User:Zebra2021/Black Wall Street Draft

This is text from current entry on Black wall street.....

During a time period when disenfranchising Blacks and openly violating their rights was common, the Black populations of Durham were making strides in business that challenged the legitimacy of white supremacy.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]’ Black-owned business in Durham can be traced back to the efforts of two African-American entrepreneurs: John Merrick and Charles Spaulding.[citation needed][dubious – discuss] This duo provided the leadership and initiative necessary for the beginnings of Black Wall Street.

Under "location"........

Current text

Black Wall Street was a four-block district on Parrish Street nicknamed in reference to the district of New York City. Although the term "Black Wall Street" did not become prevalent until the late fifties, its identity as an economic powerhouse for blacks was apparent since the late 1800s. Numerous other cities in the south had similar black economic centers, including Tulsa. Parrish Street bordered the Hayti community, Durham's main African-American residential region. The two areas together served as the center of black life in Durham.

My text-

Early 20th century sources indicate that Durham's Black business district was concentrated on one block of W. Parrish Streets between Corcoran and N. Mangum. Booker T. Washington's 1911 article titled "The City of Negro Enterprises" featured a view of W. Parrish street looking towards N. Mangum. Oliver Quick's illustration of the "Colored Business District" gives a view of the street in 1922 looking west toward Corcoran Street. The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce took a panorama photograph of the Parrish Street business district in 1926. The Street Directory of the 1922 City Directory indicates very clearly that Black professionals and proprietors gravitated to this one block. As the Durham Recorder put it, "With the opening up of a whole block of stores, including the Merchants' [sic] & Farmers' Bank, on Parrish Street, Durham leads all other Carolina towns with its colored industries."

The Parrish Street business block sat in the midst of Downtown Durham, just a block off Main Street. It was an island of Black commerce roughly equidistant from historically--Black neighborhoods like the Hayti neighborhood at the southeastern edge of the city's original borders and the community of Walltown and the West End on the western side of downtown. Durham, like Charlotte, had changed from a city where black and white residents lived in relative proximity to one another in the 1880s to a city where residential areas had been sorted out by race. A 1937 Public Works map captures the way that segregation and redlining practices led to the creation of distinctly Black communities of Crest Street, Lyon Park, Walltown, the East End, West End, and Hayti (pronounced Hay-tie.

As the principal businesses on Parrish Street continued to thrive, the Black press celebrated the successes of the North Carolina Mutual enterprise. The Pittsburgh Courier introduced the term "Wall Street of Black America" in the 1924 story "Parrish street in Durham called the "Wall Street of Negro America." Again, in the early 1940s, the paper called attention to the "Black Wall Street" moniker.( 1940 article--need citation)

The descriptor stuck and now Parrish Street still has the flagship Mechanics and Farmers Bank on the ground floor of the old North Carolina Mutual headquarters at 116 Parrish St. The stately six-story building, designed by the Durham architectural firm of Rose and Rose, has been designated a National Historic Landmark while the "Black Wall Street” historic marker draws attention to the historic significance of Parrish Street as a remarkable hub of Black enterprise.

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Inaccuracies in first sentence --- not 4 blocks, but one block (the street is 4 blocks long but sources show black enterprise is on one block

Black Wall St /Pittsburgh Courier appears to have introduced the term as early as. 1924

Pittsburgh Courier writes "black `Wall Street'" in caption for photograph May 4, 1940 Title of Photo. --"These N.C. Tycoons gauge the pulse of Negro business..."

Black Wall Street district did not exist in late 1800s ---it's really 1908-1909 and beyond

I will not argue this point as the northern border of Hayti may have been closer than I realize

The 1913 Sanborn Fire Insurance map does not support that "Parrish St bordered the Hayti community." The distance between 116 W. Parrish Street, the site of the 1922 headquarters of NC Mutual and the St. Joseph AME Church on Fayetteville in Hayti is 2.1 miles according to Google maps or roughly 45 minute walk.

My text

Late 19th-Century Black Entrepreneurship

Fifteen years after the end of the Civil War, Durham experienced a surge in industrialization. The market for smoking tobacco continued to increase and the town’s significant tobacco manufacturers---W.T. Blackwell, W. Duke & Sons and their competitors attracted workers seeking wage employment. The manufacturers’ need for large fire-proof warehouses to dry and store their tobacco meant that local brick producers had a ready-made market for their product. The Fitzgerald brothers—Robert and Richard had been born to free parents in Delaware before the Civil War. (Pauli Murray describes their mother Sarah Ann as a fierce white “blue eyed” rosey-cheeked woman and her husband Charles as a “Free Person of Color.” At twenty-five, Robert migrated south to educate the emancipated at a school in Hillsborough. Richard soon came to North Carolina and established a brick yard on the west side of Durham, just outside the town’s limits.  Richard’s success as a brick maker meant that he was soon selling bricks to  tobacco manufacturers, the Central Prison in Raleigh and Trinity College (now Duke University) for its main administration building.   With his profits from brickmaking, Richard invested in creating Durham’s first drug store for the Black community. His niece, Pauline Fitzgerald celebrated it in a poem titled  ““An Ode to the First Colored Drug Store in Durham, North Carolina”.

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/hueism.php?x=printedwork&id=238

Other black entrepreneurs sought opportunity in Durham in the 1880s. John Merrick (1859-1919) moved to Durham where he bought a half interest in John Wright's barber shop in the main business district of Durham. There he served a clientele that included white industrialist Washington Duke, the republican tobacco manufacturer and philanthropist. Merrick’s biographer R. McCants Andrews, a black lawyer and colleague, described the relationship between Merrick, Duke, and the other Durham white capitalists: “The young business men of the town. . .the groups that have made Durham the splendid city it is,--were not only customers of John Merrick, but his friends. McCants Andrews describes Merrick as “the personal barber of Washington Duke” and says that Merrick traveled with the elder Duke and benefited from his guidance in business matters.

[say something about how early 20th c Black intellectuals focused attention on the relationship betweeen black and white citizens in Durham...B T Washington and WEB DuBois attributed the growth of Black entrepreneurship to both Black energy and initiative and a different attitude among white elites in Durham than in other southern communities   WEB DuBois described attitude of great mass of whites as "Hands off--give them a chance--don't interfere" attitude while BTW  noted that for many Black tradesmen white customers were some of the most substantial customers. Jean Anderson on Merrick and white connections---significance Merrick's experience of Royal Knights of King David, a black fraternal organization "was probably a more direct influence" on his decision to create a life insurance company to serve the Black community. Kenzer and multiracial members of the black community

North Carolina Mutual and the Development of West Parrish Street

John Merrick (1859-1919) founded the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Society in 1898 with investors including Dr. Aaron Moore (1863-1923), William Gaston. Pearson (1859-1940), D. T. Watson, James E. Shepard (1875-1947), E.A. Johnson (Shaw University Law School Dean) and P.W. Dawkins. At its incorporation, T.O Fuller and N.C. Bruce became incorporators while Dawkins' name was removed. The company lost money, and investors, in its first year. Merrick reorganized a year later---he and Dr. Moore were principals, Moore's younger cousin C.C. Spaulding served as office manager.

In 1905, John Merrick, C.C. Spaulding and Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore purchased property on W. Parrish Street to build a headquarters for their NC Mutual Life Insurance Company. A few years later, in 1907,  Richard Fitzgerald successfully created a Board of Directors to develop a black-owned bank. In 1907, the NC General Assembly issued an Act which allowed Fitzgerald, Merrick, CC Spaulding, Dr. Moore and several other partners the ability to operate their bank as  Mechanics and Farmers Bank. The bank opened on W. Parrish Street in 1909 and soon other black-owned businesses settled on W. Parrish Street between Corcoran and N. Mangum. When Oliver Quick published his Milestones Across the Color Line in 1922, the illustrated volume featured two photographs of a new six-story NC Mutual building which housed the insurance firm, Mechanics & Farmers bank and several other black-owned businesses. Quick published a view of W. Parrish Street looking west towards Corcoran Street. One can see the NC Mutual building on the right side of the image. Other black businesses on the “NC Mutual Block” included the Bull City Drug store, Mallie Page’s tailor shop, C. C. Amey’s hosiery shop  and the offices of black doctors, lawyers, and insurance agents.

Sanborn Map of Duham, N.C. 1913

http://gtts.oasis.unc.edu/map/durham?lat=35.9941942624026&lng=-78.89644851235126&z=15&d=va,vi,sc,sph,spc,sn,om,c,cmt&omo=80&dmo=80&cy=1913&sy=1930&size=small&year=1913

See 1888 Sanborn map for businesses on Parrish Street

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/images/full/dduma010100030.jpg

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/hueism.php?x=map&p=3&id=539

Note. “Negro restaurant” is notated on this map.

1887 Branson

https://archive.org/details/directoryofbusin1887bran/page/146/mode/2up?q=market

Digital Durham (Du Bois)

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/hueism.php?x=printedwork&id=214

BT Washington

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/images/full/ddupw010050010.jpg

“Wait till you get to Durham.”

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1913 Sanborn is http://gtts.oasis.unc.edu/map/durham?year=1913

Parrish Street is 4 block long.

1920s view of Parrish St

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/images/full/dduph010400010.jpg

Milestones….

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/hueism.php?x=printedwork&id=235

p.3 M&F bank interior

p.16 NCMutual  (6 story bldg.) in 1922 publication

p.27 Fitzgerald home

p. 31 “NC Mutual Block, Colored Business Section”

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/images/full/ddupw010150320.jpg

(bottom picture)

Fayetteville business street section

https://digitaldurham.duke.edu/images/full/ddupw010150330.jpg

top photograph

1887

See map here: https://archive.org/details/directoryofbusin1887bran/page/18/mode/2up

W. Parrish St

https://archive.org/details/durhamnccitydire11hill/page/572/mode/2up