In the spring of 1983, I was going to Central Baptist School in the Bartlett area, and I rode with our basketball team to Forrest City, Arkansas, because we had a game with Calvary Christian School there. We lost the game, but after it, we stopped by some sort of burger place on North Washington Street, and then by an Exxon station. Gas stations still bad phone booths then, and I recall looking in the yellow pages of the Forrest City phone book and seeing that there were restaurants on a street called Harlem Alley. I never forgot that, although as the years passed, and I looked at maps of Forrest City and saw no place called Harlem Alley, I began to wonder if I had only imagined it. If there had been such a place, I theorized, perhaps it was a place where the blues flourished, like Beale Street in Memphis or Eighth Street in West Memphis.
Since modern maps did not show Harlem Alley, I was not quite sure where to begin. I stopped at the St. Francis County Museum on Front Street and asked about it, but the staff there were not familiar with any place called that. At the library, however, I found a woman who was in her 70s, and she was able to tell me where it had been. Harlem Alley had been a narrow alley between Broadway and Hill streets, running east from Grant Street. Unlike other towns, where there was a Black business district separate from the white downtown, it seems that in Forrest City, there was a collection of Black cafes along that portion of Grant Street and Harlem Alley. Perhaps the reason that some were not familiar with the name is that in the Black community the place was often called “Skid Row.”
Like many predominantly-Black Delta towns in Arkansas and Mississippi, mysterious fires have devastated Forrest City, and especially the area around Harlem Alley. Only one building, which appears as if it was a large juke joint or cafe, remains. A block or two north along Grant sits the Blue Flame, a legendary cafe where civil rights workers were welcomed and where Black musicians performed. However, the Blue Flame was closed, with a wreath on the door. I was told the owner had passed away about six months ago.
Another alley running east and west through Forrest City has been made a location for brilliantly painted works of art and murals. The cheerful colors added some luster to an otherwise stark and decrepit downtown. An alley running north and south was named Cotton Alley, and unlike Harlem Alley, it remains on city maps. But all of the buildings along it seemed vacant, some with roofs caved in, or trees growing from behind the walls. The ruins of one night club remained, with a sign reading “The Alley.” This had been a country music club once.
Down on Front Street, almost all of the buildings were in ruins, with vacant lots where buildings had burned in 2008. To the south and west, I found no indication of any other juke joints or clubs, other than the Coconut Lounge, which has been there forever.
Since there was a live blues event in West Memphis that evening called Blues Off Broadway, I decided to end my exploration and start the drive back east on Highway 70 so I could get to the event before it started.