Prologue
Welcome to the Hotel Metropolitan! Transcript
(sound of door opening)
Maggie Steed: Can I help you sugar?
Ariel Lavery: We’re interested in coming in to see the hotel.
Maggie Steed: Well, honey you can’t come in here, this ain’t for you. You might need to get in your car and go somewhere else, this is a colored hotel, sugar. You can’t come on in here… nuh-uh.
(sound of door closing)
Ariel Lavery: Austin, I’m sure you’ve never been told you couldn’t enter a place of business because of your race?
Austin Carter: I feel lucky to say that has never happened to me.
Ariel Lavery: Well, I can now say that I have experienced that, though it was in good faith of giving people like me a tiny bit of the Black American experience.
Austin Carter: So, this was the hotel’s owner that rejected you?
Ariel Lavery: It was the hotel’s current owner, Betty Dobson, under the guise of the hotel’s founder and very first owner, Maggie Steed.
(old jazz, with the static of a historic radio, music starts)
Ariel Lavery: Maggie built this hotel, in Paducah Kentucky, back in 1908. It grew to become a nationally renowned place to stay. There were a few hotels African Americans could stay in in Paducah during the twentieth century, but…
Betty Dobson: There were none as nice as the Hotel Metropolitan.
Ariel Lavery: The Hotel Metropolitan became the classiest hotel in Paducah for African Americans during the time of Jim Crow. And it remained open for nearly a century before finally closing its doors, in total disrepair, in 1996.
Austin Carter: Oh wow! And Betty brought it back to life at the turn of the century, right?
Ariel Lavery: That’s right. This bit of Black history was on the verge of being completely lost, forever.
Chris Black: Without the drive of Betty Dobson, it would not have occured.
Ariel Lavery: So, when I was finally admitted entrance to the hotel by Maggie, she gave me an amazing tour full of history and so many stories of things she’s seen go on there. I really had no idea that this relic of the early twentieth century, which is practically in our backyard Austin, contained such a deep and awesome history of Black icons in the U.S.. Icons who are not just the numerous famous people who lived there but the people, the women, who made this hotel happen and kept it running.
Betty Dobson: These women, got an idea, and Maggie, had to be that person that she was willing to get the job done.
Austin Carter: And Betty is one of those women!
Ariel Lavery: Yeah! Her connection to the hotel has been life-altering for her. She has been nursing this hotel back to health while also bringing herself back from a debilitating illness, and the two of them, the hotel and Betty, have kinda gained in health and recognition together over the last 20 years. It’s become a kind of retainer for a fragile and threatened history. And it all started one day with her daughter’s want for some candy.
(Middle of Everywhere theme music starts)
Betty Dobson: That day just opened up a whole different life for me.
Ariel Lavery: Who preserves the history surrounding us? Can we have an impact in our small communities and on the story that gets retold?
Austin Carter: This is Middle of Everywhere, telling big stories from the small places we call home. I’m Austin Carter.
Ariel Lavery: And I’m Ariel Lavery. And today, Welcome to the Hotel Metropolitan.
(Middle of Everywhere theme music ends)
Scene 1: A Hotel in a Time of Need
Maggie Steed: Welcome to the Hotel Metropolitan. I own this here hotel.
Ariel Lavery: Maggie Steed and her husband were Black residents of Paducah, Kentucky who had extra room in their house to put up Black visitors.
Maggie Steed: And so when folks started coming in and the word got around that if you needed a nice place to stay and you’re colored, you come to the Hotel Metropolitan. Well, Henry and I was doing such a good business, I said, “Henry, maybe we should go and see if we could get a hotel built for colored folks, you know.” He said to me, “Maggie, had you done lost your mind? We can’t build no hotel for colored folks, you a crazy woman!”
(playful jazz music starts)
Ariel Lavery: Maggie Steed was a woman before her time. She had this vision of the hotel well before anyone imagined that a Black woman could found and run a business like this all on her own. But once she had this idea, she pursued it unapologetically. She approached the local lumber company mogul, Mr. Ore, who she did laundry for. She brought him one of her signature dishes.
Maggie Steed: He loves my chess pies.
Ariel Lavery: And after delivering her signature pie along with extra starched and pressed shirts, she asked him for support in funding and building a hotel especially for African American travelers.
Austin Carter: What did he think of that proposal?
Maggie Steed: You can’t get a hotel built, you a woman! And a colored woman at that! Who in the world gonna come to a colored hotel anyway?
Austin Carter: I guess I’m not surprised by this reaction from a, presumably, rich white man from this point in history. But, that’s pretty disappointing.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah. Well, she explained to him simply that Black folks who were traveling through Paducah, folks they had already been putting up in their home, would come to their hotel.
Maggie Steed: We want somewhere decent, just like you do when you travel. And I tell you this, whoever got the mind to do it, they gonna make them some money.
Ariel Lavery: This seemed to be a gap in Mr. Ore’s thinking. I guess he forgot about all the people who traveled through the area and weren’t allowed to stay in the same hotel as white people.
Maggie Steed: What I didn’t tell you honey, is that when I went to talk to Mr. Ore and I took him back them papers with Henry’s name, he didn’t know I had signed those papers ‘cause Henry had been dead for four years (laughs), but honey I didn’t think that really mattered.
Austin Carter: Oh my gosh! She forged her dead husband’s signature?! It doesn’t seem like she had much grief over that!
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) I don’t think she had any grief over it. She had one goal and it was incredibly important for her to get this done. She’s a ‘Can Do’ woman!
(twangy southern music starts)
So, Maggie, armed with food, extra starched shirts, incredible powers of persuasion, and her forged documents, got her hotel funded.
Austin Carter: Wow, sounds like you learned a lot about her personal life on this tour.
Ariel Lavery: That ,and she told me lots of little tidbits about being Black at that time. Like, this test that Black people would undergo to determine whether they could go to school.
Maggie Steed: Sugar, you know what this is?
Ariel Lavery: Looks like a paper bag?
Maggie Steed: But, what color is this paper bag?
Ariel Lavery: Looks brown to me.
Maggie Steed: But what if I told you, in my day, to go to school, that this bag would determine if you could go to school or not.
Austin Carter: What is she talking about?
Ariel Lavery: She was referring to something called the brown paper bag test. It was a test that determined which Black children could go to school.
Maggie Steed: These men had children, by they slaves and they wanted them educated.
Ariel Lavery: If the children’s belly skin was lighter than the color of the brown paper bag, they would be allowed.
Maggie Steed: Thus, was the paper bag test born.
Austin Carter: Wow, that’s something I had no idea about but it’s such a crucial part of history.
Ariel Lavery: Another interesting artifact Maggie told me about, I found very intriguing, as a curly-haired person who has spent too much of my life trying to straighten it...
Maggie Steed: The pressin’ comb. Sugar, if you had one that meant you was uptown and you know, Miss Maggie’s… uptown!
Ariel Lavery: The pressing comb was invented by the first Black woman millionaire, who was born in Metropolis, Illinois. Right up the road from Paducah.
Maggie: Annie Turnbow Malone.
Ariel Lavery: And she showed me how to use it.
Maggie Steed: If you took this hot comb, and it's smoking and put it in your hair, honey, you ain't gonna have no more hair. So you ain't gotta worry about what a pressin’ comb can do for you. (Ariel laughs)
Austin Carter: There are so many inventions that a lot of people, myself included, don’t realize came from early African American inventors. Did she talk about the hotel’s presence in Paducah later on? As it became more of a fixture?
Ariel Lavery: Not a lot, but I did talk with someone who grew up in the same neighborhood and was enamored with the visitors that would come. His name is Winfred Nunn.
Winfred Nunn: I was riding my tricycle. And this bus stopped.
(sophisticated jazz music starts)
Winfred Nunn: And I saw these Black men get out with hair slicked back, glistening in the sun. And they were dressed up. And I said “Mama, who are... looka there, come here, come on.” So she come out. She said “That's, ah, Duke Ellington’s band.”
Austin Carter: That’s so cool!
Ariel Lavery: Winfred explained to me that the Hotel was built in the primary Black neighborhood of Paducah, which was only like a four-block diameter.
Winfred Nuun: The Metropolitan Hotel. As in the Black neighborhood, which was a part of the Black business hub, Seventh Street, eighth Street, Washington Street to Ohio Street.
Ariel Lavery: The hotel was also part of the Chitlin Circuit.
Betty Dobson: The Chitlin Circuit was like an underground railroad type of thing. On the routes that you were given on the Chitlin Circuit you knew that you would find restaurants, churches, you know, people would fix cars, anything you would need, you would find it on the Chitlin Circuit.
Ariel Lavery: And out of the Chitlin Circuit a book started being distributed called The Green Book.
Betty Dobson: The Green Book was put together by Mr. Green, who lived I believe in New York and because he was a delivery person people would stop him if they were Black and ask him okay, in the city, where can I go get a meal? Or what's the restaurants? Or which way should I go to travel to get to wherever I wanted. And he was getting so much of that he decided to put together The Green Book. It’s named after him. And he would, he would give you little hints of things that you should know like saying, talk politely when speaking to, you know, your white counterpart, or, you know, just just little things that people go, “Wow, why would he say that,” but he was saying it, because he wanted you to be safe in your travels.
(energized southern music starts)
Ariel Lavery: And Maggie was very proud to have been featured in this book.
Maggie Steed: And if you look in that book, The Hotel Metropolitan in the 1940, Green Book is on page 17. So, we have always been there for colored travelers.
Austin Carter: So, this book really put them on the map.
Ariel Lavery: Yep, the hotel was pretty famous among the Black community. So many famous people have stayed there. And it operated well after Jim Crow, all the way until 1996.
Betty Dobson: The hotel has, since its conception, had only been closed maybe a year or two, before it would reopen again. And the unique thing about it, it's had only four owners in its history.
Scene 2: Betty Finds New Purpose out of Illness
Austin Carter: So Betty started working on rejuvenating this hotel back in the early 2000s. How did she get into it?
Ariel Lavery: Well, she went through a very unexpected journey to get to this place.
Betty Dobson: I've been working with the project for about 20 years, this is my 21st year. Getting involved in the project from the first place began with my daughter.
(whimsical music starts)
It was three o'clock, or better in the afternoon. And she said, “I'm going to go to the store with my friends to get candy.” I said “Where are you going to go get candy?” She said, “I'm going to the liquor store.” And I'm like, “Nah, you're not going to the liquor store.”
Austin Carter: (laughs) Seems a bit of a risky place for kids to find candy.
Ariel Lavery: Right? I think this kinda exemplifies the lack of resources for kids and families in the neighborhood.
Betty: My friend and I began talking and got with the gentleman who owns the vacant block over there, or property, and asked him if we could put up a building where we can sell candy and stuff like that, to keep the kids from the liquor stores.
Ariel Lavery: Betty and her friend put up a snack shack that was open after school.
Austin Carter: That’s so great that she was available to start a service like that, for the kids.
Ariel Lavery: Well, she had been working in sales for a long time, but had taken off from work because of a debilitating and life-changing event.
(forlorn music starts, turns inspirational halfway through)
Betty Dobson: I was dealing with my illness. I was walking into my job and my leg just stopped moving and I almost fell flat on my face. So, finally I go to the doctor and he says, you got MS.
Ariel Lavery: She starts reeling.
Betty Dobson: The comedian Richard Pryor was diagnosed with MS. And he was in a wheelchair. And so, and, Lola Falana.
Ariel Lavery: A famous dancer and actor.
Betty Dobson: She was, you know, really bad. And I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna, this is my fate. There was this time that I couldn't focus to talk. I couldn't pick up things. I would stumble. And they were like, you need to get your house ready, you know, think about a ramp and I'm like, Oh my God, this, it's real. Like, I'm gonna be... this is it for me. And then all once my condition got better. And the doctor said, “What are you doing?” and I said, “I-I don't know, I’m just feeling better.” And I found out I was pregnant.
Austin Carter: Whoa.
Ariel Lavery: Her MS had gone into remission, because of the pregnancy with her son!
Betty Dobson: He made me strong enough where I could do something you know, and while I was on the mend, my daughter comes up and gives me a challenge to do something better. So that, that, gave me the incentive to like, okay, I don't care if Richard Pryor is in a wheelchair and he can't walk and Lola Falana is bedridden. That's them. I think I could do this.
Ariel Lavery: With the remission of her disease, she found a whole new purpose.
Betty Dobson: Over the years, I had come to the, to the conclusion that the Lord slowed me down for a reason. Because I was so devastated to learn that I had MS. What was that going to mean for my life, my life is basically over.
Betty Dobson: That day, just opened up a whole different life for me.
Ariel Lavery: When we come back we’ll get into how MS and pregnancy allowed her to embark on a journey that saved her and her community’s history.
Scene 3: Getting the Hotel
Austin Carter: So, Betty got the diagnosis of MS and then got pregnant, putting the MS into remission. That all seems like a pretty harrowing experience. How did she end up taking on the hotel?
Ariel Lavery: Well, she was running the snack shack every day after school...
Betty Dobson: And we were doing pretty good with it.
Ariel Lavery: But there were some pretty disturbing changes happening in the neighborhood.
Betty Dobson: At that particular time, Lincoln High School was being torn down.
Ariel Lavery: Lincoln High School was the only African American school in Paducah, as Clarence Gaines remembered in this archived audio interview.
Clarence Gaines: The only one they had for Blacks was Lincoln. Uh, it has the elementary, junior high, and senior high school.
Betty Dobson: They just tore down parts of West Kentucky, the original industrial college here in Paducah, and the Hotel Metropolitan was slated for condemnation. So that was three Black buildings of historical significance to the Black community that was going to be torn down. This gentleman came and he was telling us he was proud that we were making a difference by placing this store there for the children.
Ariel Lavery: And their little store just happened to be across the street from the Hotel Metropolitan.
Betty Dobson: He pointed at the hotel and it was, I mean, a hot mess. You know, it had aluminum siding on it, and it was popping off, the roof looked like it was getting ready to cave in. And he was saying to me, “Yeah, it's just I wish you all could save that building.” And I’m like, “It should be torn down!” And he said, “Oh, baby, you don't mean that?” I said, “Yes, I do.” He said, “Did you know that Cab Calloway stayed there? Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday.” And I said, “In that?!”
Austin: (laughs)
Ariel Lavery: It was really interesting to hear Betty talk about the hotel this way given this question we asked at the top about who really writes history and why some buildings get chosen for preservation over others.
Austin Carter: Yeah, especially because she didn’t even know the historical significance of this place.
Ariel Lavery: Right! It makes you stop and think a bit about how this history gets written in the first place. You need people who are in the know about local history to be the stewards of these places.
Austin Carter: So, I guess Betty was in the know now?
Betty Dobson: I thought, let's find out who the owners’ is. This is how the story begins. (Laughs)
Ariel Lavery: She starts asking around, to people who know a bit about the hotel to try to find out who the owner is.
Betty Dobson: Folks were sayin’, “You need to talk to Big House Gaines.” And I'm like, “Who is Big House Gaines?” And they’re like, “You're crazy! You don't know who Big House Gaines is? He’s the most winningest collegiate basketball coach in America.”
Ariel Lavery: So, she meets Coach Gaines, who owns the building, becomes a basketball fan, and asks him to give her and her collaborators the hotel. But he’s hesitant about turning it over.
Betty Dobson: Because he said that we were little girls. (laughs) And he didn’t know if we could pull off something like this. We had to put together a coalition.
Ariel Lavery: As things start coming together, more people start coming out in support of the project.
(soulful music starts)
Soulful music: This heart has wings...
Betty Dobson: Every day, and I kid you not, the Lord would send me somebody for what I needed. Bill Black, Jr., who was one of the owners of Ray Black & Son construction company said, “What can I do to help?” I'm not a writer. Bill says, “You know what? I know this lady. She's an excellent writer. Her name was Sharon, is Sharon Pope.” He said, “What if I asked Sharon to come aboard and help you?”
Ariel Lavery: While all this energy for the project is building up and people are getting on board, Betty is continuing to battle her illness. And setbacks in the progress for the hotel would really affect her illness.
Betty Dobson: So we did one step, I’m feelin’ a little bit better, then we have a fall back. I will fall back. The emotional part of it...it just takes you with it.
Scene 4: Money Talks… and Eats!
Austin Carter: So the rejuvenation of the hotel is looking like it’s going to become a real thing at this point.
Ariel Lavery: Yes, but she still needed to raise the money required to start renovations. And at this point, I want to dig into this relationship Betty has with the women in her life, and how they’ve really helped boost this project into reality.
Betty Dobson: My mom. I would talk with her every day, even though we had our board meetings and all of that.
Ariel Lavery: Betty’s mother and grandmother influenced her to become a strong female leader. Similar to Maggie Steed, they had the will to create things in the face of adversity.
Betty Dobson: And I think that's where I had an open mind to say, hey, you know, I could-I could get this done because, like I said, my mom and my grandmother were strong females in the community. And if there was something that was going on, people will contact them. They would help, they would get things done.
Ariel Lavery: And this mindset ends up doing everything to get the renovations going.
Betty Dobson: Mr. Black says to us, “Well, if you could get $250,000 I think we could restore the hotel”. Well, Coach Gaines said, “Let me see if I can’t help you find that money,” puts us in contact with a man who's over the USDA. And he said, “I think I have a grant that you would qualify for, called rural development.”
(celebratory high-energy music starts)
Betty Dobson: We qualified for the grant. He got us $300,000. We were so happy because we thought it was over. We had a big celebration on the vacant lot across the street. We had the assistant governor of the state of Kentucky come down and Coach Gaines was here, his wife, his family, representatives and senators came. We made it! Me and Cheryl's hugging. This is it we made it, the hotel’s safe,we're all happy.
(music stops abruptly)
(wistful music starts)
Betty Dobson: And then Mr. Black goes, “Hold on. $300,000 not gonna get it.” He said, “Ladies you just got to the hotel in time because if it had went a month or two longer we would not be able to do anything.” It was like, where we're going to get more money? Then it hit us to get talkin’ to my mom. I told her, I said “You know we thought we had it done, mama. $300,000... We just knew that was enough.” She said, “Let me tell you something, baby. You're gonna have to go talk to them folks down there and ask them for money. And they don't want to see you or hear you coming.” She said “When you go talk to them, make it worth their while, take ‘em a pie or sompin’.”
Austin Carter: It’s so funny how a decision can be so easily influenced by something as small as being well-fed.
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) I knew you’d understand this method of persuasion. So, the deployment of food becomes a primary tactic for Betty in accomplishing her goals.
Betty Dobson: I called some of the union leaders and asked them if they could help. So, I said well, if they come you know I'll feed ‘em and stuff. They go okay, okay, we’ll come. Every day it was like some guy called another guy, “This lady’s over here cookin’, she got a nice spread for us.” So, some work guys came to help out. Same thing happen with the painters union when we needed painting, plumbers union fell in, but we were still needing some money, right?
(mischievous jazz music starts)
Betty Dobson: The Judge Executive at this time happened to call me. Judge Orazine. And he said “Betty, can you meet this lady over at the hotel?” My mom said, “Here, take some apple butter with you.” And my mom made some of the best apple butter in the whole world. When I get here, I meet the lady. I take her on the tour.
Ariel Lavery: Betty has no idea who this woman really is.
Betty Dobson: She couldn't tell me how she could help me. But what I didn't know is that she was an associate of Senator Bunning.
Ariel Lavery: Jim Bunning was a famous Kentucky senator at the time. So, after the tour, Betty pulls out her mother’s apple butter.
Betty Dobson: You know what, I got something for you. She says, “I haven’t had apple butter in years!” I said, “Well, you’re in for a treat.”
Austin Carter: Oh, man, you can’t get any better than some good apple butter! But, there must have been more significance to this apple butter if you’re bringing it up.
Ariel Lavery: Well, Betty didn’t know who this woman was, right? So, she and her team continue pursuing their goal.
(hopeful, high-energy music starts)
Betty Dobson: We're still looking for grants, how we're going to get this extra money. I started getting calls, people, “Congratulations,” over emails, “Congratulations!” It’s in the newspaper, Hotel Metropolitan gets $250,000 from Save America's Treasures.
Austin Carter: Oh, man! And she didn’t know?
Ariel Lavery: No idea what was going on. So, she called the office for Save America’s Treasures.
Betty Dobson: I said, “But we didn’t apply for it!” And she said, “Well, do you know Senator Bunning?” And I said no. She said, “Do you know Senator Mitch McConnell?” I said, “I've heard of him.” (laughs) She said, “They applied for it on your behalf. I immediately called TC.”
Ariel Lavery: TC was the woman she gave the apple butter to.
Betty Dobson: I said, “TC, did you give us a grant?” She said, “I sure did.” And she said, “You won't believe it. I've enjoyed some of your mom's delicious apple butter right now.” Food has got to be a part of anything we do.
Scene 5: The Hotel Rejuvenation
Austin Carter: I love that the gifts of food have really helped bring this project to fruition. So, did they get what they needed to start the renovation?
Ariel Lavery: Yep!
Betty Dobson: Bill was the gentleman that worked with us.
Ariel Lavery: Bill Black from Ray Black & Son, which is a general contracting company that does historic preservation in Paducah, he was the lead on this project. Unfortunately, Bill died a few years back. But, Bill’s brother, Chris Black, the president of the company, knows a lot about the project.
Chris Black: The roofline, we could see from the exterior needed a lot of help, that structurally it had developed an enormous sway in the ridgeline.
Ariel Lavery: Like Betty mentioned earlier, the building was really close to being unsalvageable. But they did find several really unique treatments to the interior that told a story about the owners.
(historic jazz music starts)
Chris Black: One of the tidbits that we found interesting was in an upper floor closet. There were seven or eight different types of wallpaper on the wall but only one layer. And it became evident that the remnants from other rooms that were papered that were leftover were then used in this closet to clean up its walls and to decorate it. But, with all the different bits that had been left over from other rooms and patterns. As flooring was uncovered, there were very early pieces of vinyl flooring, that were actually decorative and in the form of what would be a rug. They were an efficient, durable form of decoration to be put over a pine floor.
Austin Carter: Wow, that’s pretty cool. So, there was a real economical use of materials that they found.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah! It really reminded me of one of the practices Maggie revealed to me about how she made sure not to waste any uneaten food.
Maggie Steed: An’ now the trick was, if I had in them taters left over, I put it right back in the skillet, the next morning, put a little water and some onions in there, and it come up a nice little ball and I feed it to them the next day. (laughs)
Chris Black: There was an efficiency to the use of materials that extended to decorating a closet with what you had on hand.
Ariel Lavery: Betty and Chris also both mentioned the architect for the hotel as it really speaks to the respect Maggie was able to garner for this hotel from the beginning. It was a white architect.
Chris Black: A.L. Lassiter.
Ariel Lavary: … Who worked on several other big, well known projects in Paducah.
Chris Black: The specification and description of the work for the Metropolitan Hotel was very thorough and complete. He didn't take any shortcuts in doing the work for the Steeds.
Austin Carter: Even though it was unheard of at that time for a Black woman to be heading up a project like this?! It’s really had such a history of greatness from the beginning. It’s hard to believe it was so close to being lost, forever.
Scene 6: The Hotel Gives Back
(powerful turmoiled but emotionally-moving music starts)
Ariel Lavery: Even though the hotel, at the moment, has been spared, there are plenty of Black citizens in Paducah concerned about the continued loss of Black history, especially for the younger generations.
Clarence Gaines: I think there's a certain amount of complacency all over America now, with a lot of our youngsters because those youngsters who don't achieve, you'd like to see them more ambitious.
Winnfred Nunn: The young kids are coming from families who are not really into history like I am. So, if you don't tell your kids about the past, all the stuff in Paducah, except the Metropolitan Hotel has been torn down.
Betty Dobson: Every time there has been a change in this country. It has been brought on by young people. The civil rights movement, brought on by young people. It was the young people who said, “Look, Mom, you're okay with stepping off the sidewalk every time a white person comes by. I'm not going to do that anymore.” These kinds of places should stand, if nothing else, to say, your forefathers and mothers worked hard for you to have something better. Seeing Lincoln school torn down bothered me quite a bit. And the reason why is that it was close to the town that we were saving, trying to save the hotel. And we didn't really know if we could do that.
Ariel Lavery: Austin, I’m sure you remember when Charles Booker suddenly surged in the polls in 2020, challenging Amy McGrath’s democtratic candidacy for Kentucky senator?
Austin Carter: Yeah, of course.
Ariel Lavery: Well, one of the spots where Booker wanted to rally was at the Hotel Metropolitan.
Betty Dobson: I was honored the day that they phoned me and asked that the hotel could be the destination for the march. And to have, you know, Representative Booker to speak on the hotel strip voyage.
(news audio starts) Access the full audio here: https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/ky_votes/senate-candidate-charles-booker-joins-unity-march-in-paducah/article_34a7653c-aeb5-11ea-9565-8b5aa1dfd43a.html)
Female news reporter: We’re marching from the McCracken County Courthouse to the Hotel Metropolitan. They say they’re taking a stand for racial justice.
Betty Dobson: A young Black man who wants to do something better for our country, wants to stand on the steps of a Black hotel that a woman put here so her people can have something better. And they asked me to be a part of that. Girl, I was just almost in tears, just bubbling.
(peaceful music starts)
Betty Dobson: My granddaughter said to me later that day “Mimi, I'm so proud of you ‘n the hotel.” And I think that was probably the best moment of everything. Because in that moment (crying) I saw, I saw my granddaughter see me in the same light that I saw my mom and my grandmother, and how proud I was of them. And I could see her doin’ that. For me. It was just an awesome feeling.
Conclusion:
Chris Black: I think the thing about the Hotel Metropolitan that is important is when I look at the broad group of people that were required and the efforts and the points of contribution that occurred it took local not for profits, it took local government, it took state government, it took Federal USDA help and support, volunteers from all walks. Without the drive of Betty Dobson, it would not have occurred. Betty's ability to have her feel heard and it be recognized by a broad group of people that were then willing to put their shoulder on the wheel as well. That's what allowed this project to be successful.
Austin Carter: So the hotel has really been a success story… In the face of all the other history of that neighborhood that’s gone.
Ariel Lavery: It’s definitely an important success story for the community, but so much history has been lost in the neighborhood already that it wouldn’t be recognized for the neighborhood it was in 1950.
(discouraging music starts)
Winnfred Nunn: To my knowledge all that bit of history was destroyed.
Clarence Gaines: How can you have an area up where they supposed to be a Black heritage program with nothing that will remind you of a Black experience of a guy my age or anybody else? You don’t let things like that happen.
Winfred Nunn: I would like to see the Metropolitan expand to include more things about Black history. Because if we don't do it, it'll be a part of our life that’s lost forever. But, you know, the sad thing about it, I don't know what's gonna happen to the Metropolitan when Betty Dobson is not running the-the Metropolitan. That's... just kind of the shape it’s in. I don't think any young person is coming in and pick up where Betty left off.
Austin Carter: You know, we lose little bits of history every day. And while the preservation of the Hotel Metropolitan feels like a victory in preserving this history, it's also hard to not feel discouraged or uncertain about the ability of people to pass on this vital knowledge. It just seems like we need more Bettys and Maggies. And to each continue to learn and cherish the lessons of the past.
(discouraging music transitions to more upbeat and hopeful)
Maggie Steed: Now, I know you white folks are accustomed to going wherever you wanna go. But we got Jim Crow laws we have to abide by. And I just can’t let you walk in here just because you want to. I’ll let you come in because I want you to. But, it’s on my terms, you understand that?
Ariel Lavery: Understood.
Maggie Steed: Well all right now, come on in.
Credits:
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This episode of Middle of Everywhere was produced by me, Ariel Lavery, with editorial help from my cohost, Austin Carter. Our editor is Naomi Starobin. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Time on the String sound studio in Paducah, Kentucky. Other scoring was from APM music. Oral history recordings were provided by the Kentucky Oral History Commission of the Kentucky Historical Society. Ray Black and Son is a financial contributor to WKMS. Thanks to WPSD News Channel 6 News for their clip of the Charles Booker rally. Marketing and sponsorship support comes from Dixie Lynn. Thank you to our intern Serenity Rogers. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at middleofeverywherepod. Middle of Everywhere is a production of WKMS and PRX. This program is made possible, in part, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private organization funded by the American people.