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In its prime, the Gem Theatre was the heart of Black entertainment in Knoxville, a place where Black Knoxvillians gathered to watch movies and wrestling matches, attend civic events and patronize the approximately 20 connected businesses.
The theater opened in 1913 and was a lively community hub until its closure in 1964 following racial integration, according to a 2019 column by Robert Booker. Its original location was on the west side of Vine Avenue, but the theater moved to the east side around 1920 or 1921, Booker said in a 2023 video by the East Tennessee History Center.
“The Gem Theatre was kind of the hub, the mecca, for Black entertainment, where we not only saw the movies but the great entertainers who came to town,” Booker said. The space functioned as “a multi-purpose facility for the Black community.”
What was the Gem Theatre like?
The original Gem Theatre was a silent-movie house, according to a 2001 Metro Pulse article by historian Jack Neely. It closed around 1921, approximately the same time the Gem Theatre reopened in its second location, although at that time it was called the Dixie Theatre, according to Booker’s column. Newspaper articles from the early 1920s refer to it as the Dixie Gem Theatre, and eventually the first part of that moniker was dropped.
In its second location, a larger space that was home to multiple businesses, the Gem Theatre could seat about 1,400, making it one of the largest venues available to Black folks in Knoxville at the time, according to a 2022 Booker column.
The Gem hosted live performances featuring artists such as Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Cab Calloway and Billie Holliday, according to Metro Pulse. It screened movies including “Frankenstein” and “A Stolen Life,” as well as movies with all-Black casts such as “Beware!” and “Juke Joint.”
Businesses housed in the building included a bakery, candy store, bowling alley, barbershop and fruit stand, according to the 2019 Booker column.
In 1939 and 1942, fires broke out at the Gem Theatre, according to the 2022 Booker column. The 1939 fire began in the building’s attic, resulting in damage to the Deluxe Beauty Salon, the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Co, and the L.G. Gerber Tailor Shop, although the theater reopened the following day.
The second fire was caused by a lightning strike at 3 a.m. on July 28, 1942. resulting in losses estimated between $30,000 and $40,000. But the Gem persisted, and was already in the process of being rebuilt that November, according to a 1942 Knoxville Journal article.
Integration brings about the theater’s closure
After the integration movement in Knoxville − in which Booker himself was involved − opened establishments like the Tennessee Theatre to Black patrons, the Gem Theatre became less of a draw. “When the theaters desegregated, poor Gem Theatre lost its clientele and people started going elsewhere,” Booker said in the East Tennessee History Center video.
The physical Gem Theatre building was destroyed by urban removal for the creation of James White Parkway.
“The Cal Johnson Park remains but the old Gem Theatre, the drugstore where we got our ice cream cones between Sunday school and church, as well as the home of Mrs. Black, are all gone,” poet and activist Nikki Giovanni wrote in a 2016 letter to the editor regarding urban removal.
Hayden Dunbar is the storyteller reporter. Email hayden.dunbar@knoxnews.com.
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