Online exhibit: Establishing A Home – African Descent Society BC

ESTABLISHING A HOME
1900-1976

Establishing a Home

Immigration Act of 1910

In 1910, the government of Canada implemented a new Immigration Act that barred immigrants into Canada from races deemed “undesirable.” Few African descent immigrants entered Canada for the next few decades.

In 1955, the west Indian Domestic Scheme permitted single women aged 18-35 and in good health to work in Canada for one year before being granted permanent residency. Over 2600 women were admitted under this system. In 1967, the government of Canada did away with this racially discriminatory scheme, after which African descent immigration rose dramatically.

A Budding Community

The year is 1921: Vancouver has survived the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great War has ended and Prohibition is about to be over in BC. With a small population to begin with, only a few hundred African Descent families in Vancouver, the community had to be tight in order to survive. Vancouver’s historic African Descent population was concentrated around Strathcona, or the “East End.”

It was where the working class and immigrants would live together – Chinese, Italians and Blacks, to name a few, occupied the area. Due to discrimination, the only job that many could get was that of sleeping car porter, and so Strathcona also became a convenient place to settle due to its proximity.

As Vancouver became the economic centre of Canada’s pacific, more people came to live and work. There were namely two immigrant streams that made up Vancouver’s African Descent population. The first wave were those who came to Victoria via San Francisco upon Governor James Douglas’ invitation, and then made their way to Vancouver. One such famous name was that of Fielding William Spotts. The second wave came from Oklahoma via Alberta, in response to advertising campaigns by Canada’s Immigration Department. The government attracted the homesteaders, advertising land that could be bought for $1 an acre, but failed to mention that this land had not been ceded by the Indigenous populations living there. Although they left the states in order to find freedom from the oppressive Jim Crow laws, many still didn’t find luck in Alberta, as they faced discrimination from caucasian as well Indigenous peoples.

This is the story of how these people and families united, becoming established and flourished during a small period, until their displacement under the guise of “urban renewal.”

The Church Unites

After its humble beginnings at Josephine Sullivan’s kitchen, Nora Hendrix, the famed guitarist’s grandmother, took the helm and began holding fundraising suppers and charity bazaars in order to purchase a building. The dream is realized when the congregation is able to purchase the First Scandinavian Lutheran Church at 823 Jackson Avenue and establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church – Fountain Chapel (AME).

As the AME became the religious and spiritual centre of Vancouver’s African descent population, it was only natural that it also became the hub for social activity and thus recognized as the heart of the community. Throughout the years, the AME’s parishioners, which at one point numbered 300, organized to:

form a choir, which toured local churches and performed at the Avenue Theatre;
combat racial bigotry by fighting that former railway porter Fred Deal’s death sentence be reduced to a life sentence after being accused of murdering a police constable and being beat up while in custody;
demand an inquiry into the beating and death of longshoreman Clarence Clemons, who was arrested for loitering, and;
gather the African Descent youth of the area and conduct youth outreach and engagement.

Hogan's Alley - The Centre of African Descent Life

Park Lane was the official name for the T-shaped intersection that ran between Prior Road and Jackson Avenue, and Main and Union Streets. However, its unofficial name came to be Hogan’s Alley.

How could such a small area hold such a concentration of life? This is the most powerful strength of this vibrant place. It helps to know what surrounded this area as well: on one end was the AME – Fountain Chapel Church, and close by was the Pacific Central Station (the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway), which is where most Africana Descent men were employed. Coupled with the fact that there were discriminatory policies around the city that made it difficult for African Descent people to move anywhere beyond the East End, Hogan’s Alley became a natural place to settle.

The neighbourhood was a collection of shacks, cottages and southern-style “chicken house” restaurants, many of which doubled as speakeasies. The residential quarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was also located there. It was a place where on one side, there were brothels and illegal gambling dens, and on the other side there were people trying to raise their families. According to Strathcona resident Austin Phillips’ interview in the book Opening Doors:

There was nothing but parties in Hogan’s Alley – night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning, and you could hear jukeboxes going, you hear somebody hammering the piano, playing the guitar, or hear some fighting, or see some fighting, screams, and everybody carrying on. Some people singing, like a bunch of coyotes holler – they didn’t care what they sounded like just as long as they was singing.

What could’ve been Vancouver’s long-standing African Descent community was never destined to be. Unfortunately, many (read upper-class white) Vancouver residents didn’t like the reputation that Hogan’s Alley gained as a slum, nor did they do anything to help improve the situation. Instead, the City of Vancouver (the City) engaged in a slow displacement, or “slum-clearance” of this neighbourhood. The first effort dated back to the early 1930s, where the City declared the area from Dunlevy to Clark an industrial area, forbidding mortgages or home improvements, effectively leaving the neighbourhood to deteriorate.

The City continued its slum-clearance, shifting to the term “urban renewal.” The intent of these efforts was to ensure that valued land was efficiently used, of course, value meant strictly monetary and no consideration was made toward what the area actually meant to the residents. With the increased use of cars and migration to suburban areas, Leonard Marsh proposed an Urban Renewal plan which subsequently led to the “Vancouver Redevelopment Study,” that would see a freeway system connecting Vancouver’s waterfront/downtown core with the suburbs. As the ageing Georgia Viaduct would need extensive renovation and areas cleared to make way for this, Hogan’s Alley, was once more targeted. The whole area – Strathcona and Chinatown – was slated for clearance to make way for an 8 lane freeway. After six years of struggle from residents opposed to this project, the Urban Renewal project was abandoned, but not before the new Georgia Viaduct was approved and built right over Hogan’s Alley.

The name all but disappeared from Vancouver’s memory until the turn of the twentieth century when people such as writer and poet Wayde Compton revived it through the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project. Organizations, such as the African Descent Society BC and Hogan’s Alley Society are striving to deliver the area back to its original community.

The People

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Zenora (Nora) & Ross Hendrix

Bertran Philander Ross Hendricks was born of a free black mother and white grain dealer in Urbana, Ohio in the difficult post-Civil War era in the United States. As life was difficult for those of either mixed race or African heritage, Bertran decided to make his way to Chicago in 1896 - changed his name to the now eponymous Hendrix - and made a life for himself there. He became a special police officer, but entertainment beckoned him and so he joined a traveling vaudeville troupe.

Zenora “Nora” Rose Moore, was born in Georgia in 1883 to a Cherokee-African mother and a freed slave father. Her parents relocated to Tennessee, where Nora was raised. Together with her sister, Nora joined a traveling vaudeville troupe as a chorus girl/dancer.

Nora and Bertran met on the road and traveled together as part of the same Dixieland vaudeville troupe. After financial difficulties brought the troupe to an end in 1912, the young couple traveled to Vancouver looking for work. He found work at the American Club, and with a gainful employment, they could settle and start a family. The Hendrix’s settled at 827 East Georgia, and raised four children (their fifth passed away at two months of age), all of whom were born in Vancouver.

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Ernie King

A trombonist and band leader, Ernie played at the New Delhi Cabaret with his band “Five Guys Named Mo.” When the owner stopped paying union wages, King refused to work without a contract and instead bought the building at 343 E Hastings and made it the Harlem Nocturne Cabaret. The nightclub was famous for three things: being the only black-owned nightclub in Vancouver, bringing famous musicians, and featuring shows with his wife, Marcella “Choo Choo” Williams. After 10 years, the Harlem Nocturne’s doors shut. However, with his successful record in entertainment and not wanting to work for anyone else, King opened Vancouver’s first black theatre, The Sepia Players. A true artist and entrepreneur, Ernie King was a legend.

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Marcella “Choo Choo” Williams

Born in Alberta, Marcella came to Vancouver in 1948 to marry jazz artist Ernie King. After the birth of her son, she saw some showgirls perform and, thinking she could do the same, decided to have a go and so she asked choreographer and fellow Albertan Leonard Gibson to help her out and train her. She started her 12-year dancing career at the New Delhi Cabaret. From 1957-1968, Marcella and Ernie owned and operated the Harlem Nocturne, Vancouver’s only black night club.

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Leonard Gibson

Thelma, Leonard, Cy and Chic Gibson were all children that any mother could be proud of. They were artistic and did great things for their communities and society in general. Thelma, Leonard and Cy first developed their performance skills by dancing and putting on shows at their mother’s restaurant, the Country Club Inn.
Leonard “Len” became the most celebrated of the siblings. He was a prodigy: he taught himself to tap dance and, by the age of ten, he was performing at several local stages. He went on to learn ballet and when African-American dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham came to Vancouver and one of her dancers was held up at the border, she invited Len to come up on stage to replace her dancer. This led her to offer him a scholarship to her dance school in New York, which Len accepted. While in New York, he further honed his dance skills, learning more dance techniques including Afro-Cuban and jazz.

Len came back to Vancouver through circumstance beyond his control, but he made the most of it. He continued to teach dance, and he eventually was able to choreograph and produce the very first musical variety show to be developed in Vancouver, Bamboula, which also boasted the first multiracial cast. This aspect was seen as ‘too risky’ for sponsors, and so the CBC production was shut down after only a few episodes. It was replaced by the Eleanor Collins show, which he also choreographed.

Len continued teaching and performing, establishing the Len Gibson Dance Ensemble and a well-known dance studio in Toronto. Len continued his art well into his years, and is regarded as one of the most talented African Descent choreographers of the twentieth century.

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Leona Risby

Leona Risby was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Like other Homesteaders, her parents came to Alberta from Oklahoma. She, her husband Sylvester, and their two children came to Vancouver to be in a warmer climate for their son, Len. She worked as a domestic for a while, then at Mrs. Pryor’s chicken restaurant before opening up her own Country Club Cafe on Hastings Street. She then opened a second Country Club Cafe at 247 East Georgia. The Cafes were so successful that she opened her third restaurant, the Country Club Inn at 475 Powell Street, purchasing the entire building. Her restaurants attracted all sorts of clientele, and were famous for the entertainment. Her children worked and performed there, and Leona sang spiritual songs.

Leona was indeed an extraordinary woman, at some point, she found the time to marry a second time and have two more children, for a total of four. She encouraged her children to develop in the arts, which they very much did. She also fostered seventeen children throughout her lifetime!

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Viva “Vie” and Bob Moore

Vie as she came to be known, was born on Salt Spring Island of pioneer parents who were descendants of free blacks from California. Bob was from Alabama, and apparently never lost his accent.

They opened up Vie’s Chicken and Steak House at 209 Union Street. Vie was famous for never burning a steak or forgetting an order, even as she talked with customers about sports, politics, and horse racing.

Many hungry entertainers who performed in nightclubs such as The Cave and Isy’s showed up at Vie’s after their show. They included Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Mitzi Gaynor, and Sammy Davis Jr. They would open at 6pm and close at 4am. Described as a speakeasy, Vie’s never obtained a liquor licence and so customers would bring their own liquor and hide it under the table. Vie’s operated until 1976.

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Rosa Pryor

Pryor arrived in Vancouver at the end of the Spanish Flu pandemic from Iowa via Seattle. She didn’t have much money, but still managed to open up her own restaurant. She was the first black woman to own a business in Vancouver. The Chicken Inn was the longest running southern fried chicken house in Vancouver, opening in 1919 and closing its doors in 1959.

Prohibition and its After-Effects

Saloons existed before Vancouver did. With the concentration of single men working in British Columbia through the lumber industry or the gold rush, it’s no surprise that British Columbia was one of the wettest (liquor-friendly) provinces in Canada, with saloons having the ability to run 24 hours a day. As time passed and the century turned, British Columbians seemed to have had enough of the debauchery and voted for Prohibition in 1917. It only lasted until it was put to a referendum and ended in 1921. On the other hand, prohibition in the United States lasted from 1919 until 1933.

The end of Prohibition did not mean that everything was to revert back to 1916 laws. The BC government implemented laws that stated liquor could only be bought at government liquor stores or private clubs. Another referendum in 1924 made it so that beer could be sold in bars, and beer parlours were allowed in 1925. Wine and hard liquor were still illegal to sell in bars and this led to the creation of “bottle clubs,” where patrons could bring their own booze by “sneaking it in” and hiding it under the table. Even when the government finally allowed public sale of hard liquor by legalizing cocktail lounges in 1954, many cabarets decided to stay as bottle clubs well into the 1960s since the laws were very stringent and very few licenses were actually given out.

How does this relate to Vancouver’s African Descent History?

Music has always been a central part of African culture, and Blacks were able to capitalize on this during the Prohibition era. When people went out to be social, they wanted to have some form of entertainment. As beer parlours were limited to only selling alcohol and could not provide entertainment, cabarets began popping up, offering live music and dancing. One such place was the Patricia Café, attracting its clientele with a new genre of music out of the United States called Jazz. George Paris is credited for having introduced it to Vancouver. Other jazz players from the States such as Jelly Roll Morton were recruited to play at the Patricia, and thus it became a hotbed for music.

With the advent of bottle clubs and speakeasies, many African Descent owned businesses emerged and flourished. Places like the New Delhi cabaret and Harlem Nocturne became mainstays of the bottle club culture, and restaurants like Vie’s Chicken and Steak doubled as speakeasies. It was well known at the time that many houses around Union Street and Hogan’s Alley were running some kind of liquor operation.

Businesses became so dependent on this Prohibitionist culture that it was thought some would not survive without it. Once such example came from John Teti, a long-time club owner that was made to apply for a liquor licence:

In late ’68 or 1969 we were so successful the cops phoned me up and said ‘Look, you’ve got to get a liquor licence.’

So I negotiated with them. I said ‘You know what? I’ll get a liquor licence, but if you try to force Vie’s Steak House (a Strathcona institution) to get a liquor licence, you’re putting them out of business.

And if you force the On-On Tea Garden to get a liquor licence, you’ll put them out of business. So I will apply for a liquor licence if you leave those two alone — and they did.

The Places

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Harlem Nocturne

Owned by entertainment couple Ernie King and Marcella “Choo Choo” Williams, King decided to open his own club when he had a hard time finding anywhere else to perform with his band. Harlem Nocturne was Vancouver’s only African Descent owned nightclub. It opened in 1957 and shut its doors in 1968. In its short duration, it was known for amazing live jazz. Famous artists like Ike Turner performed there; there were burlesque performances and lots of dancing. As the club didn’t have a liquor license, it functioned as a bottle club, and having African Descent owners, it was subject to many police raids.

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The Penthouse Cafe

The Penthouse Club was built and owned by the Filippone family. Located at 1019 Seymour Street, the building was purchased and constructed in 1941, but didn’t become a nightclub until 1947. The Penthouse was a “bottle club,” where the tables had a hideaway drawer to stash their booze in case the police raided the club. When the Hotel Vancouver was refusing to house African-American artists, the Penthouse not only booked them, but housed them too. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sammy Davis Jr. were some of the folks to be found there. Whether or not they performed at the Penthouse, it was a sure thing that the afterparty, featuring impromptu performances by some of the artists, was there.

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New Delhi Cabaret

Located at 544 Main St (at Keefer), it was another popular place for dancing and music in Vancouver’s historic entertainment scene. Run by Leo Bagry, it was a live music venue that focused mostly on R&B and was in operation from 1956 to 1973. They had a house band and also had feature bands and novelty acts. Durius Maxwell played there as a novelty act when he was in his teens. Tommy Chong’s (as in “Cheech and Chong”) band “The Shades” played there quite often in 1959-1960. They had burlesque dancers such as “Lottie Miss Body.” Marcella “Choo Choo” Williams started her 12-year dancing career at the New Delhi Cabaret.

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Vie’s Chicken & Steak

Sometime between 1948 and 1950, Viva “Vie” and her husband Bob Moore opened the most famous of the “Chicken Houses.” With a simple menu of steaks fried on big black fry pans on top of an oil stove that helped to heat the restaurant, sides were equally simple: peas and mushrooms, hot rolls, onions and salads with oil and vinegar. It was also known as a speakeasy, since they didn’t have a liquor license. Louis Armstrong apparently liked the black-eyed peas there. Nora Hendrix was a cook there. Vie’s was a mainstay at Hogan’s Alley until its closing in 1976.

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Pullman Porters & Lincoln Club

After Lige Scurry’s Railway Club was shut down, residents of the Strathcona area and railway porters alike recognized the need for a social place to call their own.

The Lincoln Club on Georgia existed in the late 1910s and early 1920s. It was boxed in by the Avenue Theatre on the east and the original Georgia Viaduct on the north, and so was only accessible from below the viaduct and from the alley. During its six-year existence, it took on the role of the city’s earlier railway porters’ clubs as a social hub for Vancouver’s small black community and for performers passing through town on the vaudeville circuits.

The Pullman Porters Club was established in 1927 at 804 Main, backing onto Hogan’s Alley and was the official quarters for the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters.

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Country Club Inn

Run by Leona and Sylvester Risby, the Country Club Inn was the third cafe owned by the Risby’s. The food was good, but even better were the performances put on by Thelma, Leonard, and Cy who would put on floor shows with Afro-Caribbean jazz and tap.

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Hendrix Home

Located at 827 East Georgia, this was where Nora Hendrix lived from 1938 - 1952. The house was constructed in 1905 and obtained Heritage designation in 2006. Aside from its cultural value, the house is a good example of modest worker’s housing in the Strathcona neighbourhood.

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Fountain Chapel Church

African Methodist Episcopal Church (Fountain Chapel) was located at 823 Jackson Avenue from 1918 until 1985 and was co-founded by Nora Hendrix in order to serve Vancouver’s black community. Prior to the establishment of the Fountain Chapel, Christians of African Descent held services in their kitchens and rented halls around town. Eventually a small group decided they should have a permanent church of their own and set out to raise funds for the project through suppers and bazaars, and arranged for the AME to match the amount raised locally. Once financing was secured, they purchased the building on Jackson Avenue that was built in 1910 and had served as a Lutheran church for German and Scandinavian immigrants.

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