AL.com • Sept. 12, 2019
The Lincoln Theatre is dark and disheveled right now — a place for flashlights and memories.
The former movie house, which closed about 40 years ago, once was a thriving venue in a vital African-American entertainment district in downtown Bessemer. The smell of popcorn filled the air, especially on weekends, and people lined up on First Avenue North to watch screenings of Westerns, horror movies, adventure films and more.
“You couldn’t hardly walk down the streets,” says Donald Holland, 70, who visited the Lincoln as a teenager. “It was just bustling.”