Two women at the Cotton Club

From the exhibition Recent Acquisitions: Alonzo Jordan and Eugene Roquemore, organized by the Texas African American Photography Archive, Dallas, Texas, February 21 through June 7, 1997.
The Cotton Club in Lubbock, Texas, which had no connection to the famed Harlem nightclub, took its name from the region’s principle agricultural crop. The original club opened on November 11, 1938 in a renovated Army Quonset hut and attracted Lubbock “high society” by presenting Jack Teagarden and other touring big bands. In the mid-1940s, club owners began to book country and western acts, and by the 1950s opened the club, usually on Monday nights, for rhythm and blues shows, which were frequented by area African Americans. Roquemore worked part-time as a club photographer, documenting local patrons and “hipsters” until it closed in 1958.