A Black entrepreneur could build a large multibusiness enterprise despite Jim Crow barriers

Evidence

Elmore Bolling was a one-man economy in Lowndesboro, where the family lived. He had a large house, a general store, a delivery service, a catering company, and a gas station, all of which were located on a property he leased off Highway 80, one of the most traveled routes between Selma and Montgomery; he grew cotton, corn, and sugarcane and owned a small fleet of trucks. At his peak, Bolling employed as many as forty people, all of them Black like him. And his family estimates that he had as much as 40,000 in the bank and more than 5,000 in physical assets, together worth more than $500,000 in today’s dollars. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 882

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete instance of Black economic self-sufficiency in the Jim Crow era, echoes Black Wall Street and other enclave economies. — connects to: Segregating a hearing room mirrors the Jim Crow bus seating regime — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 76