West End Park

The Chitlin' Circuit is older than its name. Black performers had worked the white-owned Theatre Owners Booking Association houses, a chain formed in 1921 that collapsed in 1930, and the loose network of venues that followed kept them employed through segregation into the 1960s. The earliest known use of the term itself is a 1966 Oakland newspaper quoting Lou Rawls. Smithville's park is one of the Texas stops listed alongside Austin's Victory Grill, Waco's Walker's Auditorium, Beaumont's Raven Club and the One Acre Club in Taylor. The marker stands about 200 yards east of the park.

What the plaque says

West End Park West End Park in Smithville, located 200 yards west, was one of the last Texas stops on the "Chitlin' Circuit," a string of performance venues in the south that served as safe and accepting spaces for African American performers. "Chitlin' Circuit" refers to the Chitlins and soul food dishes that clubs often sold, although the clubs were also referred to as the One-Nighter Circuit or the Theatrical Circuit. West End Park was owned by I.T. Harper, a former pitcher for the Kansas City monarchs in the Negro Leagues, and his wife, Sis. In the racially segregated Jim Crow south, this was an important venue from the early 1900s until the 1960s for many African American musicians excluded from white venues. The surrounding park was a location for many events and gatherings in the African American community, the majority of whom mainly lived on the south side of the railroad tracks in Smithville. The baseball field at the park was used for Negro Leagues Baseball, and long-time residents recall watching legendary Negro Leagues players such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in exhibition games against the Smithville team. When not arranged as a baseball field, local families used West End Park as gathering places for church picnics, holiday celebrations, and family reunions for the African American community. As the Chitlin' Circuit was a significant part of many notable performers' careers, renowned jazz and blues artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Etta James, Joe Tex, T-Bone Walker, Roosevelt Thomas Williams (aka. The "Grey Ghost"), and Hannibal Lokumbe (Marvin Peterson) played at the local venue. In 2009, the governor's office issued a proclamation recognizing West End Park's significance to Bastrop County and Texas. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 10 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 13 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 19 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 24 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.

More markers nearby

• Smithville — 0.7 mi
• Stephen Scallorn — 6.3 mi
• Young School House and Cemetery — 6.5 mi
• Site of Wood's Fort — 7.6 mi