Ike Dixon Jr

Early on in my blog I alluded to the notion that Pennsylvania Avenue was full of black business owners after the white and Jewish population fled to the suburbs. That is false. The stories that were passed down to me never mentioned the fact that 79% of the businesses on the Avenue were white owned, although many of the business were managed and operated by Negros. Mr. Ike Dixon was one of those minority owners. That fact alone would have made my interview with Dixon more important to this study.
At this point in the semester, I don’t think the interview is going happen so I poked around and found out a little information about his personal life and career. My primary goal was to find out what made him different from other Negro operated businesses. Why was he smart enough to own his properties and where did the legacy end. My mother in-law worked on Pennsylvania Avenue while Dixon was active, but unfortunately she was not able to tell me much about him. However she turned me on to an older woman, Mae Scott an 82-year-old who was actually employed at his Comedy Club. We had one phone interview that ran about 5 minutes and this was all the information that I could get out of her about Dixon, the Comedy Club, and her time spent there.
Dwight: What was the Comedy Club like?
Mae: It was a lovely place, a lovely place. Classy and everyone came.
Dwight: Everyone meaning…
Mae: Whites, blacks, your affluent’s
Dwight: What was your role at the establishment?
Mae: I did everything, everything. Cook, clean, booked shows and all. My two years there I did a little of everything.
Dwight: What was Ike Dixon like?
Mae: He was fair, a fair man. Sharp too. Very popular, everybody knew Ike was, ha ha.
Dwight: Did he spend a lot of time at the club?
Mae: No. Big nights only. He’d sit at his table during big nights, but other then that, no, big nights only. He had a lot going on and he use to like to travel.
Dwight: So I know that he was in to politics. Do you know any thing about his political career?
Mae: No, I really don’t follow politics. He was in to a lot of things.




After that we went in circles for a minute or two before I ended the session. After reading several of my posted news clippings I came to the conclusion that Dixon’s intelligence and background separated him from the pack. His dad was also an entrepreneur that experienced success in Baltimore. He passed the legacy down to Ike Jr. and Ike Jr. continued to carry the torch until he fell in love with politics. Mr. Dixon served as a delegate in the 70’s and lost his seat in 1982. According to the Sun, he took the lost like a champ and continued to run his businesses. At this particular time Ike Dixon Jr. was not in the nightclub business. He owned a Bail Bonds and an Insurance company. And just like many other successful African Americans before Dixon, he left the city for the suburbs and closed his businesses with out passing the torch to his son. (Ike Dixon III decided to practice law. His office is located in Towson, MD.).