Entry · catalog no. 1060
chitlin circuit
/ /
noun · nationwide ·
✓ Verified
1.
The network of Black-owned and Black-friendly theaters, clubs, and juke joints that booked Black performers when white venues would not — and the touring life built on it.
“Before anybody knew his name, he was doing six nights a week on the chitlin circuit.”
Origin & Attribution
Black America under Jim Crow, roughly the 1930s through the 1960s, named for chitterlings — the soul-food dish that stood in for the whole world these rooms belonged to. Its structure grew out of Sherman Dudley's Black theatrical company in 1911 and, after the white-run TOBA collapsed, the Ferguson Brothers Agency out of Indianapolis. James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Jimi Hendrix all learned their craft on it. The circuit was not a lesser stage — it was the only stage, and it made most of the American music that followed.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide ·
Spoken by
$CHITLIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ 26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Lou Rawls, quoted in the Oakland Tribune — newspaper · 1966
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourcePreston Lauterbach — The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll — book · 2011
submitted
See also