KOLR-TV in Springfield, Missouri, recently produced a segment about the amazing history of Alberta’s Hotel, an establishment in that Route 66 city that catered to African Americans during the Jim Crow era.
Alberta’s Hotel was listed in the annual Negro Motorist Green Book travel guide. Both perished during the mid-1960s, about the time the United States approved anti-discrimination laws.
The television station talked to Springfield resident Lyle Foster about Alberta’s Hotel:
According to Foster, Miss Alberta Ellis purchased a former segregated hospital building for $10,000 and transformed it into a rooming house.
The rooming house included a large dining room, a rumpus room, a beauty salon, a barbershop, and a snack bar.
“This was actually part of a black business district,” said Foster. “Believe it or not, a lot of famous musicians and guests would actually stay at Miss Alberta’s Hotel as they were performing across the country.”
Here is the full video segment, which contains several vintage images of the hotel.
KMSU radio published more about the hotel nearly two years ago:
Her grandson, Irv Logan, who lived and worked at the hotel for a time, remembers interacting with the guests.
“That was the part that I enjoyed the most, y’know, because you never knew who was going to come. And I had the opportunity to meet people then as a youth that I had no idea who they were coming from out of town or how important they were, you know, any of that. I just knew that they were interesting,” said Logan. […]
Irv Logan and his sisters Elizabeth and Jeannie recently donated their collection of family photos and other artifacts from the hotel to the university.
She shows me a hotel room registry—it includes the names of the Harlem Globe Trotters.
Logan always found it exciting when famous guests would stay at Alberta’s.
“I can remember Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers coming there and that was one of the first times that I had experienced anyone close to my age who was in the entertainment industry. And they were from the East coast and so they were totally different than, y’know, the people I had been exposed to,” he said.
Ellis also owned the Crystal Palace Night Club and a rural retreat known as The Farm, the latter which was 10 miles west of Springfield on Route 66.
Ellis told Logan she knew her business was doomed once federal integration laws were passed during the 1960s.
“And I remember Alberta sitting with me when it was all said and done and she said, ‘You know, you’re doing it for the right reason, but it’s going to cost you personally.’ I says, ‘What do you mean?’ She says, ‘All that we work for here will be gone, because when integration comes and people are able to go wherever they want to go and spend their money wherever they want to spend their money, they’ll go to new places, different places, y’know. And, so, it’ll affect all of this.’ And it hadn’t occurred to me, y’know, as a youth, that in fact, that’s exactly what happened. But it didn’t just happen to Alberta and her business. It happened all across the country,” said Logan.
Logan’s recollections about Ellis and Route 66 in the Springfield area were recorded by an archivist for Missouri State University:
Foster wants a historic marker placed at the site of Alberta’s Hotel, which was on North Benton Avenue just south of Chestnut Expressway (aka Route 66).
A place such as Alberta’s had to be a welcome sight for many Black travelers during the Jim Crow days. The Missouri Ozarks region was notorious for its lack of facilities for African Americans.
The definitive account of the Negro Motorist Green Book and the businesses it listed is Candacy Taylor’s book, “Overground Railroad” (Amazon link). Our review of the book is here.
(Image of Alberta’s Hotel in Springfield, Missouri, via Special Collections and Archives, Missouri State University)