St. Petersburg’s Manhattan Casino was re-dedicated Saturday morning, 101 years after its construction, with speeches, a ribbon cutting, live music and a bold new work from the city’s Poet Laureate, Denzel Johnson-Green.
His words captured the relevance and importance of the Manhattan Casino to St. Pete’s African American community during its heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s:
and on hot nights when there is no reprieve…