The post-Reconstruction South ushered in Jim Crow laws, systemically designed to condemn the black community to second-class citizenship. To counter this reality, several black communities across the country developed areas known as “Black Wall Street.”
These were financial nerve centers of economic development spurred by black entrepreneurs who sought to meet the needs of their community that would otherwise be denied because of segregation.
Arguably, the most successful of the Black Wall Streets was located in Durham. The four block hub on Parrish Street served the black community there for nearly a century.
National leaders including W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington visited Durham on several occasions, seeing it as a model of successful black entrepreneurship that should be replicated in other areas. By the 1960s, much of what Black Wall Street symbolized was but a glorious memory of yesteryear.
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