Hot Springs and Blacks
During the Jim Crow segregation era, a coveted spa city named Hot Springs was home to black employees who served in white bathhouses and helped stoke the city's fame.
Covert, Michigan
When most U.S. cities and towns lived in segregation, one small township defied the racist norms by integrating from its founding, though in relative secrecy. That township was Covert, Michigan.
C.R. Patterson and Sons
C.R. Patterson and Sons, the first and only automobile manufacturer owned by black Americans, was initially a carriage building firm that later manufactured luxury cars.
The Chicago Defender
Founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott with an initial investment of only 25 cents, the Chicago Defender rose to become the most influential black newspaper in the country.
Freedom’s Journal
Founded by a group of black New Yorkers the same year slavery was abolished in the state, Freedom’s Journal was the first black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States.
Mound Bayou
Once the nation’s largest and most self-sufficient black town, Mound Bayou, Mississippi was a thriving haven for thousands of black Americans during Jim Crow.
South-View Cemetery
South-View Cemetery, home to more than 80,000 black Americans who are buried on its grounds, is the first and therefore the oldest black stockholder corporation in the U.S.
Edisto Island
One of South Carolina’s Sea Islands, Edisto Island’s history is steeped in Colonialism, slavery, Civil War, and post-war black prosperity.
Black Nurses of Stillman House
With segregation at its height, and New York City blacks being pushed farther uptown from the Lower East Side, mortality rates soared and illnesses plagued their communities. That is when a registered nurse named Elizabeth Tyler decided to act.
Allensworth
Examining the life of Colonel Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave who fought in the Civil War and retired as an officer and chaplain prior to founding the first and only California town fully financed, governed, and populated by blacks.