Description
Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
Robert Church, who would become "the South's first black millionaire," was a mulatto slave owned by his white father. Having survived a deadly race riot in 1866, Church constructed an empire of vice in the booming river town. He made a fortune with saloons, gambling, and--shockingly--white prostitution. But he also nurtured the militant journalism of Ida B. Wells and helped revolutionize American music through the work of composer W.C. Handy, the man who claimed to have invented the blues.
In the face of Jim Crow, the Church fortune helped fashion the most powerful black political organization of the early twentieth century. Robert and his son, Bob Jr., bought and sold property, founded a bank, and created a park and auditorium for their people finer than the places whites had forbidden them to attend.
However, the Church family operated through a tense arrangement with the Democrat machine run by the notorious E. H. "Boss" Crump, who stole elections and controlled city hall. The battle between this black dynasty and the white political machine would define the future of Memphis.
Brilliantly researched and swiftly plotted, Beale Street Dynasty offers a captivating account of one of America's iconic cities--by one of our most talented narrative historians.
Product Details
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
| Publish Date | March 30, 2015 |
| Pages | 368 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780393082579 |
| Dimensions | 9.4 X 6.5 X 1.3 inches | 1.5 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
Adds a fascinating chapter to civil rights history. But for all the hatred it depicts, this gracefully written book never loses sight of the fun that made Handy exalt that stretch of dirt road.--James Gavin "New York Times Book Review"
All aspects of this complex, fascinating history are told...with verve and vivid erudition.--Tom Nolan "Wall Street Journal"
Excellent study of an iconic Southern place and the fraught, violent history behind it... Lauterbach adds to the rich library devoted to "old, weird America" established by writers such as Michael Ventura, Peter Guralnick and Greil Marcus. Beale Street is mostly a tourist trap now, but it was a place of 'whorehouses, saloons, and bullet holes' not so long ago. By Lauterbach's illuminating account, the past was more fun--or at least more interesting.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
In his last book, The Chitlin' Circuit, Lauterbach shone light into obscure, all but unknown rooms of the rock-'n'-roll story. This time he turns to a chapter we thought we knew well--Beale Street, one of the grounds zero of American culture, with Tin Pan Alley and Congo Square and Concord--and the result is every bit as illuminating. Lauterbach has become one of my favorite people to read on 20th-century popular music.--John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
Lauterbach brings the history of Memphis to life in this vivid reconstruction of its volatile history... an engaging, entertaining, and thorough history. Lauterbach superbly handles the city's race relations and the black struggle for equality... a wonderful portrait of a city in flux and a neighborhood's lasting, though oft-overlooked, legacy.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Lauterbach here provides the exceptional story of a southern city that matches in sheer bravado and outrageousness any rival metropolis, and in so doing he fills in a gap in America's urban and racial history... [F]ascinating.--Mark Levine "Booklist"
Preston Lauterbach has conjured a fascinating demimonde that's dead and gone. After reading this, I dreamed all night about street hustlers, hoodoos, and snake oil salesmen on Beale Street, the Main Street of black America. Here Lauterbach gives us Beale in its heyday--the chitlin joints, the rough-and-tumble politics, the fecund music--and deftly paints a portrait of the one improbable millionaire who towered over this vibrant world. Read Beale Street Dynasty and you begin to feel you're communing with ghosts.--Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Hellhound on His Trail
Preston Lauterbach takes readers on an uproarious, sometimes shocking jaunt through Memphis history by way of Beale Street, the remarkable thoroughfare that has hosted the likes of W.C. Handy, Ida B. Wells, and Richard Wright. Beale Street Dynasty is a compelling, witty, deeply researched, and always enlightening book.--Gary Krist, author of Empire of Sin
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