Rhythm Night Club Memorial

Seven hundred and forty-six people, likely. That's the figure the Wikipedia article arrives at by adding ticket sales, passes, and the band. The Rhythm Night Club on St. Catherine Street — a converted blacksmith shop, once a church, then a dance hall leased by a social group called the Money Wasters — recorded 577 paid admissions and 150 passes on April 23, 1940. Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians, an orchestra from Chicago, was on stage. The building was wood frame with corrugated steel siding, 120 feet by 38 feet. Twenty-one of twenty-four windows had been boarded shut to keep people from watching or listening without paying. One exit: a door that opened inward into a foyer with another set of doors that also opened inward. Around 11:00 p.m., a fire started near the main entrance. Spanish moss draped over the rafters as decoration — sprayed with FLIT, a petroleum-based insecticide — caught quickly. Under dry conditions, flammable methane gas was generated from the moss. The moss fell burning from the ceiling, blocking the exit and igniting clothing and hair. The corrugated steel walls held heat like an oven. When water from fire hoses hit the metal siding, it created steam that scalded victims. Most of the dead were found suffocated by smoke or crushed, stacked shoulder-high near the rear of the building by the bandstand. Two hundred nine people died. The fourth deadliest assembly and club fire in U.S. history. The deadliest fire in Mississippi history. Bandleader Walter Barnes led his band in playing "Marie" as the fire raged; he and nine members of his orchestra died. The average age of attendees was between fifteen and twenty-five. Most were Black. The fire received minimal national press because the victims were Black. The memorial marker stands on St. Catherine Street, free and always accessible. The site itself is an empty grassy plot. Natchez has witnessed mass death before: on November 29, 1729, Natchez Indians killed 229 French colonists — the largest death toll by an Indian attack in Mississippi's history. The Rhythm Night Club fire killed 209 in a single night, in a building with boarded windows and inward-opening doors. The marker exists because more than fifteen thousand people attended Walter Barnes's funeral, because the Natchez Social and Civic Club of Chicago raised money and brought a $350 memorial tablet to the city in September 1940, and because five thousand people attended the dedication service at Zion Chapel AME church and a local park. What was built afterward: building codes requiring doors to open outward, occupancy limits, fire protection systems. What endures: the empty lot, the marker, and the fact that it happened here.