¹ Bois, W. E. B. Du, The Negro in Business (Atlanta, 1899), 8Google Scholar. Many also thought this might lead to a self-sufficient black economy. See Washington, Booker T., The Negro in Business (Boston, 1899)Google Scholar, and Bois, W. E. B. Du, Economic Cooperation among Negroes (Atlanta, 1907)Google Scholar. These ideas are developed more fully in Meier, August, Negro Thought in America: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963)Google Scholar.

² John Sibley Butler and Kenneth Wilson, “Entrepreneurial Enclave: An Exposition into the African American Experience,” National Journal of Sociology (Fall 1988); Butler, John Sibley, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans: A Reconsideration of Race and Economics (Albany, N.Y., 1991), 26–32Google Scholar; and Portes, Alejandro and Jensen, Leif, “What's an Ethnic Enclave? The Case for Conceptual Clarity,” American Sociological Review 52 (1987): 768–71Google Scholar.

³ See Groves, Paul A. and Muller, Edward K., “The Evolution of Black Residential Areas in Late Nineteenth Century Cities,” Journal of Historical Geography 1, no. 2 (1975): 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wade, Richard C., Slavery in American Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (New York, 1964), 77–9Google Scholar; Letitia Brown, “Residence Patterns of Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1800,” Columbia Historical Society, Records (1969-1970), 72; Radford, John P., “Race, Residence and Ideology: Charleston, South Carolina in the Mid-nineteenth Century,” Journal of Historical Geography 2, no. 4 (1976): 329–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spain, Daphne, “Race Relations and Residential Segregation in New Orleans: Two Centuries’ Paradox,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 441 (Jan. 1979): 82–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ See Kellogg, John U., “Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South,” Geographical Review 47 (July 1977): 310–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schnore, Leo F. and Evenson, Philip C., “Segregation in Southern Cities,” American Journal of Sociology 72, no. 1 (July 1966): 58–67CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Johnson, Charles S., Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York, 1943): 8–12Google Scholar; Woofter, T. J., Negro Problems in Cities (New York, 1928)Google Scholar; and Akalou, W. M. and Wintz, Cary D., “The Economic Impact of Residential Desegregation on Historically Black Neighborhoods in Houston, 1950-1990,” Essays in Economic and Business History 13 (1995): 289–304.Google Scholar

⁵ Kellogg, “Urban Clusters.” See also his “The Formation of Black Residential Areas in Lexington, Kentucky, 1865-1887,” Journal of Southern History 48, no. 1 (Feb. 1982): 48.Google Scholar

⁶ The term “Negro Main Street” is from Carter, Wilmoth A., “Negro Main Street as a Symbol of Discrimination,” Phylon 21 (Fall 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Robert L. Boyd has recently conducted a series of investigations of black business in northern cities during the years of the Great Migration (1900-1930). His findings were similar to those in this study: as segregated black communities arose in these cities, their spatial isolation increased their participation in business enterprise. The major difference from the southern cities examined in this study is that black business in the North was mostly restricted to particular services, such as bartering, beauty culture, and undertaking, as well as specialized retail areas that catered to certain ethnic needs. In southern cities, on the other hand, African Americans engaged in a much broader range of business ventures. A particularly important difference was their ownership, in most southern cities, of small corner grocery stores. See Boyd, Robert L., “Residential Segregation by Race and the Black Merchants of Northern Cities during the Early Twentieth Century,” Sociological Forum 13, no. 4 (1998): 595–609CrossRefGoogle Scholar; his “The Great Migration to the North and the Rise of Ethnic Niches for African American Women in Beauty Culture and Hairdressing,” Sociological Focus 29 (1996): 33–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also his paper, “The Protected Market Hypothesis and Ethnic Residential Segregation: The Case of Black Undertakers in Northern Cities during the Great Migration,” presented to the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, 9 Aug. 1997.

⁷ Blassingame, John, “Before the Ghetto: The Making of the Black Community in Savannah, Georgia, 1865-1880,” Journal of Social History 6 (Summer 1973): 473-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thornberry, Jerry J., “The Development of Black Atlanta, 1865-1885” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1977), 27, 128Google Scholar. See also Lewis, Earl, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley, Calif., 1991), especially ch. 6Google Scholar; Porter, Michael L., “Black Atlanta: An Interdisciplinary Study of Blacks on the East Side of Atlanta, 1890-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1974)Google Scholar; and Hanchette, Thomas W., Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), ch. 5.Google ScholarWarner, Sam Bass Jr, in Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (Cambridge. Mass., 1962), 158–9Google Scholar, theorizes that these organizations must have been present for any neighborhood communities to form.

⁸ A number of scholars have demonstrated this phenomenon, especially in the North, but it was also prevalent in the South. See Hanchette, Sorting Out the New South City, 116; Brown, Elsa Barkley, “Uncle Ned's Children: Negotiating Community and Freedom in Postemancipation Richmond, Virginia” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1994), 193–218Google Scholar; Wright, George C., Life Behind the Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, La., 1985), 83Google Scholar; Lamon, Lester C., Black Tennesseans, 1900-1930 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1977), 140–1Google Scholar; and Dittmer, John, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Urbana, Ill., 1977), 38Google Scholar, for examples of this in the South.

⁹ U.S. Census, unpublished mss., Record Group 29, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

¹⁰ In 1860, there were 3,237 free blacks in Charleston and 13,909 slaves. In Richmond in the same year there were 2,576 free African Americans and 11,699 slaves. Savannah had just 705 free blacks and 7,712 slaves. New Orleans had 10,689 free blacks and 13,385 slaves, while Washington had 9,209 free African Americans to just 1,774 slaves. Wade, Slavery in the Gties, 326-7.

¹¹ Radford, John P., “Culture, Economy and Urban Structure of Charleston, South Carolina, 1860-1880” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1974)Google Scholar. See also his “Social Structure and Urban Form: Charleston, 1860-1880,” in From the Old South to the New: Essays on the Transitional South, eds. Fraser, Walter J. and Moore, Winfred B. Jr (Westport, Conn., 1980), 81–92.Google Scholar

¹² Ford, Frederick A., Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina for the Year 1861 (Charleston, 1861)Google Scholar, taken from Taeuber, Karl E. and Taeuber, Alma F., Negroes in Cities: Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Change (New York, 1965), 45–6Google Scholar.

¹³ Information compiled from Scholes’ City Directory, Charleston, 1881 (Charleston, S.C., 1881)Google Scholar. African Americans, for example, controlled 87 percent of the 52 barbershops in the city. They were located on white business streets and serviced only the white trade. There was a similar situation with butcher shops, poultry dealers, blacksmiths, tailors, dressmakers, and boot and shoemakers.

¹⁴ Miller, Zane, “Urban Blacks in the South, 1865-1920: The Richmond, Savannah, New Orleans, Louisville and Birmingham Experience,” in The New Urban History: Quantitative Explorations by American Historians, ed. Schnore, Leo F. (Princeton, N.J., 1975), 201Google Scholar; Hirsch, Arnold R. and Logsdon, Joseph, Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge, La., 1992), 13Google Scholar; Blassingame, John, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar; and Spain, “Race Relations,” 85-6.

¹⁵ Loren Schweninger, “Prosperous Blacks in the South, 1790-1880,” American Historical Review 95 (Feb. 1990): 40.

¹⁶ City directories in New Orleans did not list African Americans separately from whites, so it is impossible to construct the same type of analysis as in Charleston. But evidence from a variety of sources points to the existence of a number of businesses courting the black trade on several streets in this area. Most useful in this regard are the holdings in the Marcus Bruce Christian Collection of Papers and Memorabilia in the Special Holdings Collection at the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans. In this collection Christian details a large number of businesses in these areas that depended upon an African American trade.

¹⁷ Blassingame, “Before the Ghetto,” 481.

¹⁸ Ibid., 466-8. See also Perdue, Robert, The Negro in Savannah, 1865-1900 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ellis, John H., “Disease and the Destiny of a City: The 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Memphis,” Western Tennessee History Society Papers 28 (1974): 75.Google Scholar

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²⁵ Chataigne's Richmond Directory, 1879-80 (Richmond, Va., 1879)Google Scholar.

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²⁷ The Charleston City Directory, 1890 (Charleston, S.C., 1890)Google Scholar, and Charleston S.C. City Directory, 1901 (Charleston, 1901)Google Scholar; and Rosengarten, Dale et al., Between the Tracks: Charleston's East Side during the Nineteenth Century (Charleston, 1987), 95.Google Scholar McFall's Drug Store, though, made much of the fact that it attracted a mixed race clientele.

²⁸ Du Bois, The Negro in Business, 33.

²⁹ Spain, “Race Relations,” 86; and Lewis, Pierce F., New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 44.Google Scholar

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³² Taeuber and Taeuber, Negroes in Cities, 41.

³³ Scholes'Directory of the City of Savannah, 1900 (Savannah, Ga., 1900)Google Scholar.

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³⁶ Andrew F. Hillyer, “An Address on the Union League and the Industrial and Organized Status of the Colored People of the District of Columbia,” delivered at the annual meeting of the Union League, April 1893, pp. 1-3 (Andrew F. Hillyer Papers, Library of Congress).

³⁷ Fitzpatrick, “Shaw, Washington's Premier Black Neighborhood,” 33.

³⁸ Sherman's Directory and Ready Reference of the Colored Population in the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C., 1913).Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Memphis City Directory, 1900 (Memphis, Tenn., 1900).Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ Doyle, Don H., Nashville since the 1920s (Nashville, Tenn., 1985), 42.Google Scholar See also Davis, Douglas Carr, “The Underworld of Nashville: Its Character and Function Based on Records of Personal Experiences of Prisoners in the Tennessee State Prison” (M.A. thesis, Fisk University, 1941)Google Scholar; and Woody, George Washington Jr “The Natural History of a Slum Area and of its Inherent Characteristics” (M.A. thesis, Fisk University, 1940)Google Scholar.

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⁴⁸ Nashville Directories 1900 & 1910 (Nashville, Tenn., 1900, 1910).Google Scholar See also “Historical Black Sites and Buildings in Nashville, 1824-1925, Phase I: Thematic Survey Project” (Nashville, Tenn., 1981), 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 12.

⁵⁰ Allen, Josephine, “Atlanta, Georgia,” in Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, vol. 1, 211Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Bois, W. E. B. Du, “The Negro North and South,” Bibliotheca Sacra 62 (July 1905): 505.Google Scholar

⁵² Atlanta City Directory for 1901 (Atlanta, 1901)Google Scholar. In the city overall, African Americans made up just one third of the population.

⁵³ The growing pattern of segregation in Atlanta was reified in 1913 when the city passed an ordinance stipulating that an occupant of a house in a mixed block could legally object to a person of another color moving in next door. See Rice, Roger L., “Residential Segregation by Law, 1910-1917,” Journal of Southern History 34 (May 1968): 181Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Sholes'Atlanta Directory, 1880 (Atlanta, Ga., 1880).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Atlanta City Directory (Atlanta, 1901)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ See Bauerlein, Mark, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco, 2001)Google Scholar; and Mixon, Gregory, “‘Good Negro, Bad Negro’: The Dynamics of Race and Class in Atlanta During the Era of the 1906 Riot,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 81 (1997): 593–621.Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ Harris, Carl V., “Reforms in Government Control of Negroes in Birmingham, Alabama, 1890-1920,” Journal of Southern History 38, no. 4 (1972): 570Google Scholar. “Large” cities are denned as those with populations over 100,000.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Miller, “Urban Blacks,” 203.

⁶¹ White, Margaret Longnecker, ed. The Birmingham District: An Industrial History and Guide (Birmingham, Ala., 1981), 321.Google Scholar

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⁶³ Birmingham Directory, 1908 (Birmingham, Ala., 1908).Google Scholar

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⁶⁵ Kellogg, “Urban Clusters,” 319-20.

⁶⁶ Durham City Directory, 1909-10 (Durham, N.C., 1909)Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Weare, Walter B., Black Business in the New South: A Social History of North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company (Urbana. Ill, 1983), 76.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ White, The Birmingham District, 320; Allen, “Atlanta,” 213.

⁶⁹ Chataigne's Richmond City Directory, 1879-80 (Richmond, Va., 1879)Google Scholar.

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