L OST N EIGHBORHOODS
FROM THE
ARCHIVES
v
Black History
‘Mayor of NE’ Ran Hot Night Spot
By Paul Knauls Sr.
As Told to Helen Silvis
Of The Skanner News
Article first published 02-23-2005
M
y wife Geneva Fraser Knauls was
6 years old when she came to Van-
couver, Wash., in 1946. Her dad
came out from Minden, La., to work at the
shipyards in Vancouver. The U.S. Army had
depleted the work force, so they recruited
African Americans to come here. Salaries in
the South were very low, and up here they
were much higher — so everyone just
packed up and came to the Northwest.
I was born in a small town in the north-
west corner of Arkansas — Huntington. It
was a coal-mining town and my dad worked
in the coal mine, which eventually killed
him, because he got the black lung. My dad
owed his soul to the company store. Every
time he got paid he’d go by and just give
them the paycheck. I went back there last
summer and its population has grown to 681
— that’s 200 more than it was just four
years ago.
I joined the Air Force in June 1949 and
went to basic training in San Antonio. Then
I was sent to Fairchild Air-Force Base in
Spokane, Wash. I was the first African
American on Fairchild; they sent me to inte-
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grate the base. Being the only Black man on
a base with 4,000 Whites was quite an expe-
rience — it was very enlightening. Later on,
five more African Americans came and we
were in the same barracks.
We volunteered for three years, but the
Korean War was on so they extended us by
a year. I got into a good trade there; I
learned to repair typewriters. If you didn’t
go to college you just had the armed servic-
es back then. Very few African Americans
came out of the Air Force as staff sergeants
in just three years and 9 months, but I was a
good soldier.
I lived in Spokane and worked two jobs
for 12 years because I wanted to be an
entrepreneur. I was saving up my money so
I would be able to go into business. I would
go to work at 8 a.m., repairing typewriters
for the Royal Co. I did that 8 to 5. Then
from 6 to 11 p.m. I would work at the Dav-
enport Hotel as a wine steward in the
Matador dining room.
I was the first African American to work
at the hotel, and I’ll never forget the day
when the hotel manager saw me there in my
uniform. He almost died. He went straight
to the manager of the dining room, Jack
Gordon, and I just knew he was asking him
what I was doing there. But Gordon just
said yes, he’d hired me — and he left it at
that.
Later on he got fired and I was still there
— they all got fired, in fact, and I outlasted
them all. Spokane had a population of about
15,000 at that time, and there were about
2,000 Blacks in the city.
My demeanor is such that I get along with
The Cotton Club today, on North Williams Avenue
everyone, so I can’t say I suffered discrimi-
nation. I bought a house in a White
neighborhood. The neighbors were a little
rough, but they never saw me because I
worked all the time.
On the mountain when I started skiing, I
was the only African American on the
slopes until I took my son, Paul Jr., when he
was 5.
After those 12 years, I decided to come to
Portland and buy a nightclub. My first
choice would have been Seattle, but the rest
of my family had moved out to Seattle —
and they’re very religious so I didn’t want
to open a nightclub near them.
My first nightclub was the Cotton Club at
Page 4 The Portland and Seattle Skanner v BLACK HISTORY EDITION v February 22, 2012
2125 N. Vancouver Ave. It was named after
the famous club in Harlem. In those days,
all the artists trying to make it had to go on
a circuit — it was actually called the
Chitlin’ Circuit — and it doesn’t exist any
more. So we provided that venue for artists
to make their names known. Everyone back
then knew: You haven’t been to Portland if
you haven’t been to the Cotton Club.
All the big celebrities who played the
Schnitzer and the Keller would come by
after their performances and lots of them
would play our stage because it was a safe
place and a nice place to perform.
See MAYOR on page 16