Black Press Documented the Victims
The Rhythm Night Club fire was not only the deadliest club fire in the history of the United States when it occurred; it was the only such fire in which all the victims were Black, and it remains one of the deadliest club fires in the nation’s history. The reason we know what we know about the fire is not because of the white media, who waved off the tragedy as something that happened to “negroes.”
Rather, journalists from the leading Black newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier and the New York Amsterdam News, traveled to Natchez and provided extensive coverage of not only the fire, but also its victims.
David Kellum of the Chicago Defender, for example, went with a photographer, not only to report what happened, but to humanize the story through interviews with victims’ families. Kellum and others also sought to draw attention to what they believed to be the root cause of the fire: Jim Crow. Racial segregation, they demanded, had led to this tragedy because safety codes that would have shut down a fire trap like the Rhythm Night Club were not used to protect the Black community.
A Place Apart from Whiteness
For Black Americans across the country, the Rhythm Night Club fire resonated on a more personal level. Black-owned clubs were a place apart from the white community, a space of joy and where they could freely express themselves. In the years prior to the modern Civil Rights Movement, places like the Rhythm Night Club were important to the Black community because they not only provided a place to dance and listen to music performed by Black artists, but it also offered them a reprieve from the daily insults of segregation.
The tragedy of the fire, therefore, was a stark reminder that Jim Crow neglect could even taint these spaces.
Of course, the loss of life was devastating, too, with mostly young people losing their lives. Based on my research of the official count of 209 victims, which I believe underreports the total number of those who died, their average age was just 24. There were several high-school students, and at least one victim was only 12 years old, but the majority were in their early 20s and worked as porters for local stores or as maids or cooks in the homes of white Natchezians.