DeLuxe Inn – Historic Henderson

The DeLuxe Inn

In the 1940s, the DeLuxe Inn was a nightclub on Country Club Road south of Henderson that served the area’s Black community. A contemporary advertisement placed it about a mile and a half south of the city, off the highway then marked U.S. 41–60, and promised Saturday and Sunday night music by Don Tate’s Swingsters. During segregation, it was one of the places where Black residents and visitors could gather for an evening out.

The names of some people connected with the inn survive in newspaper notices. In January 1943, Hilda Ball was listed with the DeLuxe Inn among holders of federal slot-machine licenses. A report on a local food-handlers’ school named Hilda Mae Ball, James C. Ball, Lillian Jackson, William Posey, Beatrice Bailey and John T. Cheaney as representatives of the business. The inn also sold tickets for September 1943 races at Dade Park, with Henderson’s share of the proceeds intended to support a mobile canteen and a center for Black servicemen at the old Douglass High School.

In 1944, police accused a teenager of breaking into the inn’s slot machines; in December 1945, a faulty flue damaged the roof. They do not establish when the DeLuxe Inn opened or closed, but together with the advertisement they preserve a glimpse of music, business and community life in Henderson during the 1940s.