Text by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.

National Geographic April 1999

http://www.ngtraveler.com/ngm/9904/fngm/index.html

Excerpt:

Paralleling the growth of music in Chicago was the growth of enterprise in communities like Bronzeville, a sprawling, energetic South Side neighborhood that ran from 26th Street south for some 40 blocks. Today the blues hangs over much of the area, but not much music is heard. It’s late afternoon, and I’m sitting with Gerri Oliver at the bar of the Palm Tavern on 47th. "My family’s dream was for me to be a funeral director," says Gerri, another Mississippian who moved to Chicago in the 1940s. "I just wanted to put my son through school." She didn’t pursue her family’s wish but worked variously as a check cashier, hairdresser, and manicurist. Then in 1956 she and her husband bought the Palm.

With its gloved waiters and starched white tablecloths the Palm was soon the place for local and visiting musicians to come for food and drink. Gerri ticks off a long list that includes Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and the Temptations. "To think I knew all of these people who are now famous," she says. "I took them for granted."

As we talk, one or two regulars drift in for a drink. Most of the clubs and theaters that made Bronzeville so vibrant have closed, and the Palm doesn’t offer dinner anymore. "Those drug dealers told me if I don’t let them sell from here, I wasn’t going to get any business. I don’t sell crack, and I sure ain’t making money off martinis in here," Gerri sighs. But this is the life she knows, and so she’s holding on.