I could find little on the author of this business directory, which was published privately in 1905, but the directory itself is a goldmine of social history. To give a little context, Chicago was one of the destinations for African-Americans during the Great Migration; morever, the city was founded by a Haitian fur trader in the 18th century, and post-Civil War Illinois was progressive in its anti-discrimination and segregation laws. Nevetheless, in a big city such as Chicago, segregation was rife, and African-Americans settled in the “Black Belt,” or the neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. There, well-to-do, middle-class, lower-class, and poor African-Americans lived cheek-by-jowl, surviving and thriving in less than ideal circumstances. However, a quick glance through this directory reveals pages of industries in which Chicago’s African-Americans were involved: from restaurants to dentistry, newspapers to millinery, and law to laundries. A lone entry that stokes my imagination is that of Madam Pearl Black, a Clairvoyant–one can only ponder what sort of fortunes she gave her clientele!

You can read the directory here:

Or download it for future perusal here.

The amazing and outrageous dichotomies of life under Jim Crow were embodied in Alonzo Herndon. Each day, he traveled from his home to ride at the back of a street car to his barber shop in Atlanta, where he then entered the building from the rear entrance. When Herndon’s barber shop opened for the day, he shaved, clipped, trimmed, and otherwise pampered many of Atlanta’s most prominent white men in his flagship barbershop on 66 Peachtree Street. It may have shocked his customers to their toes to learn that their elegant and efficient barber had been born into slavery in 1858 and rose to become Atlanta’s first black millionaire and president and founder of the Atlanta Life Financial Group (then known as The Atlanta Benevolent and Protective Association). It would have also shocked white Atlanta even more to visit Herndon’s home, a Beaux-Arts classical mansion designed by his first wife, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, an actress and elocution teacher at Atlanta University.

However, Alonzo Herndon’s most indelible mark was the opulent barbership located, as mentioned above, on 66 Peachtree Street. After the death of his first wife, Herndon soon remarried again (Jessie Gillespie), and they honeymooned in Europe. Herndon was inspired by the sights and elegance of the “Old World,” and returned to Atlanta full of plans to transform the three-story building, which spread an entire block from Peachtree to Broad, into a palace. By the spring of 1913, Herndon Barbershop had become the Crystal Palace.

“One entered through mahogany and plate-glass doors to a long, elegant parlor lined with French beveled mirrors and lit by crystal chandeliers and wall lamps. Ceiled in white pressed-tin and floored in white ceramic tile, the room accommodated twenty-five custom barber chairs that were outfitted with porcelain, brass, and nickel, and upholstered in dark green Spanish leather. ‘Everything in my shop is the best procurable,’ Herndon boasted. It was a brilliant display. Even the boot-black stands were of nickel and marble.”

The Crystal Palace became known from Richmond, Virginia to Mobile, Alabama as the best barbershop in the South, and became an unofficial city attraction visited by local Atlantans as well as tourists who reveled in its opulence. Herndon also counteracted Jim Crow laws by designing his back entrance that looked the same as the front! By the time of Herndon’s death in 1927, Atlanta Life, which he funded with the profits of his barbershops, expanded into one of black Atlanta’s premiere institutions with assets totaling over one million dollars. His son Norris further expanded the insurance business into a multi-million dollar company, which–along with the Herndon mansion–still exists to this day.

Further Reading:

Herndon Home
History of the Herndon Home
The Crystal Palace in Atlanta Magazine
The Alonzo Herndon Family
The Herndons: an Atlanta Family by Carole Merritt

The Kentucky Derby was held over the weekend, and celebrities, horses, mint juleps, and hats abounded–and staggering sums of money exchanged hands through betting, and raced down the tracks in the form of expensive, highly-trained horseflesh. Inaugurated in 1875, the Kentucky Derby became the first leg of the United States Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, and a large part of America’s Southern and racing history. While the legacy of the many African-American jockeys who rode celebrated horses to victory is somewhat remembered (sadly, black jockeys were phased out by the 1920s), the presence of African-Americans on the other side of the race–the horse owners, breeders, and trainers–is an even smaller footnote in racing history. Racing has and always will be an expensive sport (hence why it’s considered the sport of kings), but a few African-Americans broke through the barriers of income and race to carve a place in the pantheon of horse racing’s greats, and Byron McClelland reigns preeminent.

Byron McClelland stands to the left, in the white apron, with his stable hands

McClelland was born in 1855, and curiously, no source has mentioned if he was born enslaved. His father and elder brother trained horses, but Byron’s mother wanted something more for her son, and urged him to accept a position at The Lexington Press. However, the owner of The Lexington Press, H.C. Duncan, owed a a stable of horses and Byron jumped at Duncan’s offer to take charge of them. He trained Duncan’s stable for five years before his knowledge and skill with horses led to his being hired by H. Price McGrath, owner of the prominent McGrathiana Stud. McGrath bequeathed his stud to McClelland at his death, and by the late 1880s, he had apparently acquired enough capital to accompany his reputation as an astute judge of horseflesh, and with his partner Dick Roche, McClelland turned an August Belmont castoff named Badge into a winner.

The 1890s witnessed much success and fame for Byron McClelland. Sallie McClelland, a horse named after his wife, “captured the 1890 Spinaway Stakes and set an earnings record for two-year-old fillies of $53,969.” His horse Bermuda went on to win several important races in 1891, including the United States Hotel Stakes and the Manhattan Handicap. McClelland’s greatest success was with the horse, Henry of Navarre, whom he purchased at age three in 1894. Henry of Navarre promptly won nine races in a row, including the Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes. He sold the horse for $25,000 to August Belmont, Jr., and promptly set about winning more races with Halma, who won the Kentucky Derby, the Phoenix Hotel Stakes, and the Clark Handicap.

Now wealthy and influential, McClelland took a small detour and fulfilled his mother’s dreams by founding The Evening Argonaut in 1895. In 1896, however, he captured the Preakness Stakes with Margrave, which made him one of the few to win races that would later form the U.S. Triple Crown series. Byron McClelland’s spectacular career came to an abrupt and premature end when he died of pneumonia June 11, 1897, aged 41. At his death, McClelland was one of the very few who made a fortune from horse racing, and his estate was totaled at nearly half a million dollars. His wife and brother continued to race horses for a few years after his death, but Byron McClelland’s reputation was such that no one could replace him, and–per the glowing obituary in The New York Times, and the lack of mention of his race–transcended the usual prejudices and bigotry of the time.

Further Reading:
Wikipedia entry
America’s First Great Sports Stars – profile of famous black jockeys
The Kentucky Derby’s Forgotten Jockeys
Byron McClellan’s $10,000 sarcophagus – Find A Grace

When the United States entered the Great War 1917, it was viewed with relief by the war-weary Allied armies. After the passage of the Selective Service Act, America’s relatively small army was bolstered by a draft of 2.8 million men, and by the summer of 1918, was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. A hefty percentage of those draftees were black men who were assigned to segregated units commanded by white officers, and rarely saw combat, instead working as stevedores or in other menial positions. Also largely barred from duties were African-American nurses, who enrolled in the American Red Cross during the early days of the war, hoping to gain entry into the Army or Navy Nurse Corps. After much pressure, 18 nurses were offered Army Nurse Corps assignments in 1918, and four black women “were among the 3,480 ‘Y’ women volunteers who provided recreation for the American Expeditionary Force by staffing canteens, nursing, sewing, baking, and providing amusement and educational activities for the soldiers.”

These segregated units got their chance to shine when the French requested and received control of several regiments of black combat troops. Around this time, the front-lines of the French army were exhausted and angry, almost to the point of mutiny, so these fresh (and unwanted) forces were a Godsend. The most notable regiment was the 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the “Harlem Hellfighters” among other names, who were organized in 1916 as the 15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment and manned by black enlisted soldiers with both black and white officers. African-American regiments were usually accompanied by bands, but the Harlem Hellfighters’s band was led by a titan: Lt. James Reese Europe. Europe was one the earliest creators of jazz and he made his mark earlier in the decade with his Clef Club Orchestra, who performed at Carnegie Hall, and as band leader and collaborator for Vernon and Irene Castle. These African-American soldiers brought over not only their valor, but their red-hot music, which the French took to with alacrity.

Now under French command, the Hellfighters did much to prove just how wrong the United States was when segregating troops and refusing to use their black regiments. By the end of the war, 171 members were awarded the Legion of Merit, many were awarded Distinguished Service Crosses, and Sgt. Henry Lincoln Johnson, a railroad porter who, alongside Pvt. Needham Roberts fought off a 24-man German patrol with only a rifle used as a club and a bolo knife between them, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. No one could ignore these achievements, and when the 369th returned to the United States, it was the first unit to march up Fifth Avenue from the Washington Square Park Arch to their Armory in Harlem, and their unit was placed on the permanent list with other veteran units.

Despite their unwanted or diminished roles in the Great War, African-Americans in combat, in nursing, and in civilian roles served their country in any capacity they could, and proved themselves equal to their white countrymen and women.

Further Reading:
The Unknown Soldiers; Black American Troops in World War I by Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri
From Harlem to the Rhine by Arthur W. Little
The Hellfighters of Harlem: African-American Soldiers Who Fought for the Right to Fight for Their Country by Bill Harris
Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War by Emmett J. Scott

Excerpt from the September 1913 issue of The Crisis:

Mr. Harris's Grocery, Tacoma, WA

The characteristic of the Great Northwest is its unexpectedness. One looks for tall black mountains and ghostlike trees, snow and the echo of ice on the hills, and all this one finds. But there is more. There is the creeping spell of the silent ocean with its strange metamorphoses of climate, its seasons of rain and shine, until one is puzzled with his calendar and lost to all his weather bearings. Then come the cities. Portland one receives as plausible; a large city with a certain Eastern calm and steady growth. The colored population is but a handful, a bit over a thousand, but it is manly and holds its head erect and has hopes. Portland was the only place out of nearly fifty places where The Crisis has lectured that did not keep its financial contract, but this was probably a personal fault and not typical. Typical was the effort to establish a social center, to enlarge and popularize a colored hotel, to build new homes and open new avenues of employment.

From Portland one goes with a sense of puzzled inquiry. Why have colored folks come here? Why should they stay and what is their outlook? Then comes Tacoma and the first surprise. Why is Tacoma? one asks–so dainty a city high on its hills, with the breath of promise in its lungs? Here are less than a thousand colored folk, but peculiarly free and sturdy and individual. They have a colored paper which is not colored. They have a branch of our association with a genius for a secretary–a soft-voiced woman, utterly feminine, and yet an untiring leader of men, who may yet make colored Tacoma famous. Here the fight against race prejudice has been persistent and triumphant. There is no freer city in America, in hotel and restaurant and soda fountain. Laborers have a man’s chance, and in the civil service are many colored people. The mayor of the city, being wise, came to our lectures and ate at our banquet and saw the passing of the silver loving cup, the treasure of all the journey. Next day three of us went to Seattle. See America and then–Seattle. Seattle is the crowning surprise–the embodied unexpectedness. Imagine, if you please, north of the northmost woods of Maine, a city of 300,000, gleaming with mighty waters, where the navies of the world may lie. Washington has over 6,000 Negroes and 2,500 live in Seattle.

Mr. Morton's Home, Everett, WA

They rival Los Angeles as a group. There is the lawyer, Andrew Black; the doctor, David Cardwell; there is caterer Stone, who dined us, and the inimitable Norris, who looks at you with twinkling gravity and talks of “your” people. There was the minister, clean in body and soul. Above all there was Beattie. I remember her as a chubby schoolgirl in Boston out of Denver. Then twenty long years and more, and we meet here in Seattle in the fire glow beside the cut glass and silver of a dinner that I hunger and thirst for yet. Another mayor came to our lecture, jolly and strenuous, and in the midnight I said good-by and went my way. So the journey in the Great Northwest ended. Ended as this stupendous land could end in three whole days and four whole nights in one sleeping car on the way back to Kansas City. In that journey I recalled everything from the Grand Canyon to Seattle. I recalled the charming and simple hospitality of the best-bred race on earth.

Further Resources:
Seattle’s Black Victorians 1852-1901 by Esther Hall Mumford
Northwest African American Museum
Seattle’s Black History
The Logger’s Daughter
Exposed: The Unique History of African American Pioneers