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The Historic Cameo Theater

2023-08-02

The historic Cameo Theater, located at 1123 E. Commerce, originally served as one of several segregated film facilities for Black people in San Antonio. A historic marker is now at the site. The theater was built in 1940, but the Leon, the Ritz, and the Keyhole theatres preceded the Cameo at the corner of Iowa and Pine Streets. The Cameo was a focal point for the latest Black films by Black producers and writers. In the early years, performers such as Fats Domino, B.B. King, and Louis Armstrong played at the Cameo. Other performing musicians, who stayed at the Deluxe Hotel across the street, may have visited the Cameo and included Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Lionel Hampton. This area was a hub of black businesses that served the community because of segregation.

Early history that influenced the building of the Cameo included D.W. Griffith’s racist film, Birth of a Nation (1915) which electrified Black civil rights activists and aspiring Black cinematographers. The film served as a catalyst for white supremacists across the country. The film was an anti-Reconstruction disgusting fairy-tale that cast Black people in racist stereotypical roles while the Ku Klux Klan was presented as the “great white hope.” Its main attempt was to deny giving Black people equal rights. The film was widely protested by the Black community. However, Birth of a Nation sparked other responses as well, including efforts by Emmett J. Scott to produce Birth of a Race (1918), a production envisioned as a straightforward retort to Griffith’s racist film. Many of the Black films generated sought to create positive and truthful images of Black life and to demonstrate the ignorance of racialized thought. These events sparked the building of Black movie houses in San Antonio.

The Cameo was in the economic Black section of San Antonio at the time and in the area known as St. Paul Square (Sunset Station) extending to the edge of the central business district. In the City were the Alamo is supposed to be the “Cradle of Liberty” all of the downtown. restaurants, such as Joske’s, Kress, and Woolworth, were segregated. During its time, the theatre was in walking distance from the Black community. Residents from the East Terrace Housing Projects, the Wheatley Courts, and black middle-class residents from the Denver Heights area, could be seen trekking or riding up East Commerce to see a film produced by Black film makers. Black residents from the Sutton Homes and the Carson Homes also attended the theatre, while Blacks from the West and North Sides often rode the bus to get to the area. Films in the 1960s were divided into two parts at the Cameo, and during the intermission people would be entertained with the recordings of the latest Black music such as Booker T. and the MGs and others. These films, which were once called “Race films,” were the tags applied to Black films between 1910 and 1950.

Films shown at the Cameo were the result of the pioneer works of Black film producers. Leading the way in Black film production was Bill Foster (1884), founder of the first known Black motion picture company in 1910. Others included Noble Johnson who developed the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1916, Oscar Micheaux who created the Micheaux Film Company in 1918, and Spencer Williams (1893–1969), who made the most well-liked “race movie” ever released, Blood of Jesus (1941), which was produced in Texas and shown at the Cameo. These films attempted to counteract white supremacist propaganda and segregation.

House Bill 3979- An Example Of Texas “Not Wanting to Be Black”

Guest

2023-05-09

To be seen and not learned, “Everyone wants to be black but no one wants to be black”

Op-By: Melissa S. Thomas, Graduate Student of Social Work at Our Lady of the Lake University, Social Policy Class.

There is a phrase that has been floating around the Black community for a little while now that came from a long-tenured comedian. The phrase goes “Everybody wants to be Black, but no one wants to be Black.” That it is fine to take on African American culture, the dancing, the music, the bravado, but we can deal without all the negativity and history that is the foundation of what it is. The passing of House Bill 3979 is an example of Texas “not wanting to be Black.” It is destroying the education that our children need to aid in the understanding of what it means to be Black. They are taking our history and removing it from the books making us in existence, a historical literary holocaust. According to a 2020 article from the National School Board Association:

“In 2018, 90% of Black students had home internet access. However, this percentage was lower than their peers who were Asian (98%) and white (96%). Among Black 3- to 18-year-olds, 11% had home internet access only through a smartphone, compared with only 2% among Asian and 3% among white students. Among Black students without home internet access, 39% said that it was because the internet was too expensive, suggesting that their families could not afford it. This percentage for Black students was much higher than that for White students.” (Cai, 2020)

If this law continues to have life, how will many of our students learn about their history if they can’t afford to do it at home and the free public school system denies them access? The problem is that the public and our lawmakers keep trying to see things in black and white, to include the people, to see the education of our students on African American topics as a “woke” movement and not a celebration of perseverance and accomplishments.

Though it is a national holiday now, why don’t we celebrate Juneteenth like we celebrate the 4th of July? Why don’t we learn about Benjamin Banneker the same way we learn about Benjamin Franklin? We omit some of the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and how he felt about African Americans but treat Fred Hampton as a terrorist when he was advocating for African Americans to stand up for themselves. The school system has hidden or altered the history of African Americans for so long, now they want to outright get rid of it. When is enough, enough? African Americans have spent the better part of 500 years being tortured, maimed, crippled, and separated from our people. We created new people and embraced a country that didn’t want us here but didn’t want to see us go. Now they have invented new ways to continue the same old practices of torture, maiming, crippling, and separation and it is being done through the removal of our history where it would hurt the most, with the children. It is time for us to move as a people and as a society to ensure that the facts of who we are and what we have been through are told. In Texas that starts now with the removal of the law that is House Bill 3979.

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