The Airolina Young Aviators Program (AYA) was created by as part of Airolina Flight & Music Support, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. AYA is an aviation STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) program for students ages 14-17 often from low-income families. The program provides professional introductory flight training, mentorship and a Basic (Private) Pilot Certificate.

Photograph: Mrs. Proctor, shown here in 1974, was the founder of Proctor and Gardner Advertising.
(Chicago Sun-Times)

Barbara Proctor, the first Black woman to own an ad agency, dies at 86 December 19, 2018.
Proctor vowed never to negatively portray women or black people.

“As we know, the end of slavery didn’t necessarily mean the birth of freedom. It meant the birth of a new kind of bondage.”
Straight Razors and Social Justice: The Empowering Evolution of Black Barbershops

Image: Asheville, NC., Candy Land Store, Eagle Street, 1929-1930.

Source: Digitalnc-Special Collections, UNC Asheville.
.

EAGLE STREET THE MECCA OF BLACK BUSINESSES
by Henry Robinson - The Urban News
February 11, 2007

Photograph: Board of directors of the Coleman manufacturing co., Concord, N.C., the only Negro cotton mill in the U.S.
1899?
Reportedly displayed as part of the American Negro exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

The Coleman Manufacturing Company Building. On February 8, 1898, the cornerstone of the 80×120 feet, three-story brick building was laid "with Masonic honors." Several four-room mill houses were built by April 1900, and were rented out at about $3 per month to the workers of the mill.

"Pictured is Community Grocery at 901 Oberlin Road, 10 August 1972.
This small store building is the longest running and sole remaining retail establishment in the community of Oberlin.

It was built sometime between 1901 and 1906, possibly for cobbler Lewis T. Smith. In 1912 the store was deeded to trustees of the Oberlin Baptist Church and later operated by Harry Ligon and Robert Grant as a soda shop.

On January 29, 2021 DeBerry’s Upholstery in Laurinburg, NC, owned and operated by Rembert DeBerry, celebrated its 51st year of business .
The owner’s son, Quinyon DeBerry, says it has only made it this far because of his father’s work ethic and determination to provide for his family.

DeShazor's Beauty College owned and operated by 'Madam' Jacqueline DeShazor -809 Fayetteville Street in the Durham Hayti Community.

​

Words on image: Durham, NC- By 1911, John Merrick, along with C.C. Spaulding and Dr. Aaron Moore, established the Durham Knitting Mill (also called the Durham Textile Mill) at the southwest corner of South Elm and Fayetteville Streets.

Photograph: Mill interior, 1911: Durham, NC.

Image source: Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham.

was born January 25, 1872 in Glen Alpine, Burke County, North Carolina. After serving as a member of the Buffalo Soldiers, the segregated 9th Cavalry unit of the U.S. Army that fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. His arrival and real estate experience learned in Chicago was a harmonious fit for Asheville’s real estate boom of the early 20th century, leading to the city’s first subdivision for Black families on the location of today’s Burton Street (originally named Buffalo Street) neighborhood.

​

​

​

Greensboro, North Carolina

Gladys Knight married William McDowell in 2001.
They have seventeen grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren between them.

Knight and McDowell reside in Canton, Haywood County, North Carolina, where they own a community center that was formerly a school attended by McDowell.

Image: Left image: Diners and staff inside the Half Moon Cafeteria in Greensboro on September 21, 1948.
Right image: An exterior view taken from the street of the Half Moon Cafeteria in Greensboro.
The Half Moon Café served local college students until 1939 when it was demolished for construction of the Hayes Taylor YMCA.

its grand opening was August 4, 1963.

​

​

Hattie Juanita Wooten Lewis was the owner of the Lewis Hotel that was located at 218-220 East Cabarrus Street in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hattie’s husband, Needham Lewis, assisted with building the hotel until he left for other opportunities in Washington, DC. Hattie's nieces, Gloria Griswold Jeffers, Fannie Griswold and Beadie Lucille Griswold, moved from their home in Dudley, NC, to assist their aunt in managing the hotel while attending classes at Shaw University.

Blount Street Barber Shop

Photo: Workers constructing A Ship's Rudder

Mr. Hull Anderson, a freed former enslaved African American ship builder, from Washington, NC, Beaufort County.

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Durham is remembering its native son, John "Skeepie" Scarborough, who passed away at the age of 83.

Skeepie was a pioneering businessman as the fourth-generation owner and president of Scarborough and Hargett Celebration of Life Center.

Joe Louis Dudley, Sr., Co-Founder of the DudleyQ+ Hair Products Brand.
Dudley Products Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of hair and skin care products for the African American community.

Date of photograph unknown

Pictured is the family of John D. Lewis, News and Observer's 1960 Family of the Year.

J. D. Lewis was a broadcasting pioneer who broke racial barriers over a lengthy career at Capitol Broadcasting, the parent company of WRAL TV.

Image description: Mrs. Tulia Turner sitting on the railing of the porch of her home, the John T. and Mary Turner House in Oberlin Village, Raleigh, NC May 25, 1983.
Image credit: N&O negative collection, State Archives of North Carolina.

Kathleen Featherstone Williams is a member of the Featherstone Clan and a native of Asheville, N.C.

She was born on November 1, 1920. She graduated with honors in 1938 from Stephens-Lee High School in Asheville. She went on to the Stewarts Beauty School in Asheville, graduating in 1940.

Elevated view of East Cabarrus Street in Raleigh, July 1961.
Lincoln Theatre, center frame, was one of Raleigh’s only Black owned and operated movie houses. Opening in 1939 at 126 East Cabarrus Street, the theatre was operated by Bijou Amusement Company who owned theatres in several locations across the southern United States.

Martha Louise Lea Little (1904-1983) and her husband, Roy Charles Little (c. 1893-1938), owned “Little Service Station” in Yanceyville, NC, one of early successful local Black businesses.

Established in 1935 by Sadie Mack and Edward D. London in Greensboro, North Carolina

​

​

Photo:
The Mayor Orren James Groceries in downtown Princeville. Image from the State Archives.

On February 20, 1885, 22 years after Emancipation, freedmen in Edgecombe County incorporated Princeville, the state’s first black town.

McRae’s was listed in “The Negro Motorist Green Book” from 1947 to 1955.

Mechanics & Farmers Bank provides a source of money for Blacks

On Sunday, 08.01.1909, Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Durham, N. C., opened for business. It is an African American savings and loan institution.

​

In 1910, Mr. Willie became one of the first Black businessowners in Southport

Barbara Proctor, the first Black woman to own an ad agency, dies at 86 December 19, 2018.
Proctor vowed never to negatively portray women or black people

Radio station owner Mütter D. Evans was born in Williamston, North Carolina to Dallas Bryant and Mable C. Evans. Evans was raised in the late 1950s in rural eastern North Carolina. In 1971, she enrolled in Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“When it's in your blood, it's stuck. You can't get rid of it,” Ellison said aboard the trawler he named after his son, Kayden, and daughter, Kaizlee.

Photograph taken in 1940

North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs
Photograph: Sixtieth Anniversary Convention of the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs, Page 27.

October 20, 1898, John Merrick and six fellow investors met in the office of Dr. Aaron Moore to organize the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association.

Pictured here is the Orgen Printing Company that was located at 115 East Hargett Street, Raleigh, NC, ca. 1917.
This was Raleigh's first Black American weekly newspaper.

The Orgen Printing Company was established in 1916 by Lawrence Macauga Cheek, he is standing on the far right leaning on a countertop.

It was originally owned by Thomas Payne and managed by Thomas H. Knight, “a well-known railroad man.”
In its first year the hotel hosted weddings, parties, and organizational meetings, many of them reported in the national African American newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier.2. It was also called Payne’s Hotel and it appeared in the Green Book from 1939-1941, 1947-1950, 1954-1957, 1959, and 1962-1967. It was located at 417 N. 6th Street in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Photographed February of 1971 by photographer and documentarian Alex Harris

1940's , Pilgram Funeral Home. Henderson County, NC.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baker Barber Collection- Henderson County , NC, Public Library.
.

Another businessman who got his start during the 1930’s had an enduring influence on the Hendersonville community. The man was James Pilgrim. After graduating from Stephens-Lee High School in Asheville, N.C., in 1934,

Miss Quessie, as she liked to be called, was a driver for 14 years, from 1954 to 1968.

Photographs: The Carolinian Newspaper
Oral History Interview date: May 17, 1997. - Interviewer: Kathryn Tyson
Source: Digital NC/North Carolina Collections.
Contributing Institution: Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.)

Richard Burton Fitzgerald was born free (c.1843) in New Castle County, Delaware, to Thomas and Sarah (Burton) Fitzgerald.

His father Thomas was Mulatto of African and Irish ancestry, and manumitted from slavery by a White father and master. His mother was White and of English ancestry; she decided to raise her sons within the community of free people of color.

By researcher Lisa Y. Henderson - Black Wide- Awake

Miss Emma Ruffin, Ruffin Bros. Grocery, Murfreesboro, NC. For almost 60 years, the
Ruffin sisters and brothers - Mary Lou, Emma, Samuel, Jacob, Jr. - worked side by side
running their family business Ruffin Brother's Grocery and Furniture Mart.

"The Ruffin Brothers Grocery Historic Marker.
The dedication ceremony is Sunday, February 24th at 4PM. The store is located at 1104 East Main Street, Murfreesboro, NC. The marker will be placed next to the store building. The land on which the store stands has been in the Ruffin family since 1926."

North Carolina's racist segregation laws pushed Black citizens to form their own businesses and modes of transpiration. In Winston Salem, NC one such company was both, a business that provided transportation, The Safe Bus Company. We #NCMAAHC have put together two articles for you to learn about the Safe Bus Company.

Sarah Gammon Bickford was born enslaved on Christmas Day in 1855 on the Blair Plantation near Greensboro, NC. She was a Black chambermaid who became an administrator and entrepreneur. In the 1870s, her skills led her to the gold fields of Montana.. She ultimately became sole owner of the Virginia City Water Company, becoming the first and only woman in Montana—and probably the nation’s only female African American—to own a utility.
In 2012, the State of Montana honored her by inducting her into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans.

Thought to be cobbler Sherman M. Jones (1865-1932), standing at the door of his shop at 212 East Davie Street in Raleigh, NC. c. 1926.

Mr. Jones is listed in Raleigh city directories as the proprietor of the shoe shop.

Image description: ca. late 1920's early 1930's - Portrait of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (SFCWC).
Front Row, left to right Margaret Murray Washington (Mrs. Booker T. Washington), Mary McLeod Bethune, Lucy Craft Laney, Mary Jackson McCrorey.
Second Row, left to right Janie Porter Barrett, M.L. Crosthwaite, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Eugenia Burns Hope.

Asheville, NC- Photo by Young's Photo Studio- Students of Stewarts Beauty School, Nov. 1954.
Source: Digitalnc-Special Collections, UNC Asheville.

Durham, NC. - Photograph of Tapp’s Grocery & Market.

Before the Chicken Hut there was the Chicken Box, and before the Chicken Box there was Tapp’s Grocery & Market.

J. D. Lewis' Teenage Frolics, which aired from 1958 to 1983, stayed on the air longer than any other local teen dance program. A graduate of Morehouse College and a World War II veteran, John Davis (J. D.) Lewis, Jr. started his radio career at Raleigh's WRAL in 1947 as a morning deejay playing gospel music.

Date of photograph unknown- Murfreesboro, NC- The Cozy Tavern was a Black owned and run restaurant on East Main Street. Mr. Eugene Reid ran it for many years. It closed in the 1980s.

Source: Murfreesboro Black History Project - Cultivator BookMobile-Store

The Delany Building was erected at 133 E. Hargett St. in 1926 by Dr. Lemuel T. Delany. He was the older brother of Sadie and Bessie Delany, the famous centenarian authors of “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First Hundred Years.”

This photograph is attributed to being that troop. Immediately they encountered white American opposition, but troops continued to meet in increasing numbers.

Ca. 1939, The Harlem Barbershop on Hillsboro Street, Oxford, NC., Granville county.
Mr. William Mallory, proprietor.

The Hotel Alexander on McDowell Street was the only hotel serving Blacks in Charlotte, NC during the 1940s. Black salesmen, families, and celebrities stayed there and it served as a center for the social life of the community.

The Kilby Hotel and Arcade (1913-2014) on Washington Street became the entertainment center for African Americans. Many musicians with gigs at the hotel, or who were traveling through stayed at the hotel and performed there. Because of enforced segregation laws, this was a safe hotel for Black Americans.

Operated 1879-1930 by The N.C. Industrial Assoc. to accommodate state's Black citizens because of the State of North Carolina's enforcement of segregation laws.

Durham, North Carolina

The Peoples Bank--Kinston, NC

Historical Background
Kinstons principal black commercial district has traditionally been located along Queen Street south of King Street, and it is in this section that the firm later chartered as The Peoples Bank had its beginnings.

​

The Black Beach Resort That Almost Changed North Carolina

A first-class seaside destination for Black southerners opened just north of Wrightsville Beach in 1923, but lasted only three years. The short life of the Shell Island Beach Resort still holds lessons for today.

The Tod R. Edwards family of Siler City, an African American family, operated a very successful jewelry store from 1905 until 1961.

Tod R. Edwards moved from Bynum to Siler City, where, in 1895, he opened a barbershop. When business was slow, he passed the time with his hobby – tinkering with watches and clocks using
tools he made himself.

​

Warren Clay Coleman,was born enslaved on March 28 in 1849–he died on March 31, in 1904
Warrens mother Roxanna Coleman was enslaved and owned by Daniel Coleman, Sr. of Concord, NC. His father was Rufus Clay Barringer, a Confederate general. Warren also had two brothers, Thomas Clay and Joseph Smith.

In the early 1900s they walked across the old bridge and picked up dirty clothing from residents in New Bern.

"Warren Wheeler was the first African American to own an airline in 1969 when he founded Wheeler Airlines. The airline flew more than 40,000 passengers annually.

Whitted’s Store was a cornerstone of Mebane’s historic West End

William Swann and Prentice Prince opened the station in 1954, and it quickly became part of the community.

Mrs. Willie Ford Hennessee

Mrs. Willie Ford Hennessee a native of Columbus, Ohio moved to North Carolina to attend Allen Home High School in Asheville, NC, and graduated from Allen Home High School.

She attended St. Augustine College in Raleigh, N.C. but left to attend and graduate from Poro Beauty College, Chicago, Ill.

The Interior of the YMI (Young Men’s Institute) Drug Store,
Asheville, NC, 1910.

Left to Right: Thomas Moore,
Dr. Jones, Dr. Torrence.