Photo: NATHAN MORGAN | NASHVILLE BUSINESS JOURNAL The Green Book featured roughly a dozen businesses in Nashville, back in the 1960s. According to the Tennessee Tribune, only two of them remain today: R&R Liquor Store and Swett’s, two of Nashville’s oldest Black owned businesses. On December 13th both businesses will receive the Green Book Legacy […]
Clary Frye is honored along with other prominent Tampa historical figures on the Tampa Riverwalk with a bronze bust When the world tells you there isn’t a way, build one. That’s the story of Clara Frye, a woman who served 20 years as a nurse in Tampa, Florida. In an era when Black patients couldn’t be treated at hospitals, […]
In 1905, Madam C. J. Walker launched her hair care products business. By 1918, she had a mansion that happened to be in the same neighborhood as John Rockefeller. The unlikely rise of Walker from a cotton plantation to the ranks of the elite is a story of self determination and grit. Walker, after all, […]
Photo: Colored Agricultural and Normal University (Langston University) boys dorm In 1892 three Memphis men who owned a grocery store were lynched. Their crime was owning a store that competed favorably with a white owned store. One of the men, Thomas Moss, was a good friend of Ida B. Wells. After the lynching Wells wrote, […]
Photo: Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms at Antioch Baptist Church North, Twitter Atlanta is often labeled as a city too busy to hate but the historical facts tell a very different story. There was a time when white terror was so pronounced that Black people were actually afraid to move around the city freely, living confined to […]
At a time when few medical establishments would accept Black people, Black people simply decided to build their own. Provident Hospital was the first Black owned and operated hospital in the United States. Provident was founded by a Black surgeon, Daniel Hale Williams, who also founded an associated nursing school for African Americans. Provident opened […]
When TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc. reported revenues in excess of $1 billion in 1987, the world witnessed a milestone. This was the first time a Black owned company reported more than $1 billion in annual sales. TLC Beatrice was a snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate, which also happened to be the largest […]
Biddy Mason was a Los Angeles real estate mogul, before the term was even invented. Mason was born into slavery in the year 1818, in Georgia. By the time she died in 1891 she’d amassed a fortune of $300,000 (many millions today) and owned a great deal of property in what is now the heart […]
Barbering can be a perfect springboard into wealth, believe it or not. Alonzo Herndon was a barber who became Atlanta’s first Black millionaire and at the time of his death, was the wealthiest Black person in Atlanta. Not bad for a barber. Herndon, however, had to work his way up even to being an Atlanta […]
Joan Johnson, co-founder of Johnson Products Company, has died at age 89. (Family Handout) Johnson Products Company is best known for having been a pioneer in the modern Black hair care industry. Ultra Sheen Cosmetics, Afro Sheen and a host of other brands were manufactured by the company. Johnson Products Company was also the first […]