Triracial Moviegoing during the Jim Crow Era

Raleigh, NC – Learn something new during your lunch hour at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. Drop by for History à la Carte: Triracial Moviegoing on Wed., Nov. 14, at 12:10 p.m. Bring your lunch. Admission and beverages are free.

Using newspaper records, photographs and oral histories, Christopher McKenna will examine Jim Crow-era moviegoing in Robeson County, where theaters imposed three-way segregation of audience members. McKenna is a Senior Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.

McKenna will focus on whites, American Indians and African Americans who attended movies in Robeson County from 1896 to 1940. He highlights the county’s efforts to accommodate three-way racial segregation and the patrons’ responses to these efforts. For example, Lumberton’s Carolina Theatre had a whites-only auditorium and a balcony with wooden partitions to separate whites, African Americans and American Indians. The balcony was accessed by a separate entrance and staircase.

Come learn more about moviegoing during the Jim Crow era in Robeson County.

For more information about the N.C. Museum of History, call (919) 807-7900, visit the museum’s website or connect with the museum on Facebook and Twitter.