Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    African Americans in Memphis
    African Americans in Memphis
    African Americans in Memphis
    Ebook212 pages56 minutes

    African Americans in Memphis

    By Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Memphis has been an important city for African Americans in the South since the Civil War. They migrated from within Tennessee and from surrounding states to the urban crossroads in large numbers after emancipation, seeking freedom from the oppressive race relations of the rural South. Images of America: African Americans in Memphis chronicles this regional experience from the 19th century to the 1950s. Historic black Memphians were railroad men, bricklayers, chauffeurs, dressmakers, headwaiters, and beauticians, as well as businessmen, teachers, principals, barbers, preachers, musicians, nurses, doctors, Republican leaders, and Pullman car porters. During the Jim Crow era, they established social, political, economic, and educational institutions that sustained their communities in one of the most rigidly segregated cities in America. The dynamic growth and change of the post-World War II South set the stage for a new, authentic, black urban culture defined by Memphis gospel, blues, and rhythm and blues music; black radio; black newspapers; and religious pageants.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439622711
    African Americans in Memphis
    Author

    Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins

    Author Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins is an associate professor of art history at the University of Memphis. Her most recent book is A Kingly Craft: Art and Leadership in Ethiopia, which was published by the University Press of America in 2008.

    Related to African Americans in Memphis

    Related ebooks

    Ethnic Studies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for African Americans in Memphis

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      African Americans in Memphis - Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins

      Memphis.

      INTRODUCTION

      During the Civil War, escaped slaves fled rural plantations, seeking refuge in Memphis. By the war’s end, 17,000 blacks had settled in the city, numbers too significant for whites to ignore. Violence erupted in the race riot of 1866. White mobs went on a three-day rampage, killing 46 blacks, raping black women, and burning churches, homes, and schools.

      It was not enough to drive the newly freed away. The emancipated continued to set down roots in Memphis, creating the communities that sustained them after slavery. They founded neighborhoods and proceeded to build homes, churches, schools, and cemeteries in which to bury their dead with respect. Benevolent societies were organized to care for the elderly and orphans, while hospitals were constructed to provide health care. Black newspapers and journalists reported and discussed information important to the fledgling communities.

      A class of professionals was drawn to the largest urban center in the Mid-South, providing services to Memphis’s growing black population as lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, teachers and principals, trained musicians, and educated clergy. Most migrant men found work as laborers, while women found jobs as domestic workers. Some were able to move up economically by establishing barbershops and hair salons, working as tailors or seamstresses, operating a saloon, grocery store, or boardinghouse, and buying real estate.

      Black Memphians struggled to procure their civil rights. In 1892, the lynching of three black businessmen drove Ida B. Wells to publicly condemn this type of domestic terrorism. She never returned to Memphis after her life was threatened, and many others followed suit. The violence of the post-Reconstruction South caused another black female leader in Memphis, Julia Britton Hooks, to write an influential essay entitled The Duty of the Hour, published in the 1895 Afro-American Encyclopedia. Julia Hooks used the example of Memphis to urge African Americans to stand fast in the face of racial violence.

      By the end of the 19th century, African Americans had won hard-fought victories and achievements for their race. Memphis was home to a new, urban, 20th-century community. Much of this early vibrant African American culture was centered on Beale Street, the epicenter of black political, social, religious, and economic life. Up until the late 1940s, Beale Street thrived with its churches, banks, barbershops, and doctor’s offices; clothing stores, theaters, restaurants, saloons, and drugstores; as well as gambling dens, juke joints, fraternal clubs, and entertainment agencies. Robert R. Church, W. C. Handy, and George W. Lee were the proclaimed leaders of Beale, but it was equally the prized possession of its sporting men, showgirls, cooks and maids, street corner preachers, gamblers, voodoo practitioners, and roustabouts. Most of the early black businesses in Memphis first opened in the Beale Street area, such as Solvent Bank and Trust Company in 1906, Hooks Brothers Photographers in 1907, and Emma Wilburn Funeral Home in 1914. Through it all, African American life and culture was anchored by Beale Street Baptist Church. The Mother Church still overlooks the famous street from her twin towers and stained-glass windows at 169 Beale Street.

      The 1940s and 1950s brought changes that prepared the way for the civil rights movement. African Americans in Memphis participated in World War II and the Korean War, and benefitted from their service to the country. While they lived in one of the most segregated cities in the United States, black men and women challenged racial, class, and gender inequalities. They protested police brutality and job discrimination, and began to campaign for political office.

      While African Americans in Memphis may have been physically locked in, so to speak, segregation failed to reign in black culture. Black cultural development in Memphis reflected the black struggle. The phenomenon of WDIA radio, rhythm and blues music, the literary and visual arts, gospel, schools, neighborhoods, clubs, and everyday lifestyle in general were all influenced by an increasing political consciousness. This book is a visual history, a look at how African Americans in Memphis lived through emancipation, segregation, and the onset of the civil rights movement.

      One

      MEMPHIS PIONEERS

      SLAVES, FREE PEOPLE, AND MIGRANTS

      During the early 1800s, Memphis developed into an important destination for black and white migrants. The city’s growth as the political and economic hub of the upper Mississippi Valley was tied to cotton, slavery, and transportation. By the mid-19th century, Memphis was the largest inland slave-trading center in the South. Black labor was critical to the success of Memphis as a trading center. There were about 3,338 slaves in the city by 1860 and 198 freed blacks. The bulk of the slave population in West Tennessee worked in the rural counties surrounding Memphis. The urban slave population in the city worked as laborers, draymen, mechanics, craftsmen, domestic servants, cooks, and washerwomen. (Memphis Room.)

      The Civil War was the catalyst that dramatically changed the demographics of the Memphis population. Escaped slaves fled rural plantations, seeking refuge in Memphis. By the war’s end, 17,000 blacks had settled in the city. Many of the new migrants settled in the downtown area around Linden, Beale, Turley, Causey, and St. Martin Streets. Some whites referred to this new community as the Negro Quarters. Here were located all the elements of community building, including hotels, groceries, churches, and schools alongside poor, overcrowded, and unsanitary living conditions. Blacks were often at odds with the Irish immigrant population living in the same neighborhoods in similar conditions. With the addition of African American soldiers serving with the 3rd U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, the mix was ripe for explosion. Violence erupted in the race riot of 1866. (Private collection.)

      The story of Lucy Jane Wright and her family illustrates the multiethnic history of Indian, black, and white relations in early-19th-century Memphis. The Wright family is one of the earliest documented families of color with roots in Memphis, arriving before the Civil War. Lucy Jane Wright’s mother, Ann, was Afro-Indian. The family remained in Memphis after the forced exodus of Native Americans

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1