Tampa on the Chitlin' Circuit — Tampa, Florida

The Chitlin' Circuit was a touring route rather than a place. The City of Tampa, quoting National Public Radio, defines it as a group of performance venues, located mostly in the South, that were safe and acceptable places for African American musicians and entertainers to perform during Jim Crow. Tampa was one of the stops, and its clubs, ballroom and boarding houses clustered in the Central Avenue district, the center of Black life in segregated Tampa.

The sources frame the era a little differently. The City of Tampa says Tampa was a stop during the 1920s and 1930s and that the city's musical history thrived through the 1940s. Hillsborough County places performances by B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles and James Brown in the area between the 1930s and 1960s, and says Tampa carried the nickname Harlem of the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

The name comes from food. At a February 2026 panel at the Tampa Bay History Center, described by Hillsborough County, a historian from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County explained that chitterlings, or chitlins, were a pork dish made from intestines, eaten by the Black working class and sometimes served at Black-only establishments. Seasoned and dressed up, the dish was a soul food delicacy, but it was not mainstream.

Naming the musicians' network after what the panel called a second tier food, the County's account continues, reflected the way the segregated circuit was undervalued by people outside the Black community. In Tampa the circuit's venues were mostly Black-owned and Black-run, which is part of why the County's write-up treats them as a chapter of Hillsborough County history rather than simply a list of concerts.

The City of Tampa, drawing on the Tampa Bay Times, names the main rooms. The Cotton Club was owned by the Joyner family. Club Chiffon, Charlie Moon's Pool Hall and Johnny Gray's Bar also booked music, and the Blue Room was owned by Watt Sanderson. The Pyramid Hotel, later renamed the Rogers Hotel, housed the Apollo Ballroom. A Hillsborough County photo caption adds Watts Sanderson's Central Terrace Beer Garden, another Central Avenue establishment for Black patrons in the circuit era.

The Cotton Club had a reputation of its own. Former Florida state senator Arthenia Joyner, whose father ran the club and who calls herself a child of Central Avenue, told the 2026 panel that it was considered the premier place to go. Men were required to wear coats and ties, women dressed sharply, and a no-fighting policy was strictly enforced. People, she said, came dressed and ready to stroll on Central Avenue.

The roster in the City of Tampa's account is long. Acts that played the Central Avenue rooms included B.B. King, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, James Brown, Ruth Brown and Asa Harris, alongside local musicians. The City's list of circuit performers adds Tampa Red, Mahalia Jackson, Count Basie and Etta James.

For some performers Tampa was a starting point rather than a tour date. The City's Perry Harvey Sr. Park page states that Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald came through on the circuit while Ray Charles and Cannonball Adderley started their careers on Central. At the park entrance, James Simon's sculptures of musicians, dancers and a jukebox recall that nightly music, re-creating a scene of dancers listening to a jukebox while live players perform next door.

The rooms left strong memories in Tampa. Hillsborough County's account of the 2026 panel notes that the conversation turned to childhood memories of sneaking into a long-gone Tampa performance hall to hear Ray Charles. Inside the park, the Hey Day wall of Rufus Butler Seder's LIFETILES murals is devoted to the local and national acts that played Central, and the City points readers to From The Scrub to the Twist, a Newspaper in Education publication produced by the Tampa Bay Times, for more on the circuit in Tampa.

Finding a bed was one of the hardest parts of touring under segregation. At the 2026 Tampa Bay History Center panel, an author and filmmaker who had traveled the circuit as a young child with her musician father described the challenges, and sometimes the dangers, Black performers faced in finding lodging, restaurants and basic services on the road, according to Hillsborough County.

In Tampa, the City of Tampa identifies Saunders' Boarding House, later named the Jackson House, as the residence for many traveling Black musicians. The Soulwalk marker for the Jackson House says Moses and Sarah Jackson built it as a home in the late 1890s and converted it to a boarding house, perhaps as early as 1910. It grew after Tampa Union Station opened less than a block away, and through the early 1960s it housed Black railroad workers and visitors at a time when they were barred from white hotels, motels and boarding houses. The Jacksons ran it as a boarding house into the 1990s, and the marker notes it is the only such segregation-era lodging for Black visitors in Tampa still standing.

Jimi Hendrix arrived at the end of this story and from a different direction. Hillsborough County records that before forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966, he spent years touring as a sideman with the Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Ike and Tina Turner, the rhythm and blues road that circuit performers knew well.

When he came to Tampa, it was not to a Central Avenue club. The City of Tampa's Soulwalk marker records two nights, Aug. 18 and Nov. 23, 1968, at Curtis Hixon Hall, the downtown venue whose site is now Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Out of 216 concerts the Experience played from 1967 to 1970, two were in Tampa, and both were near sellouts with more than 7,000 fans each night. The Hillsborough County Historical Advisory Council and the founder of the University of Tampa Guitar Club erected the marker in 2019 at North Ashley Drive and East Zack Street.

The circuit itself returned to public view in February 2026, when WUSF presented Chitlin' Circuit Chronicles at the Tampa Bay History Center, moderated by an NPR television and media critic and funded by the Arts Council of Hillsborough County through its Special Event Partnership Grant program.