Robert T. Motts
   HOME
*





Robert T. Motts
Robert T. Motts was an African American saloon owner and gambling racket leader, who established and managed Chicago's Pekin Theatre, an epicenter of African-American theater. Motts was an organizer in the Republican Party. He also owned theaters in New York City. Early life Motts was born on June 24, 1861. His father, Thomas Motts, was a coal dealer in Muscatine, Iowa and died during the Civil War.Cook County, Illinois, U.S., Deaths Index, 1878-1922 His mother moved the five children to Washington, Iowa. At the age of 18, Motts left for St. Louis and later Chicago, where he worked odd jobs and then as a coachman for four years. Career After the World's Fair of 1893, he invested in a saloon on 2700 State Street, owned by Snowden and Beasley. Eventually he bought out his business partners' shares and began to develop the Pekin Theatre. A court order in New York enjoined Motts' theaters from having a show that infringed on a similarly named show. Death Motts' health began to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pekin Theatre
Established on June 18, 1905, Chicago’s Pekin Theatre was the first black owned musical and vaudeville stock theatre in the United States. Between 1905 and around 1915, the Pekin Club and its Pekin Theatre served as a training ground and showcase for Black theatrical talent, vaudeville acts, and musical comedies. Additionally, the theatre allowed “African-American theatre artists with an opportunity to master theater craft and contribute significantly to the development of an emerging Black theater tradition”. The Pekin became "renowned for its all-black stock company and school for actors, an orchestra able to play ragtime and opera with equal brilliance, and a repertoire of original musical comedies."Bauman, TThe Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black-Owned Theater Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014. at Project MUSE Robert T Motts, founded the theatre, and brought it to prominence by presenting an all black company, seeking out an affluent interracia ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ... in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park (Chicago), Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago had won the right to host the fair over several other cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American Architecture of the United States, architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image. The layout of the Chicago Columbian E ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Washington, Iowa
Washington is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Iowa, United States. It is part of the Iowa City, Iowa Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,352 at the time of the 2020 census. History Washington was founded in 1839 as the county seat of the newly established Washington County. In 1854 it became the home of a United Presbyterian College, which was dissolved in 1864. As of 2014, the town has celebrated its 175th anniversary, only 5 years behind the oldest city in Iowa, Dubuque, Iowa. In 2016, the Guinness World Book of Records certified the State Theatre in Washington, Iowa, as the "world's oldest continually operating cinema theatre". Geography Washington is located at (41.299941, -91.689175). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. Climate Demographics 2010 census As of the census of 2010, there were 7,266 people, 3,048 households, and 1,861 families living in the city. The population densit ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

People From Chicago
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Illinois Republicans
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockford, as well Springfield, its capital. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area. Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Additionally, the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rive ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

1861 Births
Statistically, this year is considered the end of the whale oil industry and (in replacement) the beginning of the petroleum oil industry. Events January–March * January 1 ** Benito Juárez captures Mexico City. ** The first steam-powered carousel is recorded, in Bolton, England. * January 2 – Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia dies, and is succeeded by Wilhelm I. * January 3 – American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the Union. * January 9 – American Civil War: Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union. * January 10 – American Civil War: Florida secedes from the Union. * January 11 – American Civil War: Alabama secedes from the Union. * January 12 – American Civil War: Major Robert Anderson sends dispatches to Washington. * January 19 – American Civil War: Georgia secedes from the Union. * January 21 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate. * January 26 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]