Dorothy Blackwell McNeil was a pioneering manager of the Club Zanzibar in Hoboken, New Jersey; it was the "one of the last stops on the Chitlin Circuit" between 1961 and 1981. [Club Zanzibar: Recollections of Dorothy McNeil. Series: Vanishing Hoboken: The Hoboken Oral History Project. Pub: Hoboken Historical Museum and Friends of the Hoboken Public Library. 2006. ii, 1]

In 2006 the Hoboken Oral History Project published a chapbook entitled Recollections of Dorothy McNeil that includes photos of Hoboken, McNeil and her family, Club Zanzibar, and some of the entertainers who performed there.

In 2018 McNeil, along with fellow Hoboken celebrities photographer Dorothea Lange and sportswoman Maria Pepe, was honored by her home town with a large (150’ by 35’) mural on a commercial building's exterior wall. Hoboken Celebrates New Mural on Northern Edge, Celebrating Inspirational Women of the Mile Square City hMAG hNOW Lifestyle Magazine 26 October 2018 21 April 2020 At the mural's unveiling Hoboken's then mayor, Ravi S. Bhalla, called the three women "trailblazers" who "made tremendous impacts on their community and the country.”[ibid] DISTORT, the artist who created the mural, said his intention was to "honor Hoboken's history as a working-class and artistic city" and these women who had contributed to its "character." [ibid]


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