I believe the year was 1965. My brother, sister and I went to downtown Oakland to the movies. During those days in Oakland young Blacks had to be particularly careful going downtown because the police would, if they felt like it, beat your ass if they felt you were to uppity. Part of being uppity to an Oakland cop was having enough money to go to the Paramount Theater or one of the other better movie houses Like the Fox or the Roxie. But this day was different because of what was playing at the movie that day. What was showing was "Ski Party" starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. And it wasn't that we were so much fans of either of these actors that we would risk crossing, what was at that time a color line in Oakland to see one of their movies. The attraction for us and the large group of Blacks at the movie that day was that James Brown was going to be in the movie!
We sat through the entire bull#%$* movie just to see James perform his hit "Outta Sight". He was actually saved until the very last fifteen minutes of the movie! That was the thing about James Brown. His presence allowed Blacks, in fact MANDATED Blacks to go places normally prohibited from them. Tomorrow I'll go into more of these places he made availible to us.