2023 24 Black Pages FINAL 2 - Flipbook - Page 93
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200 Years of African American History: The Pain, Plight, Progress & Promise
The history of African American owned businesses in Middle Georgia, including the counties of
Bibb, Houston, Baldwin, Laurens, Jones, Monroe, Wilkinson, Twiggs, and Crawford, illustrates the
perseverance and tenacity of Black businesspeople despite enduring slavery, Jim Crow, and
financial discrimination. Let’s explore the distinct phases of Black entrepreneurship in the region,
comprising the era before emancipation, the Golden Age of Black Business, the Great Depression,
the Civil Rights era, the emergence and assimilation of Black businesses into mainstream
corporate America.
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Slave Population - 1860
In 2023, Macon, Georgia, celebrates its 200th anniversary as a city. During Macon's founding, the cotton
boom was already in full force. Over half of the Middle Georgia region was inhabited by African
Americans, the vast majority of whom were enslaved in the cotton industry.
Cotton Avenue functioned as the route for transporting cotton from nearby plantations to boats on the
Ocmulgee River, which then delivered it to various locations. In an ironic twist, this same street, later
renamed D.T. Walton Sr. Way in honor of a Black dentist and Civil Rights activist, would evolve into the
heart of the Macon Black business community and the focal point of its entrepreneurial endeavors.
In 1860 more than half of the entire population of
Bibb, Houston, Baldwin, Laurens, Jones, Monroe,
Wilkinson, Twiggs, Crawford was enslaved. (Peach
did not exist yet)
Percent Enslaved
93
56%
Enslaved population
Free Black population
White population
55,384
329
42,712
Total population
98,427
