Black History

  Robert Sengstacke Abbott, ca. 1920 Born on December 24, 1870 to formerly enslaved parents in St. Simons, Georgia, Robert Sengstacke Abbott attended Hampton Institute in Virginia and then went on to graduate from Kent Law School (now Chicago-Kent College of Law in Illinois) in 1899. In May 1905 he started publishing the Chicago Defender. In the early years he personally sold subscriptions to the paper and advertising by going door to door. The paper attacked racial injustice, particularly lynching in the south. The Defender did not use the words “Negro” or “Black” in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as “the Race” and Black men and women as “Race men and Race women.” Many places in the south effectively banned the paper, especially when, during World War I, Abbott actively tried to convince southern Blacks to migrate to the north, about 100,000 of them coming to Chicago. The Defender was passed from person to person, and read aloud in barbershops and churches....

  Beach goers, Highland Beach, Maryland, 1930 Highland Beach, Maryland, the oldest of the major Black resort towns, was founded along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay in 1893 by Charles and Laura Douglass.  Charles Douglass was the son of prominent abolitionist and nineteenth-century civil rights activist Frederick Douglass. Major Charles Douglass, however, was prominent in his own right.  He was a retired officer formerly with the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the first Black regiment established during the American Civil War, and a longtime Treasury Department clerk. Located in Anne Arundel County, 35 miles east of Washington, D.C. and a few miles south of Annapolis, Maryland, Highland Beach became the first African American-owned summer resort community in the United States. In fact it was established because of an act of racial discrimination. In 1890, Major Douglass and his wife were denied entry into a restaurant at The Bay Ridge Resort on Chesapeake Bay b...

THE  TRUE REFORMERS BANK (1888-1910) The Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers in Richmond, Virginia was the first bank owned by African Americans in the United States. It was founded on March 2, 1888 by Reverend William Washington Browne and opened on April 3, 1889. Although the True Reformers bank was the first Black-owned bank chartered in the United States, the Capitol Savings Bank of Washington, D.C. was the first to actually open on October 17, 1888. Born in 1849, Browne was a former Georgia slave who escaped joined the Union Army in the North. After the Civil War, he founded the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers, a Black fraternal organization. In 1887 when Browne visited Charlotte County, Virginia to establish a local branch of the True Reformers, he encountered problems. The branch arranged to keep its savings with a white shopkeeper in the county, but with racial tensions high after an 1887 lynching, the shopkeeper told other white ...

Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (Toronto: John Snow Paternoster Row, 1855) by Samuel Ringgold Ward The American League of Colored Laborers (ALCL) was the first Black American labor union. It was formed in New York City in 1850 as a collective for skilled free craftsmen, and sought to develop agricultural and industrial arts skills among its members, and to encourage African American business. Frederick Douglass helped organize the union in response to the difficulty Black laborers had in joining white unions. On June 13, 1850, the organization assembled for its inaugural meeting in the lecture room of Zion’s church on the corner of Leonard and Church streets. There, the League appointed New York minister Samuel Ringgold Ward as its president, and Henry Bibb of Michigan as its secretary. Douglass agreed to act as vice-president.  Notably all three men were activists know more for their work to abolish slavery than their efforts on behalf of working class peop...

The Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church is a historic church at 4501 S. Vincennes Avenue in the Grand Boulevard community area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1899, the building was originally a synagogue for the Isaiah Temple congregation. Architect Dankmar Adler, who partnered with Louis Sullivan to build many of Chicago's early skyscrapers, designed the Neoclassical building; Adler was the son of a rabbi, and he designed several other synagogues in Chicago. African-American settlement changed the demographics of the neighborhood in the early twentieth century, and the Isaiah Temple congregation sold the building to the Black Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church congregation in 1921. The first gospel choir was formed in the church in 1931, and its leaders Thomas A. Dorsey, Theodore Frye, and Roberta Martin were responsible for popularizing gospel music in Chicago's Black churches. The church's choir helped launch the careers of many prominent gospel musicians, including Mahal...

Wormley Hotel James Wormley 1819–1884 Entrepreneur James Wormley, a pioneering Black nineteenth-century businessman and owner of the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C., opened the capital's first integrated hotel. He was also known for his business acumen and lobbying efforts to secure adequate funding for the first Washington, D.C. public schools for Black Americans. Wormley was born in Washington, D.C. to Pere Leigh and Mary Wormley. Both parents had lived as free people with a wealthy Virginia family prior to moving to Washington, D.C. in 1814. On January 16, 1819, while living in a small, two-room, brick building located on E Street, near Fourteenth Street, northwest, James was born. His father owned and managed a hackney carriage business, which he purchased for $175. Being located in the hotel section of Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue allowed his business to flourish. James, the eldest of five children, acquired his first job there. At the family business James began drivin...

Shelia Ruffin Yacht Charter Soca Caribbean Yacht Charters is a new boutique travel agency founded by a Hampton University and Howard Law School graduate Shelia Ruffin. Growing up on the eastern shore of Virginia, Ruffin always had an affinity for boats. Her grandfather was an avid boater and this allowed her the opportunity to spend her childhood on the water. Ruffin eventually attended law school but failed to pass the bar on the first try. This led her to land a job on the island of St. Thomas where she decided to practice law. While there, Ruffin decided to become a certified travel associate, but she wanted to do more than just be a travel agent. “I googled yacht agencies that were one-stop-shops, but I couldn’t find any,” Ruffin told Travel Noire. “This gave me an idea of what I could do. Plus, I couldn’t find any people of color within the industry. Therefore, I set out to start my own company.” From there, Soca Caribbean Yacht Charters (SCYC) was born. “We offer a door to dock-t...

Jones Bar-B-Q Diner is a barbecue joint in Marianna, Arkansas, US, that has been open since at least the 1910s. According to business guide Black Business, it is believed to be the country's oldest black-owned restaurant. In 2012 it was recognized by the James Beard Foundation as an "American Classic". The smoking business was first started by the current owner's grandfather's uncle, Joe. The exact year it opened is disputed; Garden & Gun specified 1910 when naming it to their Barbecue Bucket List. The Beard Foundation said it had been open "since at least the 1910s." According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, it "is perhaps the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Arkansas, as well as perhaps the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the South owned by a black family." According to Oxford American, it is "the oldest black-owned restaurant in the South, and, perhaps, one of the oldest family-owned black restaurants in the ...

John Harold Johnson (January 19, 1918 – August 8, 2005 was an American businessman and publisher. Johnson was the founder in 1942 of the Johnson Publishing Company, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Johnson's company, with its Ebony (1945) and Jet (1951) magazines, was among the most influential African-American business in media in the second half of the twentieth century.In 1982, Johnson became the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400. In 1987, Johnson was named Black Enterprise Entrepreneur of the year.in 1996, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Johnson was born in Arkansas City, Arkansas. His family moved to Chicago at time the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, during the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South. Johnson endured much teasing and taunting at his high school for his ragged clothes and country ways, as he encountered something he never knew existed: middle-class blacks. Johnson later transferred to DuSable High School for h...

Remembering Jack Johnson, the First Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion The Texas-born fighter faced down his opponents and took down the ‘Great White Hope’ movement that was designed to end his reign, but his legacy reaches beyond the sport. In his heyday as heavyweight champion, which began in 1908 and ended in 1915, it wasn’t enough for promoters to find opponents for Jack Johnson. They needed white ones. The search for the “Great White Hope,” a movement started by noted author Jack London, who found Johnson’s position as heavyweight champ insufferable, began in 1910, with Jim Jeffries, the first of a string of white challengers to challenge Johnson for his title. It wasn’t until 1915, when Jess Willard, in the 26th round of a scheduled 45-round fight, that one finally succeeded. Born in Galveston, Texas, the son of former slaves, Johnson was a dock worker in his teenage years. He left home at 16, making it as far as New York, surviving by working as a janitor or stable boy. A shop ow...

13 Black-owned founded brands that transformed the alcohol market Alcohol has been around for a long time. How long? While the first "fermented drink" can be traced back to 7000 BCE, the first known beer recipe was etched into clay tablets by Black Sumerian women around 1800 BCE. Created as a hymn to Ninkasi—the Sumerian goddess of alcohol—this recipe reached modern hands in 1991 after Anchor Brewing Company brewed up a batch based on a translation by Miguel Civil, a Professor of Sumerology at the University of Chicago. The beer didn't take off commercially—mostly because it is meant to be consumed right away—but the takeaway here is that Black culture has been significant to the alcohol business for as long as we can remember. In this article, we're taking a look at some of the Black-owned and founded brands in the alcohol beverage industry to celebrate these crafters and their work in pushing the industry to new heights. Maison Noir Wines This double-sided project t...

Arthur Smith was labeled as the first African American Jewelry Designer during the mid-20th century. Showing artistic talent at a young age, Arthur received a scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. After graduating in 1940, he enrolled in a jewelry-makin Attending class at NYU where he learned the basic technique of jewelry making. It wasn’t until he met Winifred Mason, that he began to focus and truly develop his true artistic skills. He begin applying the techniques he learned to his own personal creations. He soon opened his own shop in Greenwich Village in 1946, later relocating to 140 West Fourth Street which proved to be a boost to his career. It allowed him to market his products to higher-end shoppers, causing his creations to be in high demand. Arthur was able to establish business relationships with Bloomingdale’s and other stores around the U.S. He also received coverage in Vogue, Harper’s Bazzar and he was mentioned in The New Yorker. “A piece o...

Sarah Rector Sarah Rector received international attention at the age of eleven when The Kansas City Star in 1913 publicized the headline, “Millions to a Black Girl.” From that moment Rector’s life became a cauldron of misinformation, legal and financial maneuvering, and public speculation. Rector was born to Joseph and Rose Rector on March 3, 1902, in a two-room cabin near Twine, Oklahoma on Muscogee Creek Indian allotment land.  Both Joseph and Rose had enslaved Creek ancestry, and both of their fathers fought with the Union Army during the Civil War. When Oklahoma statehood became imminent in 1907, the Dawes Allotment Act divided Creek lands among the Creeks and their former slaves with a termination date of 1906.  Rector’s parents, Sarah Rector herself, her brother, Joe, Jr., and sister Rebecca all received land. Lands granted to former slaves were usually the rocky lands of poorer agricultural quality. Rector’s allotment of 160 acres was valued at $556.50. Primarily to ge...

Mr. & Mrs. Junius George Groves Junius George Groves, the son of Martin and Mary Anderson Groves, was born in slavery in Green County, Kentucky. After emancipation, he received public schooling three months out of the year but taught himself to read, write, and understand mathematics. As a freedman with just 90 cents to his name, Groves ventured to Edwardsville, Kansas, during the Exodus of 1879, where he married Matilda E. Stewart a year later. The couple had 14 children, 12 of whom survived into adulthood. After working as a sharecropper, Groves began purchasing farmland in 1884; by 1905, his holdings included about 500 acres. He and Matilda grew the farm and built a 22-room mansion on the property. Groves purchased and shipped produce—‌most famously potatoes—‌throughout North America. His other financial ventures included owning and operating a general goods store in Edwardsville, stock in mines in Indian Territory and New Mexico, and stock in Kansas banks; he also founded or co...

Black Folklore The Downfall Of Allensworth: How Racism And Lies Destroyed A Black Town In California Almost 70 miles south of Fresno, California, tucked away in the small county of Tulare is a tiny state park. Although it may not look like much, it was once a true testament to Black American resilience. How do you get a whole race of people to uplift themselves after years of persecution? This was the very question Colonel Allen Allensworth asked himself before he embarked on one of the most important journeys in African American history–to build the first Black self-sufficient town in California. Sadly, that journey would never get to live up to its full potential. Like so many other symbols of Black excellence in the early 1900s, Allensworth’s dream would be poisoned by racism’s venomous sting. Colonel Allensworth was an American hero in every sense of the word and his story doesn’t get told nearly enough. But this is Black Folklore, where we dive into America’s past to tell lesser-k...