Events they prevented Rachel Dangermond from the regular opening of 100 Men Hall, where Ray Charles, BB King and Etta James once played, in the beach town of Bay St. Louis, Miss., for the past six years: Flood. Typhon. Pandemic. Typhon. Tornado.
“It's a lot of spit and glue,” Dangermond says. “Spaces are difficult.”
Dangermond, a 65-year-old journalist, spent that time turning the 400-seat Black History landmark in a one-story house with blue front steps into a community center. On the hall schedule this year: a writers' group on Saturday morning. a drag brunch; “Cigars under the stars”; a performance by bluesman Cedric Burnside. Two warring harmonicas known as Harps On Fire. and a festival for the late New Orleans pianist James Booker. Dangermond's goal is to “keep this juke open with its historical value and continue to preserve its sacred act of playing music.” And she adds: “I am no longer the owner. I'm more the facilitator of the history of this place.”
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The 100 Men Hall didn't start out as a hall at all — it began in 1894 as an African-American cooperative in which 12 founding members pledged to help each other pay for medical and burial expenses. As it grew, the club evolved into the Hundred Members Debating Benevolent Association (DBA), a community support group during Jim Crow and segregation, which, according to Scott Barrettaprofessor of sociology at the University of Mississippi, “helped lift people up in the economy and provide them with social benefits and dignity where they were otherwise persecuted.”
In 1922, the DBA built the hall as a meeting place – a weathered wooden gable bearing the words “100 MEN DBA”, recreated from the original, sits atop the building – and it soon evolved into a venue for live events. In the beginning, these were plays, bridal showers, Mardi Gras balls and drag shows. By the 1930s, the club had become a stop on the Chitlin Circuit, a network of American clubs catering to black audiences that helped star acts from Billie Holiday to the Jackson 5. “It's like going back in time,” he says. James Keating, a retired physician who publishes the newsletter for the Hancock County Historical Society, of the hall. “It looks like a place where music is played.”
In 2018, Dangermond was “in the mood” when it found itself in Bay St. Louis, about an hour's drive from New Orleans and a kind of informal suburb with a population of about 10,000. She had just lost two promising job prospects, including one as a representative for the New Orleans police chief, and was staying with a friend when someone texted her that 100 Men Hall was available for sale — for $389,000, according to Zillow — including an attached apartment built by a previous owner. (The property's value today is nearly $670,000.)
In disbelief, Dangermond and her adopted son, then 9, showed up in bathing suits (they had been swimming) on the property. “It was just a whim,” Dangermond recalls. “I had this kind of divine clarity. I passed the door. There was nothing on the walls. It was just an atmosphere.
“The next thing I know, I was closing.”
Then came the unpleasant surprises. First was a notice that the State of Mississippi had revoked the club's nonprofit status, and Dangermond had to sign a consent agreement to resurrect it and pay a fine. He had to wait out the bureaucratic process for non-profit status, because without it the club couldn't sell booze at public events. Until he could resolve the issue, he held political fundraisers and other private events in the hall. This set the table for public concerts by Burnside, the North Mississippi guitarist, drummer and grandson of the late blues hero RL Burnside. We say, “Okay, that's going to be great!” and we build, build, build,” says Dangermond. “We're getting to the middle of the year and Hurricane Barry has worn us out. Before that, the storm began to flood the neighborhood. I had an F-150 parked in the driveway and I looked out and the water was up to the driver's side window. Musicians can't get here.”
Dangermond and the venue “lost a lot of money,” he says, but rebounded and were booked to play every month of 2020 — until the pandemic shut down live music. Like many venues, the hall was paired with outdoor, covered concerts, but then came Hurricane Zeta and a matching tornado that tore the roof off the building, causing $150,000 in damage. Dangermond had sold her home in New Orleans to pay for the club, then depleted her opening savings, so she relied on insurance and donations to pay for repairs.
“It was like joy and pain,” he says.
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Today, the 100 Men Hall holds events almost daily and rests. Blues is a staple and almost an automatic sell-out no matter who's playing, even as the genre struggles to support clubs across the United States. Bay St. Louis natives stop Dangermond at the grocery store and regale her with stories of sneaking in as a child to hear Sam Cooke play. As a ninth grader in 1967, Maurice Singleton learned the swing-out dance from his sister and performed it during a show by soul singer Roscoe Robinson. “It was the first time I'd been in a building that was dimly lit for a performance,” recalls Singleton, a 71-year-old writer and teacher who lives in the city.
Burnside, who held an outdoor event at the hall shortly after the tornado literally blew the roof off in 2020, set up his band under a large tree near the “tin house,” a distinctive structure that contains a mural of founder Etta James of Hancock County NAACP President Albert Fairconnetue and others. “It makes me feel like a real juke. It was a specific energy for this building,” says Burnside, by phone from a tour stop in Athens, Ga. “It reminded me of a big house party. All [comes] together and drink some moonshine, eat some food and listen to some great music.”
The hall closed in 1982 after the dissolution of the Hundred Members Debating Benevolent Association and the building ended up in the hands of the Disabled Vets of America. In 2005, a couple ran it as an art gallery. Later, a musician and his wife remodeled the DBA and received a state grant to renovate the building, leading to its designation as a state historic landmark in 2011. Dangermond still can't express the quality of 100 Men Hall that led her to purchase the part. But, he says, “Musicians want to play here and they hear these voices on the walls. They get up on stage and feel it.”
