The Avenue Theatre

Missouri · United States · Theatre

The upstairs seating was the segregated section. When the building is quiet you hear a baby crying up where the projection room is.

The Avenue Theatre in downtown West Plains, Missouri was built as a cinema in the early twentieth century.

The second floor of seating was the segregated section, where Black patrons were required to sit, entering by a separate stair and watching the same film from the back and the top of the room.

When the theatre is quiet, a baby is heard crying upstairs, near the projection room.

That is the whole of what is reported and it does not need adding to. Segregated balconies existed in cinemas across the southern and border states within living memory, and the people who sat in them were somebody's parents and grandparents.

West Plains has its own history to sit alongside this. In 1928 a dance hall in this town exploded, killing around forty people, most of them young, and many were never identified.

The theatre building still stands downtown.

FAQ

Where is The Avenue Theatre located?

The Avenue Theatre is in Missouri, United States.