Momnesia

Thanks, Imperial Theater!

Now that The Metro Spirit has been vindicated in the "James Brown Birth Date Scandal of 2006," I'm posting a photograph of one of our favorite supporters: The Imperial Theatre in Augusta, Ga. They trusted our reporting enough to use our dates (1928-2006) when everyone else was using the Associated Press dates (1933-2006).

Thanks, Imperial Theatre!

I can't tell you how many calls we got from individuals berating us for using the wrong dates, accusing us of apathetic reporting. Apathetic reporting happens when writers go by the "generally accepted" information, instead of getting their facts from the primary sources (i.e., court documents, birth certificates, and the horse's mouth). In our case, we had it from the horse's mouth long before anyone else. James Brown told columnist Austin Rhodes several years ago that he had changed his birth date when he was in his early twenties to avoid prison. Making himself five years younger meant that he received a juvenile sentence for criminal activity he committed in downtown Augusta, Ga.