Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

DECEMBER 30, 1934

Onzell had told her son Artis over and over again that she did not want him going over to Birmingham, ever; but tonight, he went anyway.

He jumped off the back of the freight that arrived at the L & N terminal station at about eight o’clock. When he went inside, his mouth dropped open.

The station seemed as large, to him, as Whistle Stop and Troutville put together, with its rows and rows of thick, rich mahogany benches and the multicolored tile that covered the floor and the walls of the huge building.

SHOE SHINE … SANDWICH COUNTER … CIGAR STAND … BEAUTY SHOP … MAGAZINES … BARBERSHOP … DONUTS AND CANDY … CIGARETTES … WHISKEY BAR … COFFEE … BOOKSTORE … HAVE YOUR SUITS PRESSED … GIFT SHOP … COLD DRINKS … ICE CREAM …

Here was a city, teeming with redcaps, porters, and train passengers, all under the seventy-five-foot glass ceiling. It was all too much for the seventeen-year-old black boy in overalls who had never been out of Whistle Stop. He thought he had seen the whole world inside that one building, and he staggered out the front door, dazed.

And then he saw it. There it was, the largest electric light sign in the world—twenty stories high, with ten thousand golden light bulbs glowing against the black sky: WELCOME TO BIRMINGHAM … THE MAGIC CITY …

And it was magic; billed as the “fastest growing city in the South,” and even now, Pittsburgh was being called the Birmingham of the North … Birmingham, with its towering skyscrapers and steel mills that lit up the sky with red and purple hues, and its busy streets buzzing with hundreds of automobiles and the streetcars on wires, whisking back and forth, day and night.

Artis walked down the street in a trance, past the St. Clair (Birmingham’s Up-to-the-Minute Hotel), on by the L & N Cafe, and the Terminal Hotel. He peered in between the Venetian blinds on the window of the coffee shop and saw all the white men sitting there, enjoying their blue-plate specials, and knew that this was not the place for him. He made his way past the Red Top Bar and Grill, and over the Rainbow Viaduct, on by the Melba Cafe, and, as if by some primeval instinct, he found 4th Avenue North, where all of a sudden the complexion began to change.

He had found it: Here it was, those twelve square blocks, better known as Slagtown … Birmingham’s own Harlem of the South, the place he had dreamed about.

Couples began moving past him, all dressed up, talking and laughing on their way to somewhere; and he was being pulled along with them, like a whitecap floating on the crest of a wave. Music throbbed out of every door and window and spilled down flights of stairs into the streets. The voice of Bessie Smith wailed from an upstairs window, “Oh, careless love … Oh, careless love …”

Hot jazz and blues were melting together as he passed by the Frolic Theater, which boasted to be the finest colored theater in the South, featuring only musicals and high comedy.

And the people kept on moving.… Down the block, Ethel Waters sang and asked the musical question, “What did I do to be so black and blue?” While next door, Ma Rainey shouted out “Hey, Jailor, tell me what have I done?” … And people in the Silver Moon Blue Note Club were doing the shimmy-sham-shimmy to Art Tatum’s “Red Hot Pepper Stomp.”

He was here—Slagtown on a Saturday night—and just one block away, white Birmingham was completely unaware that this exotic sepia spot even existed. Slagtown, where the Highland Avenue maid of that afternoon could be tonight’s Queen of the Avenue, and red-caps and shoeshine boys were the leaders of Slagtown’s after-dark fashion show. They were all here, with black shiny patent-leather slick hair and gold teeth that glistened and sparkled as they passed under the colored lights that flashed and traveled around the signs. Blacks, tans, cinnamons, octoroons, reds and dukes mixtures, moving Artis down the street, all dressed in suits of lime green and purple, sporting two-toned yellow-and-tan brogans and thin red-and-white silk ties, while the ladies, with gleaming deep maroon and tangerine lips and swinging hips, were promenading in spectator pumps and red fox furs …

Lights blinked away at him. THE MAGIC CITY BILLIARDS PARLOR FOR GENTLEMEN; THE ST. JAMES GRILL; BLUE HEAVEN BAR-B-CUE; ALMA MAE JONES SCHOOL OF BEAUTY CULTURE … on past the Champion Theater, Where Happiness Costs So Little, ¢10 … Two doors down, he saw dancing couples through the window of the Black and Tan Ballroom, where amber spotlights lazily searched the room, turning the couples a pale purple as they floated by. He turned the corner and was carried along, faster and faster, down the teeming street, past The Clouds of Joy Used Clothing Exchange, the Little Delilah Cafe, Pandora Billiards, and the Stairway to the Stars Cocktail Lounge, advertised as The Home of the Mixed Drink, and the Pastime Theater, this week featuring Edna Mae Harris in an All-Colored Revue. Next door, at the Grand Theater, Mary Marble and Little Chips were appearing. He went on by the Little Savoy Cafe, past more dancing couples, silhouetted through the windows of the Hotel Dixie Carlton Ballroom, with its large revolving mirrored ball shooting silver sparkles of light all over the room.… Foxtrotting couples inside were unaware of the young black boy in overalls, wide-eyed with wonder, being swept by the Busy Bee Bar-b-cue Shop, for Ladies and Gents that offered Electrically Cooked Waffles and Hot Cakes at All Hours and Your Favorite Sandwiches Toasted, Served with the Best Coffee in the City, Hot Dogs for ¢5, Homemade Chili, Hamburger, Pork, Ham, Swiss Cheese Sandwiches, All for a Dime … past the Viola Crumbely Over the Rainbow Insurance Co., which specialized in burial policies, with a sign in the window that urged her potential customers to Get a Lot While You’re Young, on by the De Luxe Hotel and Rooms for Gentlemen.

Near the Casino Club at the Masonic Temple, a large-breasted beauty behind him, resplendent in a corn-colored satin dress, wearing a lemon-yellow feather boa, squealed and swung her purse at a fleet-footed gentleman and missed. The gentleman laughed, and Artis laughed, too, as he continued on down the street with the crowd; he knew he was home at last.