Black businesses were essential to facilitating the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South between the 1910s and 1960s. Yet, the traditional narrative of the migration as a movement of laborers seeking high-wage jobs obscures the history of African Americans who moved north or west seeking entrepreneurial opportunities.
This story is featured in my book, “Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit,” which will be published April 8, 2025.
Between 1910 and 1970, more than 6 million African Americans left the South for destinations such as Detroit, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. This mass exodus had, and continues to have, enormous political, cultural and social implications for our nation. Migrants were seeking true freedom, including full political and economic citizenship – things they had not been able to achieve in the Jim Crow South.
As a historian of Black business, I wanted to know more about those who migrated to Detroit with the aim of working for themselves – as opposed to getting a job in Henry Ford’s auto factories.
The experiences and trajectories of these migrant entrepreneurs can tell us much about the possibilities for Black social and economic advancement through business in the United States.
Leaving the South
Pioneering African American historian Carter G. Woodson, father of Black History Month, pointed to the lack of business opportunities in describing the causes of the mass migration that began in the mid-1910s.
“In most parts of the South the Negroes are still unable to become landowners or successful business men,” Woodson wrote in 1918. “Conditions and customs have reserved these spheres for the whites.”
Of course, African Americans did establish businesses in the South, sometimes becoming quite wealthy. But there was always the threat of lynchings and other forms of racial violence for those who defied the racial caste system of Jim Crow. The destruction of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a well-known story. But there were many other incidents of white supremacist terrorism targeting Black businesses owners.
In fact, many Black entrepreneurs pointed out that the danger of racial violence was a deciding factor in their moving to Detroit. This included people such as Willis Eugene Smith, who established a funeral home, and Berry Gordy Sr., who operated a grocery store and contracting business in the city. In his 1979 memoir, “Movin’ Up: Pop Gordy Tells His Story,” Gordy told how he decided to leave Georgia for Detroit after local whites began pestering him about a large check he received as payment for goods he had sold. Gordy’s sister warned him: “You fool ’round here, they’re liable to beat us out of it, take all our money.”
Many African American entrepreneurs who participated in the Great Migration questioned whether they could experience enduring upward mobility through business if they stayed in the South.
As early as 1917, the director of the Detroit Urban League, Forrester B. Washington, reported “receiving many letters from [southern] Negro business men asking information regarding the real situation here.”
Migrant entrepreneurs’ services essential
Many of those Southern entrepreneurs decided to move north. Detroit’s African American population increased 611% between 1910 and 1920 to 40,838, making it home to one of the largest populations of African Americans in the country.
While Southern migrants saw Detroit as a promised land, segregation in the North was alive and well. There were many negative aspects to racial segregation, but it also created entrepreneurial opportunities, as Black newcomers needed the services of Black-owned businesses such as barbershops and hair salons, hotels and restaurants. These businesses sustained the growing African American community and made it feasible for Southern migrants to settle permanently in the city. By 1926, 85% of Detroit’s Black population were migrants, according to “The Negro in Detroit,” a report produced by the Detroit Bureau of Governmental Research.
Some businesses made their Southern roots explicit in their advertising. A 1933 advertisement for the Creole Hand Laundry, located at 542 Watson St., stated: “From New Orleans, La.”
Migrant entrepreneurs tapped into newly created niche markets, catering to the tastes of Southern transplants. For example, the Home Milling Company was established in Detroit around 1922 and processed hominy grits, cornmeal and whole wheat flour in a plant at Catherine and Russell streets. Home Milling’s managers had plans to expand the business in order to supply Black-owned bakeries in Detroit and satiate the tastes of newcomers.
“There is quite a large demand of the products on the part of Southern residents in the City and the concern is doing a fair volume of business,” stated the 1926 “The Negro in Detroit” report. “Their cornmeal is made from specially selected white corn out of deference to the palate of Southern Negroes who do not relish meal made from yellow corn.”
Supreme Linen and Laundry was another company that provided essential goods and services to Detroit’s growing number of Black-owned restaurants and hotels. Established by native Mississippians Fred and Callie Allen in 1929, the company supplied uniforms, tablecloths and napkins to businesses across the city and housed a commercial laundry.
The Detroit Tribune, CC BY-ND
A mecca for Black-owned business
By the 1940s, Detroit had earned the reputation of having more Black-owned businesses than any other city in the United States. This thriving business community comprised mainly Southern migrants.
Black business women, particularly those affiliated with the Detroit Housewives’ League, were instrumental in facilitating the growth of the Black-owned business community in the 1930s and 1940s. The league was established with the goal of boosting Black business in the city and grew to have over 10,000 members. The organization promoted Black businesses by hosting annual exhibitions, producing and distributing informational publications, and sponsoring educational programs for entrepreneurs and consumers.
Building a successful Black business community in Detroit in the first half of the 20th century was certainly not without obstacles. These included retail and residential segregation, lending discrimination and violence, among others. Yet, migrant entrepreneurs facilitated the migration to the city and transformed the landscape of Detroit.
In 1925, the city’s Black population was 85,000. That blossomed to 300,000 by 1950.
Detroit’s historic Black business community was concentrated in adjoining neighborhoods called Black Bottom and Paradise Valley.
Later, this area was targeted by urban planning initiatives, including freeway construction and urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, the success of this business community was cut short. State-sponsored redevelopment wiped out much of the wealth Black entrepreneurs hoped to pass down to their children, contributing to the racial wealth gap.
This destruction was a harsh blow to Southern migrant entrepreneurs who had relocated to Detroit seeking economic independence, upward mobility and other markers of freedom.
Read more of our stories about Detroit.
