MISSIPPI

Rhythm in Natchez

Twelve good-time Charleys in Natchez, Miss, formed the Moneywasters Social Club two years ago. All were Negroes: William Clay, Jake George Minor, Charley Hall, Ed Frazer, eight others. Just to have a convivial 13, they let in William Powell Jr. Their objects were exclusively wasteful and social: to drink and play cards, throw dances for the rest of the 9,600 Negroes in Natchez.

Ed Frazer, a propertied man, also something of a philanthropist, was vice president of the Moneywasters. He was also operator of the Rhythm Night Club, a big (200 by 40 ft.) shack of wood and corrugated iron on St. Catherine Street in Natchez' darktown. He leased the building from Mrs. C. Ferriday Byrnes, who rates even higher among Natchez whites than her tenant did among Natchez Negroes. The Negroes who went to Moneywaster dances at the Rhythm were mostly laborers, carpenters, waiters, servants in the best homes of Natchez.

Last week the Moneywasters gave a dance. As usual, they did things up brown. This time they had Maestro Walter Barnes of Chicago and his Royal Creolians. Tickets in advance were 50-c-; on the spot, 65-c-. Negroes flocked to Natchez from Vicksburg, Centreville, Vidalia, Baton Rouge, even from New Orleans. Paid admissions: 557. The night was warm. Only way into the building was the front door; the Moneywasters had boarded the windows against peepers and gate-crashers. Tobacco smoke fogged the hall. Under the grey, dry Spanish moss which hung two feet above the dancers, the crowd on the floor yelled, clapped, sweated, stomped. Moneywaster Charley Hall and a helper, Johnny Jones, slaved at the bar in happy violation of Mississippi's dry law. By 11:30, the party was getting hot. A male guest, standing near the ladies' room, heard one girl say to another: "Now you did it. You set the place on fire."

The moss blazed up. Fire shot along the dry, wooden walls in their sheath of iron. Walter Barnes cried out: "You can all get out if you keep calm." He yelled and brandished his baton at the Creolians, trying to keep them playing on the platform. The dancers did not keep calm. They pressed toward the narrow door. It jammed. They dashed to the rear of the hall, and the boarded-up windows. Drummer Oscar Brown always carries a hammer to nail his drums to the floor; he hammered his way through a boarded window. A few followed him.

Screams woke the Rev. Edward Doherty, assistant pastor of the only Catholic church for Negroes in Natchez, who lives near the hall. Because "Negro women having a good time in the club frequently screamed like that," he paid no attention at first, arrived belatedly in time to give general absolution. Thirty-two of his parishioners died.

In 15 minutes, it was all over. The iron building was not destroyed, but Walter Barnes, his vocalist, six of his ten bandsmen died in the hall. Only a few burned to death; most were smothered or crushed. When the blaze had burned itself out, the dead were piled three deep.

Bartender Johnny Jones was one of the few who escaped by battering through one of the windows. His wife did not get out. Said Johnny Jones, when he next saw her: "My old lady looked like a pickle when they brung her out. She burned like a pickle. Dead." The counted dead: 198.

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