Bris Collins<\/a> came to Peoria\u2019s North Washington area around the same time as the Pryors and became a lifelong friend to the family. Over the years he had many legitimate and illegitimate businesses in town: he ran clubs, a motel and a barbeque joint at the same time that he had his hand in narcotics, gambling, and counterfeit operations. His less legal enterprises landed him in prison at times, but he remained a fixture in the underground entrepreneurial set of black Peoria.<\/p>\nCollins Corner itself\u2014the club that was the successor to the bars that Collins had earlier operated on the 400 block of North Washington Street\u2014featured a mix of jazz combos and R&B bands, and was known to be a rowdy place, with barroom brawls that, according to house pianist Jimmy Binkley, were cinematic in scope. Designed as a watering hole for Peoria’s black community, it was less open to white patrons than Harold’s Club: whites who strolled into the club were likely to be meet a discouraging look.<\/p>\n
It’s unclear how long Collins Corner lived as a club.\u00a0Though it opened\u00a0around early 1962, it was shuttered about a year later, due to some reported financial improprieties: Richard Pryor took the closing of the club as a spur to hit the road as a comedian. But it seems to have revived itself and remained at North Washington through the mid-1960s at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Collins Corner was a club of, by, and for the black community, operated by one of the most legendary and complicated figures in Peoria’s black underworld. Bris Collins came to Peoria\u2019s North Washington […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":59,"menu_order":50,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"categories-test.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-719","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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