As proprietor of Roberts Show Lounge and the 500 Room, Roberts booked the likes of Nat "King" Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton—and responded to segregation and its legacy with ingenuity and class
by James Porter
Walk into Herman Roberts's south-side home, built for his mother in 1965, and the first thing you see are the photographs lining the walls of his living room. He has dozens if not hundreds, including pictures of musicians James Brown, Sarah Vaughan, Jackie Wilson, Dinah Washington, Bill Doggett, and Billy Eckstine; athletes Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali; political and civil-rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Harold Washington, and Jimmy Carter; comedians Dick Gregory, Slappy White, Nipsey Russell, and Stepin Fetchit; and author James Baldwin.…[ Read more ]