![]() ![]() Instead, she writes, “the crowd rose, thunderous, in unison, when the Beatles took the stage. Determined to go, and saving up enough money to score a seat near the front row, she remembers fearing the atmosphere she would encounter:Īt the time, I didn’t know anything about the group’s press conference announcement refusing to perform for an audience where Black patrons would be forcibly segregated from Whites, probably relegated to the worse seats farthest away from the stage and maybe subjected to a threatening atmosphere if they showed up. Kitty Oliver, who appears in the clip at the top from Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week, was a young Beatles fan who hadn’t heard the news about the show desegregating. ![]() One of the concert’s attendees, historian Dr. The Gator Bowl had to relent and desegregate for the evening’s show. I’d sooner lose our appearance money.” Despite storm damage and evacuations, the 32,000-seat stadium had sold out. When concert promoters pushed back, John Lennon flatly stated in a press conference, “We never play to segregated audiences, and we aren’t going to start now. The rider for the September 11 concert “explicitly cited the band’s refusal to perform in a segregated facility,” writes Kenneth Womack at Salon. ![]()
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