Star Light
Starlight Club was listed in the Green Book in 1952 as “Star Light—227 N. Gladden Street” under “Night Clubs” in Washington.1
The Starlight Club (also Star Light Club) was owned and operated by Washington, NC entrepreneur and Hyde County native Pomp Credle (1904-1979). The club was incorporated in 1950 as “The Starlight Club, Inc.” by Credle, Matthew Bennett, Preston Hardy, and others. Credle was enumerated in the census as a cafe manager prior to operating the club.2
The Starlight Club was advertised with the slogan “Wise Men . . . Follow the Star” in 1951. The club was located at 227 N. Gladden Street in “Little Harlem,” a Black business district that stretched from Second to Sixth Streets along Gladden Street. The business district got its name from the many business owners who moved to the area from New York City and the neighborhood’s role in the Chitlin’ Circuit.3
The Starlight Club closed by 1957.4
Essay by Brandie K. Ragghianti, 2022
Notes
1. Victor Green, 1952 Green Book, 55.
2. Pomp [none] Credle, September 13, 1094, Beaufort, Washington County, North Carolina, U.S. World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947, accessed from www.ancestry.com; Pomp Credle, January 25, 1979, Washington, Beaufort County, North Carolina, U.S. Death Indexes, 1908-2004, accessed from www.ancestry.com; “New Corporations,” The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), September 20, 1950, digital p. 22, accessed from www.newspapers.com; 1950 United States Federal Census, Washington, Beaufort County, North Carolina, digital image s.v. “Pomp Credle,” accessed from www.ancestry.com.
3. “Wise Men . . .” (ad), The Carolinian (Raleigh, NC), July 21, 1951, 2, accessed from https://newspapers.digitalnc.org; Matt Debnam, “Washington locales appeared in the Green Book,” Washington Daily News, February 26, 2019, accessed from https://www.thewashingtondailynews.com/2019/02/26/washington-locales-ap….
4. Hill’s 1957 Washington, NC City Directory.