"Colored" theatre
June 27, 1937
Colored Theater
Leland, Mississippi, in the Delta area, June 1937. This photograph show how segregated the late 30’s were. The theater clearly states that it is for colored people only. Black we not even able to watch a film with the whites. Once in awhile the white and blacks we in the same theatre but the blacks were never close to the action. Colored people has to sit up on the balcony and the whites sat on the ground floor.
If you were colored then you could not jus walk into a white theater. You could incarcerated just for walking in there. It seems crazy now in 1930 blacks knew the consequences. Police officers were always white so if you did something they didn't like they could beat you with their night stick. Many blacks got beat for going into white places. In some cases the officer didn't even ask the blacks to leave they just hit the to get the point across.
The colored theatre was not as good as the whites theatre. As you can see its not a very big building. It is pretty thrown together. Not much thought went into this, unlike the whites theater.Colored people didn't get extravagant things. They got what was necessary but never as good as the whites. The blacks knew this was not right but would not stand up for themselves very often. They shouldn't feel the need to back now from the whites, nobody should have to back now from somebody else because of the color of your skin.