A digital companion to the biography Becoming Richard Pryor. For more than a half centuryβfrom the lateth century to the midth centuryβ Peoria hummed to the tune of its bad reputation. However one judged this sin city β and reformers looked at it aghast and tried for decades to shut it down β there was widespread agreement on one thing. It was anything but dull. Sitting on the banks of the Illinois River, a convenient way-station between St. Louis and Chicago, Peoria played host to all sorts of travelers across the nineteenth century.
Outside observers were shocked by how openly the vice trade flourished in Peoria. Because it still carried a disreputable odor, the business of vice was open to all comers. Black women in particular achieved unprecedented wealth and power as purveyors of sex in turn-of-the-century Peoria. Both enjoyed relative freedom in a society that otherwise marginalized women of color.
When the United States ratified the Eighteenth Amendment in , Peorians rightly worried that two of their major industries β distilling whisky and running taverns β would suffer dearly. However, the distilleries were re-purposed to making industrial solvents and non-alcoholic food items, and the taverns continued to serve bootlegged liquor. Peoria kept alive its bad reputation. Gangsters continued to run rackets and gambling was widespread. Vice was such an ongoing success that, as World War II approached, some citizens of Peoria once again started organizing against the keepers of brothels, taverns and any sort of immoral activity.
This was the city Marie Pryor reached in the mid s after leaving Decatur, Illinois, with her husband and four teenage children. The world of North Washington Street was a troubled and troubling one. Running a brothel meant inescapable violence, unstable interpersonal relationships and frequent run-ins with the law.
At the same time, the red light district of Peoria could allow for a close-knit sense of community. As in any typical Midwest neighborhood, stoops and porches provided social spaces for friends and family to gather βthey just happened to be the stoops of brothels. The nightclubs and taverns that doubled as gambling houses and drug dens were also social spaces for Peorians to gather, drink, dance and hear the latest jazz.
