Deep Deuce jazz, Ralph Ellison and Clara Luper's sit-in at Katz Drug.
Deep Deuce
In the 1920s and 1930s Deep Deuce was a regional center of jazz and of Black culture and commerce, and in the 1940s and 1950s it was the largest African American downtown neighborhood in Oklahoma City. After-hours jam sessions ran along its streets, and its musicians included the singer Jimmy Rushing and the Blue Devils.
The Blue Devils And Charlie Christian
In 1925 the bassist Walter Page renamed a touring band in Oklahoma City the Blue Devils, and it became the premier territory jazz band of the American Southwest in the 1920s, with Lester Young, Count Basie, Buster Smith and Hot Lips Page in its ranks. In the early 1930s it effectively merged with Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, the basis of the Count Basie Band.
Charlie Christian's family moved to Oklahoma City when he was a young child, and he learned his craft in the Deep Deuce jam sessions. In 1939 he joined Benny Goodman's new sextet, and he became one of the first electric guitarists, bringing the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the lead, and a key figure in the development of bebop before he died in 1942 at 25.
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City on March 1, 1913. At Douglass High School he played football and was shaped by the principal Inman E. Page and the music teacher Zelia N. Breaux. He wrote about Deep Deuce, a neighborhood that held a great passion for him, and his novel Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.
Clara Luper
On August 19, 1958, the teacher Clara Luper and members of the NAACP Youth Council walked into the segregated Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City and asked to be served. They were refused, and the police were called, but they stayed, with the students bringing out their books and studying while they waited. Two days later Katz's management desegregated its lunch counters in three states. Since 2005 the Clara Luper Corridor, from the Capitol area to northeast Oklahoma City, has carried her name.
Black Oklahoma City Today
From Deep Deuce to northeast Oklahoma City, the city's Black history is part of its streets, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Oklahoma City.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Oklahoma City on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Haywood Building on NE 2nd Street in Deep Deuce. Photo: MisterBadmoon, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons Calvary Baptist Church in Deep Deuce. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons