The Rise of Durham's Black Wall Street: The History of the South's Most Prosperous African American Business District during Jim Crow

In the wake of the Civil War, African Americans attained freedom from chattel slavery, but continued to suffer discrimination both legal in the form of Jim Crow laws and de facto in the continued perception among the vast majority of white Americans that African Americans were at the very least inferior and at the most a constant dangerous presence in their communities who must be carefully controlled.

Durham, North Carolina's "Black Wall Street" exemplifies the flourishing of Black enterpr...