "Negro training school at Boley"
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June 6, 1940: Statewide meeting of Oklahoma State Colored Democratic Association
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August 15, 1948: Oklahoma Negro Central Committee for a statewide drive to raise $10,000 for the Democratic campaign, with every Negro voter in the state invited to attend
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March 25, 1958: With rent paid for by the Beta Sigma Omega chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (the first Greek-lettered sorority established for and by Negro college women), 4 rooms are rented in the second floor for well-child conferences for mothers and babies under the auspices of the Oklahoma City Health Department
In a nutshell, this short list shows time and space being given to literacy, health care, 1,500 crazy Elk conventioneers, and international, national and local politics including time afforded to pinko commie rats — uhh — make that the interests of labor in the community.
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