Shreveport’s Castle Hotel (1920s-1975)

In the heart of Shreveport’s St. Paul’s Bottoms stood the Castle Hotel, an integral part of the city’s history during the segregation era. Established by Cora Snowden in the 1920s, the Castle Hotel served as the city’s only hotel open to Black people during the Jim Crow and segregation eras. The hotel initially provided Black railroad workers in the area a place to stay. Throughout its history, the Castle Hotel hosted renowned figures of the Civil Rights Movement, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and Dr. Joseph Lowery. “It was a quality place,” remarked Claude Underwood, who charted local Black history for decades. “It was initially built as a home but later converted to a hotel. It was first class – with central air, hardwood floors, just like the regular Holiday Inns.” Dr. E.E. Allen, a dentist whose office neighbored the hotel, told the Shreveport Journal, “It was the only decent place Negroes could stay.”

Despite its location in St. Paul’s Bottoms, a district that struggled with crime, the Castle Hotel’s proximity to the Oakland Cemetery insulated it for a while. It remained a haven for the Black community and even underwent expansions in the 1950s and 60s, adding rooms and its iconic canopy. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the old Galilee Baptist Church in 1962, he stayed at the Castle Hotel. Reverend William Hines, Shreveport’s first Black police officer, recounted providing security for Dr. King in an interview with Shondra Houston and her student. “When Martin Luther King came here, I was assigned to offer security for him. I had the privilege of shaking his hand when he first came because myself, Tisdon… We had four Black officers, and we had to go to Evergreen Church and Galilee to offer security for him. He lived down at the Sprague Street Hotel because Blacks didn’t live in the Holiday Inn and all those places. There was a pretty good hotel out on Sprague Street and so that’s where he lived. I gave him security while he was here.”

The hotel later fell onto hard times from which it never recovered, including robberies, shootings and murder. Edgar Jackson and Jackie Gipson pleaded guilty to robbing a hotel clerk at gunpoint in Oct. 1965. Another Castle Hotel clerk was held up by two men in 1974. They were never caught. A Dallas man, Gary Wayne Caesar, was convicted of attempted manslaughter in 1973 when he fired at two police officers responding to a disturbance at the hotel. In 1981 Bruce Ray McKinney suffered gunshot wounds to the neck and chest after an argument in front of the hotel escalated violently. Officers said the shooting was drug related, and the shooter was never captured. The most infamous case involved a Castle Hotel resident who murdered a local jeweler. Glenn Ford and two accomplices robbed Isadore Rozeman and shot him inside of his shop in 1983. The case received notoriety when Ford’s defense failed to block police photographs of his dirty laundry as evidence.

Tragically, a series of fires sealed the hotel’s fate. Five people were injured, one seriously, when a two-alarm fire began in a second-story bedroom in 1975. Multiple fires broke out across the city one night in Dec. 1989 straining the Shreveport Fire Department’s resources. The three-alarm fire heavily damaged the Castle Hotel. The final blow came less than two weeks later when a fire set on the ground floor burned the upper half of the hotel. Due to the increase in crime and damage from the fires owners George and Alice Smith decided to tear down the building. Alice had hoped to place the Castle Hotel into the National Historic Preservation District and make it a shelter for the homeless, but all that remains of the iconic hotel are the front steps and part of the foundation.

This article by Dr. Gary Joiner, Professor of History at LSU Shreveport, also includes the contributions by KTAL/KMSS' Christa Swanson

Archives and Government Documents

1872 Bird’s Eye Map of Shreveport, Louisiana by H. Brosius and O.L. Van Greelen, Northwest Louisiana Archives, Louisiana State University Shreveport.

City of Shreveport Arrest Record book, 1962, Northwest Louisiana Archives, Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Shreveport.

Confederate Defenses of Shreveport and Environs by Confederate Major Richard M. Venable (1864), Northwest Louisiana Archives, Louisiana State University Shreveport.

Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-aps/?fa=location:caddo+parish%7Clocation:shreveport

National Register of Historic Places website for St. Paul’s Bottoms. https://nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/la/caddo/districts.html

National Register of Historic Places website for Oakland Cemetery. https://nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/la/caddo/districts.html

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map book of Shreveport, Louisiana, 1899, Volume 1, plate 17; 1903, Volume 1, plate 17; 1904, Volume 1, plate 17; 1909, Volume 1, plate 20; 1935, Volume 1, plate 24; 1960, Volume 1, plate 24, Northwest Louisiana Archives, Louisiana State University Shreveport

Shreveport City Directory, 1955, 1956. 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1960 (Breuggerhoff's). https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-aps/?fa=location:caddo+parish%7Clocation:shreveport

State of Louisiana historic marker at Little Union Baptist Church, dedicated May 7, 2021.

Technical Report

Joiner, Gary D. Cultural Resources Survey of Ten Acre Lot (TAL) 9, St. Paul’s Bottoms National Register District, City of Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, prepared for Shreveport Green, November 25, 2020.

Books

Branch, Taylor Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Palombo, Bernadette J., Gary D. Joiner, W. Chris Hale, and Cheryl H. White, Wicked Shreveport Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2012.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Simpkins-Savage, Deborah and Dr. C.O. Simpkins. Lest We Forget…The Story of Dr. C.O. Simpkins and the Civil Rights Movement. Shreveport, LA: Published by the Authors, N.D.

Newspapers

Chillicothe [Ohio] Gazette, May 9, 2015

Marshall [Texas] News Messenger, February 23, 1999

Shreveport Journal, April 29, 1959

Shreveport Journal, December 18, 1964

Shreveport Journal, May 26, 1967

Shreveport Journal, May 24, 1968

Shreveport Journal, December 16, 1969

Shreveport Journal, October 17, 1973

Shreveport Journal, December 5, 1974

Shreveport Journal, August 23, 1975

Shreveport Journal, March 30, 1977

Shreveport Journal, August 25, 1980

Shreveport Journal, November t, 1981

Shreveport Journal, November 4, 1988

Shreveport Journal, December 23, 1989

Shreveport Journal, February 29, 1990

The Shreveport Times, April 23, 1955

The Shreveport Times, April 1, 1960

The Shreveport Times, October 14, 1960

The Shreveport Times, May 9, 1967

The Shreveport Times, May 14, 1967

The Shreveport Times, September 4, 1975

The Shreveport Times, July 12, 1976

The Shreveport Times, May 20, 1981

The Shreveport Times, June 11, 1981

The Shreveport Times,” December 3, 1984

The Shreveport Times, November 4, 1988

The Shreveport Times, December 23, 1989

The Shreveport Times, January 5, 1990

The Shreveport Times, February 16, 1990

The Shreveport Times, January 14, 1996

The Shreveport Times, April 25, 2008

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