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

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

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

The first known game between two black teams was held in September 1860, at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, when the Weeksville of New York beat the Colored Union Club 11–0. During the period of Reconstruction, black ball teams popped up all over the Eastern Seaboard, comprising of ex-soldiers and officers, and teams like the Jamaica Monitor Club, Albany Bachelors, Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques played each other and any other team that would play against them. Soon, Philadelphia, with an African-American population of 22,000, became a mecca for black baseball, where two former cricket players, James H. Francis and Francis Wood, formed the Pythian Base Ball Club, which was promoted by legendary ballplayer and civil rights activist Octavius Catto. Segregation barred the black ball teams from joining the National Association of Base Ball Players, and they were dependent upon semi-pro white teams to keep in condition and make a living, but “Blackball” thrived despite these hardships.

Pioneer baseball players included Bud Fowler (pitcher) and Moses Fleetwood Walker (catcher), the latter of whom was the first African-American to play in the major leagues. The first black professional baseball team was formed in 1885, when Walter Cook, a white businessman from Trenton, NJ, spotted the Babylon Black Panthers, a team formed by waiters and porters employed by the Argyle Hotel in Babylon, New York, and became their manager. He renamed the team the “Cuban Giants” to attract white baseball fans (since oddly enough, non-Americans of African descent were more acceptable to American society), and their success led to the formation of the Southern League of Base Ballists (comprising of ten teams: the Memphis Eclipse, the Georgia Champions of Atlanta, the Savannah Broads, the Memphis Eurekas, the Savannah Lafayettes, the Charleston Fultons, the Jacksonville Athletics, the New Orleans Unions, the Florida Clippers of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Macedonias). Though this league lasted only one year, the National Colored Base Ball League was formed in 1887, and under the leadership of Walter S. Brown of Pittsburgh, the NCBBL was “granted official minor league status and thus ‘protection’ under the major league-led National Agreement.”

Thought the NCBBL also failed, the six teams–Baltimore Lord Baltimores, Boston Resolutes, Louisville Falls Citys, New York Gorhams, Philadelphia Pythians, and Pittsburgh Keystones–played a decent season, and despite the existence of two defunct black baseball leagues, the ball players soldiered on. The Cuban Giants remained successful, and copycat teams sprang up immediately, the most prominent being the Cuban X-Giants, a splinter and a powerhouse team who played ten seasons around 1900. Many teams and leagues rose and fell by the turn-of-the-century, but black baseball reached preeminence under Rube Foster, the Cuban X-Giants star pitcher, who helped the team defeat the Philadelphia Giants, a black ball team formed in 1902 by Sol White, white sportswriter H. Walter Schlichter, and Harry Smith, sports editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, a black newspaper. These two teams battled for supremacy in “blackball” during the first decade of the 20th century, and Rube Foster began to pull together the makings of a black baseball league by black ball players, for black ball players. By 1920, the Golden Age of black baseball began, and up until the 1940s, African-American baseball teams played games and world series just as exciting, skilled, and lucrative as the segregated major leagues.

Further Reading:
Sol White’s History of Colored Baseball with Other Documents on the Early Black Game, 1886-1936
Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams by Robert Peterson
Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution by Neil Lanctot

Websites:
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
Negro League Baseball eMuseum
Black Baseball in Hartford, Conn
The Cuban Giants

From 1901 to 1908, Hartshorn hosted the Clifton Conference to discuss the educational and religious opportunities available to African Americans. He published his findings in 1910, the bulk of which An Era of Progress and Promise is comprised. It provided a comprehensive portrait of early African-American schools, colleges, and churches as well as biographies of African-American educators, ministers, and influential businessmen. Excerpts for An Era of Progress and Promise were originally made available online in 2004 but were limited to institutions or individuals with direct North Carolina connections. It has now been made available in its entirety by the State Library of North Carolina, and is one of the best resources for African-American life and culture during the Gilded Age.

Read An Era of Progress and Promise now.

Baltimore: the city’s proximity to Washington meant the elites of both cities mingled frequently, and society comprised natives of Baltimore and relations of Washington elites. Possessing one of the largest populations of African-Americans before and after the Civil War, by the late nineteenth century, Baltimore’s elite society emerged from the free families aligned with the city’s civic, educational, and religious life for generations. Tying the black elite together was the presence of George Murray, who was born free in 1773 and lived until 1890. Those living in Baltimore were rather affluent as well, with a black editor calculating the collective wealth of the elites at approximately $500,000, of which $75,000 was the worth of John Locke, the owner of a hack and funeral business. Others gained their wealth from catering, barbering, hod-carrying, brickmaking, and caulking. The wealth and relative leisure permitted vacations, and the most popular spots were Harper’s Ferry, Cape May, and Arundel-on-the-Bay, later called Highland Beach, which was founded by Frederick Douglass’ son Charles.

Charleston: this was the most aristocratic city of the South for blacks and whites, and most if not all, of the black elites in this city had deep (miscegenation) ties to the white aristocrats. During the antebellum era, they existed in a happy plane below whites but above slaves, and indeed, a number owned slaves themselves. They were the most exclusive of black elite circles, and most considered Charleston society superior to any other city.

New Orleans: As with Charleston, a substantial portion of the black elite traced their lineage to free people of color, but they developed on a completely separate line than Charleston due to New Orleans’ unique history. They “enjoyed more privileges and were more respected by their white neighbors than in any other city in the United States” and were considered, at best, quasi citizens. This situation created a “peculiar social system” wherein “men who elsewhere would be called ‘colored’ because of their known African origins, f[ound] their social business here as Creoles.” Though Jim Crow put a crimp in their antebellum status, they nonetheless prided themselves on their education, their breeding, and wealth.

Philadelphia: The old families of this city contained three distinct components: native Philadelphians, the West-Indian group, and fair-complexion, free-born Southerners who migrated there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Much of the wealth came from catering, and the most renowned and successful cater was Robert Bogle, whose patrons were esteemed white Philadelphians. Black elites here were closely identified with the abolitionist movement, several benevolent societies, various civic and religious enterprises, and especially the prestigious Banneker Institute. Unlike the cities of the South (as you will see with other Northern cities), the old elite quickly adapted to the influx of educated and skilled blacks who migrated north after Reconstruction, retaining their social prominence by entering the fields of law, medicine, education and business.

New York: the black population in the city was small but elegant. They, like the old Philadelphia aristocracy, were made up of native New Yorkers (many of whom traced their lineage to the days of Dutch settlement), migrants to the city, and West Indian emigres. This elite group was divided in two, with the New York and Brooklyn factions battling for exclusiveness. Brooklyn won out, however, especially after the harsh racial climate after the Draft Riots and the influx of black Southerners after the Civil War. In 1895, the New York Times was moved to note that as soon as black New Yorkers “amass a comfortable fortune, they move across the East River [to Brooklyn]“. Most were of the professional class; caterers, physicians, druggists, and so on, with much of their wealth derived from real estate holdings. On the subject of Harlem, blacks did not begin to move to this area until the late 1900s, and most of the wealthy residents were not of the black elite.

Boston: elite black Bostonians were even more tied to abolitionist circles than in Philadelphia. Though they made up only 2% of the black population of the city, they counted attorneys, physicians, salaried employees, business proprietors, and literary and musical people a part of their small, exclusive circle. Their vocations brought them in contact with upper-class whites more often than lower-class blacks, with many taking part in the city’s civic life (for example, George L. Ruffin, a Harvard-educated lawyer, served as a legislator and city judge). Their circle was difficult to pierce, and Boston’s black elite tended to associate with their white neighbors, they employed white servants, attended a few select churches, and vacationed together at Saratoga and Oak Bluff (Martha’s Vineyard). Unlike any other city, black Brahmins were privileged enough to attend public events such as performances at the Boston Symphony, the opera, celebrations at Harvard, and races at Mystic Park, where a few of their horses won cups.

Chicago: the city was first settled by a black sable trader from Santo Domingo, but the black population didn’t become identifiable until the 1840s, and was made up of escaped slaves and free blacks from the North and the South. Though Chicago had a reputation as a “sinkhole of abolition,” this was not the case for black Chicagoans, who lived beneath a yoke of legal and extralegal discrimination. After the Civil War, blacks in Chicago battled discrimination in housing, employment, and the use of public conveyances, but a black elite nevertheless thrived. A unique feature of black Chicago was its professional tone: society was led by physicians, dentists, druggists, and attorneys. Fannie Barrier Williams was certain that the black aristocracy in Chicago was “better dressed, better housed, and better mannered than almost anywhere in the wide west.” Though education was paramount, wealthy black businessmen were able to join society by the 1920s.

The West: black communities on the West coast remained small until WWI, where in 1900, the combined population of blacks in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Los Angeles numbered but 7,191–less than 1/8th of Philadelphia and less than 1/4th of Chicago. San Francisco was the hub of black elites in the West, and the keyword for telling who was who was the use of the word “pioneer.” Los Angeles’ black population surpassed that of San Francisco’s after 1900, and was marked by the city’s founding by blacks and mulattoes, as well as the vast numbers of professional blacks who migrate to Los Angeles after 1890. Seattle’s black population was very small–406 in 1900–but the wealthy residents were considerably well-to-do, the most comfortable being the Caytons, publishers and editors of the Seattle Republican, who lived in spacious house on Capital Hill, the city’s most exclusive neighborhood, and existed between the black and white worlds. Denver’s population grew from 23 in 1866 to 4000 in 1900, more than one wealthy black family gained prominence after the gold rush.

Further Reading:

Aristocrats of Color by Willard B. Gatewood

Of this period, two books remain extant:

The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916) by E. Azalia Hackley

Hackley, a classical singer who studied voice in Europe, “championed the use of African-American spirituals among her own people as a tool for social change.” According to the manual, The Colored Girl Beautiful was compiled from talks given to girls in colored boarding schools across the United States.