Two, possibly three, generations have gone to the movies since I last frequented them here. All were in town other than the drive-in whose exact location I do not remember because I never went to the drive-in, I guess.

But downtown there were five, and all had very singular, very distinctive panache. There was The Saenger downtown, coliseum-like, it seemed, where I could go buy a ticket from my teacher, Mrs. Dease, who supplemented her teaching income on Saturdays at the movie matinees at The Saenger – and where a classmate was killed in the slaughter of the 1953 tornado.

There was the key entry on Clay Street to The Strand that I don’t think I ever experienced, but do remember vividly from pictures. What I do remember was the upstairs side-entry for “colored” folk which gave us the balcony perspective and the prospect of throwing our popcorn down on all the main floor attendees. It was also my favorite site for “double-features” —two pictures for the price of one, and where you could stay and see them over and over ‘til you could recite the dialogue with the actors onscreen. And nobody bothered you or told you to leave. I remember seeing “Sweet Smell of Success” there.

Then, of course, The Joy, with the most advanced air-conditioning of the time. And it was COLD in there. But what I remember most is “The Glass Kitchen” on the corner right down the street from it. It was the power center of Vicksburg in the mid-1950s. All the local politicos met there, often in the morning. And the view from the street was breath-taking, floor-to-ceiling windows, where white people ate after the movie and black people could only look on in envy.

And The Alamo, across from The Valley, that seemed for some reason foreboding, but fronted on Washington Street. It was the site of my least-frequented attendance.

And finally, The Palace, on South Washington Street, the only all-Black theatre in town where serials abounded like “Superman” and “Lash LaRue,” and where my family’s dear friend, Miss Loudell Morrisey, would come with all her cooked treats, pork chops and pies, for an afternoon or evening of leisure. The Palace didn’t sell stuff, you see.

Then, one by one, they all disappeared, replaced by the movies at the mall, more expensive and less inviting as audience behaviors became more boorish and movie choices more limited.

The Saenger and The Joy were the venues for the movie musicals, a genre hardly existing anymore. There we’d see movies like “Showboat” that I remember as the first movie I had ever seen with someone black in it — William Warfield singing “Ol’ Man River.” I can still hear his magnificent range. Marge and Gower Champion, Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, and Ava Gardner. Later, “The King And I”.

I have heard that “Gandhi” was never shown here.

And the least-known great film-maker of our time is a black man named Charles Burnett from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Yolande Robbins is a community correspondent for The Vicksburg Post. You may email her at  yolanderobbins@fastmail.com