Name/Title
The Little Booker StoreDescription
The Patterson-Logan Grocery Store in the Washington Heights Neighborhood is one of the few surviving buildings of its type in Charlotte. African Americans owned and operated grocery stores throughout the black residential enclaves of the city in the first half of the twentieth century. Most were destroyed after legal racial segregation was dismantled in the 1960’s. Black entrepreneurs had limited opportunities to own businesses in the Jim Crow South. They could be lawyers, dentists, and doctors. They could establish insurance agencies and sell real estate. They could operate barber shops, hair salons, and funeral homes. They could be peddlers or artisans, such as bricklayers, plasterers, and carpenters.
Grocery stores, like the Patterson-Logan, were also a mainstay of black entrepreneurship in racially segregated Charlotte. A book published in 1915 highlighted Charlotte’s black businessmen. It listed twenty-four proprietors of black-owned grocery stores. In February 1930, more than one hundred “negro merchants” gathered at a banquet to protest what they regarded as unfair competition from chain stores. Many of the attendees were grocers. “Local grocery stores,” writes historian Lisa Tolbert, “were the most common small business run by black merchants.”Address
Street
515 Booker AvenueCity
CharlotteState/Province
NCZip/Postal Code
28216Country
United States
