Deep Deuce
Deep Deuce historic neighborhood is a district in Downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It consists mostly of low-rise apartment buildings (built primarily in the 2000s) and formerly vacant mixed-use buildings and shops.
Located a few blocks north of Bricktown and centered on NE 2nd Street, Deep Deuce was the largest African-American downtown neighborhood in Oklahoma City in the 1940s and 1950s, and was a regional center of jazz music and black culture and commerce. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, much of the city's African-American community dispersed to other areas within Oklahoma City.[1] Much of the neighborhood was bulldozed to make way for I-235 in the 1960s, but the current downtown boom and renaissance has made the area attractive to developers once again. As a result, little of the neighborhood's original character remains today. As of March 2014, The Oklahoman reported that the area had only one remaining African-American owned business.[2]
African-American writer Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, wrote a poem in tribute to the Deep Deuce (incidentally, he held a great passion for it as it housed his first job) in 1953. The poem is entitled "Deep Second" and can be found in the posthumous book Trading Twelves.
References
- ↑ Dozier, Ray, "New life for Deep Deuce," The Journal Record, December 29, 2000.
- ↑ Steve Lackmeyer, "Amidst Deep Deuce revival, fears of a lost history emerge", The Oklahoman, March 3, 2014.