The Old Miller Theater
- Ninfa O. Barnard
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
The Old Miller Theater holds some of the most important African American history in the city and state as an event center hosting vaudeville shows, national speakers, movies, boxing, political rallies, concerts, conventions, socials, as well as providing office space for lawyers, doctors, a casket company and others.
The Miller Theater when it was briefly rented as The Gem.
Image Credit: www.arkansasonline.com
On February 6, 1910, the Arkansas Democrat reported that Dr. S.M. Miller, an African American physician in the city of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had bought a building on State Street for $6,000 (approximately $204,616.42 today). On the property, Dr. Miller planned to erect a vaudeville theater that exclusively served African American patrons.
Four years earlier, Dr. Miller built the two-story Miller hotel on Third avenue and Tennessee street. In an interview with the Pine Bluff Graphic, Dr. Miller stated that the vaudeville house would be built with “the most modern conveniences. The newspaper also stated that Dr. Miller would invest a large sum of money in the theater to ensure that the African American residents of Pine Bluff would have “an exclusive play-house with a liberal patronage.”
The Miller Building on State Street was an important three-story brick commercial and service building in the African American community, housing a cafe, hotel rooms, doctors and dentists, and hair stylists/barbers. It was also home to a movie theatre under at least three different names including the Gem show in the picture. Unfortunately, Miller died just before construction was finished. However, it operated as the Miller Theater from 1912 to 1917. When it opened, it was the first theater built for African Americans in the state of Arkansas.
In October 1916, the American Woodmen, a fraternal organization established to fill the need for financial and social support that African Americans were often denied by other institutions. They also provided community-based services that included scholarships, community projects, along with providing support for widows, heirs, and orphans. In his address to the Pine Bluff camp No. 3, J.L. Horace stated, “The negro must take his place as a man and not as a baby. We are now fifty years from slavery, and the world is demanding of us to do our work and do it well. It is not asking who your father was or what you can do? If you cannot measure up, then stand aside.”
In April 1917, as the United States officially declared war on Germany and entered World War I, African Americans in Pine Bluff reaffirmed their allegiance to the United States in a meeting at the Miller Theater.
During this meeting resolutions were unanimously adopted stating the following: “Whereas, the congress of the United States passed a resolution on April 6, 1917, and said resolution was signed by the president, declaring a state of war now exists between the United States of America and the imperial German government; and Whereas, we as colored American citizens feel that as part and parcel of this American government, we should and ought in this time of war, as well as in peace, bear our full share against Germany or any other foreign foe.” It went on to state, “...we hereby reaffirm our allegiance to the government in this hour of peril and pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in the support of our government. When called upon, the negro has never faltered nor been disloyal. We now stand ready to perform whatever duties that may be demanded by our chief executive.”
In October 1917, the Miller Theater was the site of the first meeting of the Supreme Union of Ethiopia, founded by Pine Bluff resident Mrs. S.J. Page. The Supreme Union of Ethiopia’s motto was “Lifting as We Climb”, as they purchased several thousand dollars' worth of estates in Pine Bluff and Amy, Arkansas, relieving the debt and mortgages of the poor and allowing them ample time to repay those debts.
In addition, the Supreme Union of Ethiopia owned more than $500,000 in properties (approximately$17,051,368.42 today), published a weekly periodical, and operated the only African-American owned ice cream factory in the South, right here in Pine Bluff. Mrs. Page, its founder, also traveled across the South giving speeches that convinced African Americans to stay in the South during the Great Migration because “the South is the negro’s best place - a place where he can find work, earn his bread, and save money if he wants to do so. His churches, his schools, and colleges are in the South - and all of this done in fifty years.”
The Pine Bluff Graphic reported that more than 1,000 African American delegates from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi were expected to attend. Mayor Simon Bloom, a Jewish Pine Bluff native, was the principal speaker.
During its run, the Miller Theater housed numerous events important to Pine Bluff’s African American community and to the country. It was used as a meeting hall, office space, movie theater, boxing venue, and convention site. It hosted blues and jazz legends like Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, broadway star Richard Harrison, internationally renowned minstrel show, and the touring show of the first black-owned recording company, Black Swan Records.
After Miller's death, the building was entered into a forced sale in 1917, which ended the Miller Theatre’s operation. It was subsequently sold to a black fraternal order, the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows which continued a variety of programming and entertainment well into the late 1920s. The cornerstone on the building still bears its name.
At some point during the Great Depression of the 1930s its top two floors were leveled to help provide brick for the construction of Taylor Field. Today, what is left of the once three-story building is among just 10 black vaudeville structures still standing in the United States.
In 2018, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff art department received $2.2 million from a Windgate Foundation gift for scholarships and art education in the Delta. Over the next five years, several collaborative projects were implemented, one of the most noteworthy was the Old Miller Theatre mosaic, which honors the history of the Miller Theater in downtown Pine Bluff.
On December 4, 2023, the Miller Theater mosaic was unveiled in The ARTSpace on Main and will be located at an undetermined spot in the future Delta Rhythm & Blues Cultural District. The mosaic took about 810 hours and was made of multiple clay panels weighing 100 pounds each. Karen DeJarnette, the chair of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff School of Art and Design, along with faculty members Te’Arra Stewart, Matthew Fields, and Jonathan Wright, worked on the design. The mosaic specifically honored the Miller Theater's history during the 1920s, when it hosted acts from the Black Swan Records tours, including performers like Ethel Waters, Fred “Deacon” Jones, J. Mayo Williams, George Thomas, and William Grant Still.
Plans are being developed to re-purpose the Old Miller theater as an open air gallery and artisan market in the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Cultural District Cultural District.
Sources:
www.newspapers.com - Pine Bluff Daily Graphic: More Than 1,000 Expected at Convention of Ethiopia Union Opening Today
uapbarkansawyer.com - UAPB’s Department of Art and Design inspires community and students through creative endeavors
Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard