The Platters 1959....justice the American way.....

August 10^th – “Move along…move along there! Nothing to see here… move on…”

If only.

Let’s see how good a reporter for the local rag you are. Pick out the important portions of this report and arrange them in the correct order you’d send them back to head office for filing and printing, and remember, it’s a front page lead... your first big scoop.

Setting the scene: -

Timeline 1959 – 10^th August – Cincinnati USofA. Already on a deadline, you’ve wired the front desk and screamed at them to hold the front page. You’ve arrived at the scene of the crime and completed your forensic examination of the witnesses, neighbours, accused and victims and done a detailed inspection of the actual place where the events happened; these are the details your notebook holds and you need to prioritise the content and ship it back asap so as to make the best human interest report possible and make yourself an Ace Reporter. Get it right and this one’s your ticket to the big league; The Times, The New York Times…National Enquirer or OK Magazine… Here’s the notes.

Platters, black vocal harmony pop group, staying in series of rooms at The Sheraton Gibson Hotel. 1000 rooms. Group performing locally. 12 storeys to the magnificent hotel. Men discovered holding an after show party. Palatial surroundings. Many well-to-do hotel patrons shocked and horrified by the police’s findings. Bedrooms and parlours. Alcohol ordered from room service. Hotel re-built in 1922. Hotel Hostess service, uniform of short silk skirts, strapless tops. The hotel features a 350-seat quick-service restaurant. Suggestion of drugs being used by group members. Biggest hotel in the Midwest. Invited party guests included women. 6 high-speed hotel elevators carried people to the various floors rapidly and efficiently. Three white girls (possible minors – only look 19) one black (no age given). A delighted guest wrote of the Kon-Tiki restaurant at the hotel: ‘If it was available we always got our favourite table, under the star-lit sky, near the waterfall. And obviously, as we left it was “See you next week” that we heard behind us. Linda loved the recognition…she thrived on the fact that she was actually being treated with respect; appreciated for the person she was.’ The room where the party was being held contained a concealed double bed, hidden behind French mirrors. In 1939 the hotel played host to the convention for the Southern Homeopathic Medical Association. Girls were scantily clad when found. The hotel’s Roof Garden could hold up to 1500 guests. Four adult black men, The Platters, were charged with aiding and abetting prostitution, lewdness and assignation.

So, how’d you do? Got the scoop? OK, fast-forward…

What, for me, is more interesting is that, in the December of that year, the four members of the group would be acquitted of all charges. Don’t forget we’re still a year from Greensboro’, two years from the Freedom Riders’ and James Meredith, six years from the Neshoba County murders and nine years from the murder of Martin Luther King…and only ten or so years past the point where a black, male jazz trumpet player/singer (Roy Eldridge) and a white, female jazz singer (Anita O’Day) had to have a certain amount of stage space between them when they performed together with Artie Shaw; so, as you can see,  back in’59’ us white folk weren’t quite ready to see these black fellas messin’ with our girls’, which makes the dismissal of the charges against The Platters all the more intriguing.

So, found not guilty and facing no charges? Well, almost. In the racially-divided atmosphere of the time it was a career-damaging incident. The public got their own justice, of course, as a campaign by outraged white citizens led to several major radio markets banning the playing of Platter’s songs and their original popularity in many areas was never the same…that’ll learn y’, boy…