As a result of escalating racial tensions in the early 1910s, a surge of Black businesses fled from downtown Atlanta to the safer, western part of the city where the Sweet Auburn District developed. Sweet Auburn housed a diverse array of Black businesses, including Atlanta’s first Black-owned life insurance firm.
Known as the “Black Metropolis,” Bronzeville in Chicago was at the center of the city’s Black Belt area. Businesses flourished in Bronzeville because its area had one of the highest concentration of Black people in nation as a result of the Great Migration.
U Street in Washington, D.C. was known as “Black Broadway” in the Chocolate City. The street not only housed prominent Black economic institutions such as banks, businesses, and insurance firms, but it also was home to many venues where Black artists performed.
The Jackson Ward community in Richmond, Virginia was started by formerly enslaved Black people and quickly became an exemplar of Black entrepreneurship in the mid-Atlantic. The area was called “The Harlem of the South” because famous Black performers would frequent its entertainment spaces.
The Ville in St. Louis, Missouri once stood as the fortress of the city’s Black middle class. Due to segregation and racist laws, the Ville was home to important institutions for Black folks in St. Louis, such as a teaching hospital.