What They Built: Black Business Districts

by bam

A cited, high-school-and-up course on Black business districts as economies rather than as backdrops to their own destruction: Parrish Street and Hayti in Durham, Jackson Ward in Richmond, Sweet Auburn in Atlanta, Greenwood in Tulsa, and Bronzeville in Chicago. You will read them the way you would read any local economy, out of business records, charters, insurance filings, city directories and National Register nominations: which firms existed, what they sold, who capitalised them, and what the numbers do and do not support. The center of the course is the question nobody teaches, which is an economics question and not a sentimental one: how do you finance a business district when banks will not lend to you? The answer runs through fraternal orders, industrial insurance, building and loan associations and a generation of chartered banks, and it is documented down to the dollar in places. The course also states its own rule out loud and holds to it: a positive is never used to soften a negative. What was built and what was taken were happening at the same time, in the same country, often to the same people, and this course teaches the co-occurrence without editorialising it into balance. Prerequisite: The Green Book: How to Read a Route.