Black in Business

PAST & PRESENT BLACK IN BUSINESS

Black labor and capital from northern White entrepreneurs resurrected Hampton after the area was burned to the ground by Confederate forces. As most of the White inhabitants fled, Hampton and Yorktown were repopulated by newly freed men and women who purchased land and earned a living to avoid returning to their former slaveholders. Hastily constructed villages housed 40,000 of the formerly enslaved. Some Blacks acquired skills that allowed them to earn extra money and offered less scrutiny from Whites.

BLACK IN BUSINESS

Hampton Roads was also revitalized by Black watermen who to this day are critical to the region’s fishing and oystering industries

As a maritime hub, Hampton Roads and its waterways represented opportunity and freedom for free and enslaved Blacks. For thousands of years, Native Americans used these waterways as their primary means of transportation. Before the American Revolution, Norfolk served as the nation’s third largest port. As Hampton Roads’ maritime dominance and dependence on tobacco grew, so did the region’s Black population. A deepwater port, Hampton Roads could handle large ships, an economically invaluable feature. By the Civil War, Hampton Roads emerged as a primary transportation and economic center and offered greater employment opportunities.

Although relatively few in number and despite political, legal, and economic restrictions, early Black entrepreneurs established successful businesses and provided independent resources to support Black communities. Free Blacks comprised most of these early business owners, although several enslaved or formerly enslaved Blacks established businesses as well. In 1889 Peoples Building and Loan Association was founded in Hampton, the first Black bank in the community. It was headed by Reverend Richard Spiller and it served the community for 100 years.25 In 1904 Reverend W.B. and Mrs. Anne Weaver founded the Weaver Orphan Home for women and children.

From the outset, Black businesses and professionals in Hampton Roads were important to philanthropic efforts. Williamsburg business owner Sam Harris worked tirelessly to support Public School No. 2, the city‘s school for Black children. Born into slavery, Harris opened a “Cheap Store” in the post-Civil War period and became one of the city’s wealthiest business owners, Black or White. Over three decades, Harris built an empire that included a stable, barber shop, coal and lumber yards, blacksmithery, saloons, and a ship. According to the biographer, Julia Woodbridge Oxrieder, Sam Harris loaned money to the president of The College of William and Mary and entered into a real estate partnership with a judge.26

James A. Fields of Newport News, who with his brother escaped slavery and was considered contraband, sought refuge at Fort Monroe during the Civil War. Fields became a successful realtor, owning 15 properties in Newport News. In 1908, Fields allowed four doctors to use his home as a hospital. For two years, Whitaker Memorial Hospital was the only hospital for Black people in Newport News. In Williamsburg, the Black community formed the Williamsburg School Improvement League in 1906 to purchase books, pay for teachers and provide extra funds for schools for Black children that the city refused to support.27

Blacks in Hampton Roads worked to advance the political interests of the Black community as well as their own. In the 1850s, formerly enslaved brothers Daniel, Robert and Frederick Norton, escaped Virginia and traveled to New York and Massachusetts. They returned to Virginia after the war ended and were elected to the Virginia General Assembly

Norfolk Business owner Henry Omohundro reads to his children. Source: Rose, 2000