The State Theater provided motion pictures all ages enjoyed..seven days a week. On certain Saturday's, kids would be admitted for six pepsi-cola tops to see chapter-series flicks,like Flash Gordon or some Western. This was called Matinee Saturday's, and you held on to your ticket to see if it matched the Grand-Prizes number(bicycle-wagons..)
As we matured, that was a place to take a date or just meet friends, and have fun. Someone seated at the rear of the theater seemed to always let a empty glass soda bottle roll several rows toward the front stage. A lot of giggling and HA!HA's! followed until someone stopped the roll or the seat leg.
This is what I remember......What are your memories of the State Theater.....anyone with pictures to include,please do.
I have searched, with no success, to find photos of the State Theater.
Chuck, you've got me hungry! PaPa Dad's for the main "Q" and East Texas Bar-B-Que (or was it East Texas Hot Links?) behind the State Theater for link baskets! And the Woosie sodas -- I had forgotten those! 
Didn't forget K-Orange and Grape, though!
Chuck, you may want to start that State Theater discussion somebody suggested you start. Who among us DIDN'T go to movies at the State??? And guess what else? ... in a talk with Bob Lane I learned that it seems the State was owned by a Black family whose daughters attended St. Peter's. I'm sure we would explore that and much more in State Theater memories in that discussion.
Gosh y'all, for all the compliments, all I can say is ....
This truly is a treasure for someone interested in Black History.. THIS.... IS WAAAYYY Cool ! You can ACTUALLY see every edition of JET AND read them !!!! This is Black American History at its best!!! This was forwarded to me and I knew I had to share. Check it out when you have time. This e-mail contains copies of Jet Magazine going all the way back to 1950s copies. Not only do you get the covers of all the issues of Jet Magazine, but you can actually read the issues. Good tool for your children and grandchildren. I browsed through some of them and the emotional changes I went through is; I don't know how to describe it. This is definitely a keeper! http://books.google.com/books?id=Db4DAAAAMBAJ&hl=En&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=2_2&atm_aiy=1950#all_issues_anchor |
The words above were written by the person who sent the email with the Jet Magazine link to me. My thoughts are the same as hers so I'll only add this:
When we received our weekly Jet Magazine it was passed around until it was pretty much falling apart. The magazine was at that time the only way we found out what was going on in the black comunity. In it we could find out what people of color (Negroes back then) would be on TV/radio that week among other things
After browsing through the first Jet I found myself thinking, "Oh my God, how far we have come". And then reminding myself that the same discrimination that Josephine Baker endured, and that black men and women are imprisoned for on trumped up charges (drugs found in back seat of police car), continues to exist in 2010 in America and elsewhere in the world.
My consolation is in knowing that God already knew that things were going to happen.
Tell me what you think, how you feel, Bulldogs.....
I'm thinking only Fred Walker who gave us this picture knows ALL these answers for sure, but maybe you do too!(?) CLICK the picture to go to its page and share your knowledge with us.
( You know, BTW's "eyewitness history" is truly in our hands. Only we who've lived in the times and with the people and places portrayed in these wonderful photographic records are the remaining keepers and curators of the great museum of "BTW Life" created by the pictures, documents and written information we share!! )
... well, I'll put my other guesses on the picture's page here. C U there!
"How to" videos will be added to show how to do things that add YOUR special things.
Enjoy Your Website!
The portrayal in Clint Eastwood's film, Flags of Our Fathers, of the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima.
On February 19, 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."
Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island.While the battle scenes in the film show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.
The film tells the story of the raising of the stars and stripes over Mount Suribachiat the tip of the island. The moment was captured in a photograph that became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood's film follows the marines in the picture, including the Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from combat operations to promote the sale of government war bonds.
Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man who put the firstflag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on,"he says. That, too, is absent from the film.
"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said MrMcPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still havea strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."
MeltonMcLaurin, author of the forthcoming The Marines of Montford Point and an accompanying documentary to be released in February, says that there were hundreds of black soldiers on Iwo Jima from the first day of the 35-day battle. Although most of the black marine units were assigned ammunition and supply roles, the chaos of the landing soon undermined the battle plan.
"When they first hit the beach the resistance was so fierce that they weren't shifting ammunition, they were firing their rifles," said Dr McLaurin.
The failure to transfer the active role played by African-Americans at Iwo Jima to the big screen does not surprise him. "One of the marines I interviewed said that the people who were filming newsreel footage on Iwo Jima deliberately turned their cameras away when black folks came by. Blacks are not surprised at all when they see movies set where black troops were engaged and never show on the screen. I would like to say that it was from ignorance but anybody can do research and come up with books about African-Americans in world war two. I think it has to do with box office and what producers of movies think Americans really want to see."
He added: "I want to see these guys get their due. They're just so anxious to have their story told and to have it known."
Roland Durden, another black marine, landed on the beach on the third day. "When we hit the shore we were loaded with ammunition and the Japanese hit us with mortar." Private Durden was soon assigned to burial detail, "burying the dead day in, day out. It seemed like endless days. They treated us like workmen rather than marines."
Mr Durden, too, is wearied but unsurprised at the omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be heroes. This was pre-1945, precivil rights."
A spokesperson for Warner Bros said: "The film is correct based on the book." The omission was first remarked upon in a review by Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who noted that the history of black involvement at Iwo Jima was recorded in several books, including Christopher Moore's recent Fighting for America: Black Soldiers - the Unsung Heroes of World War II. "They weren't in the background at all," said Moore.
"The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are our films and very often they become our history, historical documents." Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.
"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie."
The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." It would provide a fitting end note to Eastwood's film.
