Canada may have been the promised land for some but Pittsburgh was the salvation of many. Pittsburgh was arguably the most critical city on the Underground Railroad: without Pittsburgh, it simply wouldn’t have worked. It is estimated that 100,000 people escaped to freedom because of Pittsburgh, a legacy that should never be forgotten. The Steel […]
Soul Food Market will be a top rate grocery store, completely owned and operated by Black people. Soul Food Market, however, will not be the first of its kind. Well before the Civil War started, Samuel T. Wilcox built a grocery empire with annual sales in excess of $4 million, in today’s dollars. Many tried […]
William Washington Browne wasn’t covered in your history class, a fact that reveals the “Miseducation of the Negro.” Browne was born into slavery in Habersham County, Georgia, in 1849. When he died in 1897, his funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Richmond’s Black community. Browne was a preacher, businessman and social reformer. […]
Birmingham’s Fourth Avenue Historic District is home to one of the highest concentrations of continuously owned and operated Black owned businesses in the country. The District is also home to the 16th Street Baptist Church, a landmark in American history. Most know that in 1963 the Ku Klux Klan bombed the church, killing four little […]
After chattel slavery, Black people stood. After campaigns of terror decimated Black business districts, like the 1921 attack on Tulsa’s Greenwood district, Black people stood. Whatever was left standing, however, the federal government erased overnight. With laser-like targeting, thriving Black business districts around the country were destroyed, through the construction of interstate highways. Those same […]
Photo: Stan Kaady Auburn Avenue in Atlanta was once known as “the richest Negro street in the world.” The phrase was coined by John Wesley Dobbs, a civic and political leader known as the unofficial “mayor” of Auburn Avenue. Dobbs once said, “Get the vote and the dollar and you’ll walk in Jerusalem just like […]
James Brown died on Christmas day 2006. He revolutionized music but he was also a living symbol of Black power. His music and style inspired cultural pride but on a deeper level, the Godfather of Soul was a revolutionary in business. At at time when “colored” performers were merely expected to sing and dance, James […]
Photo: Wikimedia Commons Scientists in Oklahoma discovered possible evidence of mass graves linked to the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa. Since 1921 when the massacre occurred, there’s been a huge effort to hush and cover up what really happened. Survivors have long held that the actual number of victims is much higher than what […]
In 1915 Birth of a Nation was released, a film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan and poisoned the minds of Americans with false stereotypes of Black people. African Americans across the country were livid, many even protested. Life for Black people was hard enough but the new emerging film industry had the power to […]
Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images On November 7, 1967 the world would change forever. That was the day Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Harold Washington, Maynard Jackson and Marion Barry were all born. No, they were not all born that day biologically but that day marked the birth of their possibility. November 7, 1967 was the first […]