diversity
The Trailblazers

by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: From the time Africans first came to America in 1619, there is evidence of their significant contributions to the built environment of the New World, notes Stephen Kliment in this second installment to his series on diversity in American architecture. He traces that trajectory to the current era, including specific tribute to six noted architects of the 20th century.

Below is a synopsis of the article. Click on the PDF link in the right column for the full text.

How far back to trace the emergence of a black architecture profession is a matter for debate. The first blacks arrived in America in late August 1619 and were identified as indentured servants. Little is known about who they were, their skills, or what craft they practiced.

Nonetheless, the status, roles, and contributions of African Americans may be grouped roughly into three phases

• Colonial and antebellum (1619–1863)
• Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the rise of the professional architect (1863–1945)
• Post-World War II, civil rights, and post-civil rights (1945–present).

While in servitude, black men (exclusively men, apparently) certainly worked in skilled building trades, which also would include the responsibilities of detail design. Such abilities would have set them apart in both status and privilege, especially in the 18th century, before racial role became dogma. This skilled workmanship extended to buildings across the growing nation, including the White House and Capitol.

While in servitude, black men certainly worked in skilled building trades, which also would include the responsibilities of detail design

As a summary, the contributions of black slaves to American design and construction reflected:

• Broad ranges of workmanship, depending on materials, tools, attitudes, and freedom to improvise
• Much talent unproven because meager resources restricted the flowering of skills
• Signs of professionalism displayed by the leading black building craftsmen.

Varied contributions
With the end of the Civil War, the opportunities for those craftsmen declined sharply due to the influx of immigrant carpenters, masons, metalworkers, painters, and other craftsmen; the import, from northern states and Europe, of manufactured building products such as bricks, precut lumber, and miscellaneous metal products, which hitherto had been produced on site; and last not least the limitation some southern states placed on the right to contract with blacks for construction.

Despite passage of a battery of Reconstruction laws designed in part to establish guidelines for the rights and treatment of the newly freed African Americans, longstanding discriminatory attitudes held by whites towards blacks (and eventually enacted in Southern states in a series of so-called Jim Crow laws), and practices dealing with segregation of blacks in public places, schools, and vehicles held black architects and builders back well into the 20th century.

The rise of academic development
Yet, by the 1870s, a movement was under way, triggered mostly by black activists, to advance the intellectual underpinnings of a black society.

Also in those years was born the stress on academic development to reverse centuries of intellectual suppression. The American Negro Academy was born in 1897, with W. E. B. Du Bois' backing. Black architects and builders fit into this framework marginally at first, held back not by lack of skill but by the spirit of the patron. The patron not only provided the capital to erect a new building, but would have to entrust the commission to a racial group whose performance was untried and whose members had to compete with the white architect who was part of the patrons’ social circle.

The American Negro Academy was born in 1897, with W. E. B. Du Bois' backing

Given these barriers, the years from the 1870s through the 1920s turned out to be surprisingly productive for the emerging black design professional. The reason is plain. African Americans, newly emancipated but suspecting with reason that the civil rights legislation passed by Republican post-emancipation congresses would soon flounder in a sea of state-passed segregation laws, decided on a line of attack of solidarity and self help.

Solidarity and self help
The result was a flowering of construction financed, designed, built, and occupied by blacks. The participation of black designers, craftsmen, and black-owned banks came about in two settings.

New towns. The first was in the new towns and communities formed by freed blacks, placing upon the newly arrived inhabitants the task of building a community from the ground up. Among these communities were Nicodemus, Kan.; Boley, Okla. (plus more than two dozen other towns in what was a territory through 1907); Eatonville, Fla.; Mound Bayou, Miss.; and Hobson City, Ala.. These so-called “Black Towns” later disappeared—weakened, ironically, by growing integration in the mid-20th century. But, in their heyday, these towns provided dignity, work, and self-expression to black families newly released from bondage.

Old neighborhoods. The other post-emancipation phenomenon was concentration of black families in certain neighborhoods in some major cities of the South. Streets came to be associated in those cities with black populations, such as Memphis’ Beale Street, Jackson’s Farish Street, Chattanooga’s Ninth Street, Richmond’s Jackson Ward, and above all Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, which came to be known as Sweet Auburn, and contains among other monuments the old and new buildings for Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Reverends Martin Luther King Senior was pastor and Martin Luther King Jr. preached.