Rickie Bradley

DAY 125 Rickie Bradley photographed exclusively for the 100 Men Hall People Project (100MHPP). 

My parents used to come to the Hall for the dances. Every blues band played in here and my daddy used to be the bartender when they had dances. When I was in high school they used to let us in for the dances. We couldn’t drink alcohol but we could come. The dances were people of all ages. The dances were on Friday and Saturday nights; there were some good dances in here. I used to think this was awesome that they would let us come in to go to the dances. It was real awesome and we had a good time. Well when the lady bought this Hall after Katrina I thought she was going to tear this down but I’m glad she didn’t because there are so many memories here. My grandfather used to be the janitor at St. Rose – Albert Smith - he lived on Union Street. I used to help him at St. Rose. My mom used to teach at St. Rose, third and fourth grade. When I would get in trouble the nuns would spank me and they’d take me to my mom and she spanked me and when I got home my dad would spank me. When I was in high school we played basketball against these white teams that had the rebel cross on it, and we had the black fist on ours and we never completed a game because we always got in a fight. We had a reunion for our 10th anniversary, we were all together and then we got together for the reunion. We were dancing with each other’s wives and friendly together.  

(Photo by: Gus Bennett | The 100 Men Hall People Project) 

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