Off Main Street: Black Space, Agency, And Community Building In The Jim Crow South

Dating back to mid-twentieth century, Americans have held a nostalgic view of their small towns and Main Streets, regularly depicted as ‘fair’ spaces. This association is the reason “Main Street” was pitted against “Wall Street” both during the Occupy Movement, and decades before, during 1930s labor fights between railroad workers and owners.[1]  Main Street functions as a trope for the space of the 99%, the everyday citizen’s path to the American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A place where everything one needs in terms of social, civic, professional, economic, and spiritual support can be attained: consumer goods, hair and beauty establishments, church, a beer or a meal, a chat with the mayor or civic elders, entertainment, bank loans, education, health care, funeral services, and communications—from the U.S. Mail to telegraph stations to telephone booths.

Through daily participation in the Main Street space and the conversation, society, and communal membership it offered, small town America enfranchised its rural citizens. But we know there is much to question about this rosy image because the period that witnessed America’s small town boom was concurrent with the specter of Jim Crow’s ascent.[2] Between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, as white wealth fueled the prosperous commercial and industrial development of villages and towns across the nation, white American leadership adopted laws and policies across the country that suppressed access to those spaces by people based on racist concepts of fitness. As practiced, this was legal and institutionalized racism. To Black, Indigenous, Asian, and recent immigrants who did not fit standards of whiteness, Main Street was not a universally accessible space of opportunity. These individuals largely had to produce livelihoods through their own agency. They became sellers, consumers, and makers of goods and services, and cultivated their own social capital to ensure their survival and prosperity. 

Logistically, this meant that Black people had to micromanage their trips to Main Street with extra care. Most of what was on offer in terms of food, water, and public facilities were for whites only. If there was no black restaurant in town, visitors had to pack all their day’s provisions and hope they could find a place to relieve themselves when the time came. Travel by white-owned ‘public’ transportation was always a gamble; many Black folks were forced to walk into town from their farms. Finally, once downtown, where and how Black people were served was restricted by whoever owned the business (Black or White). “You could shop,” says Theresa Lyons of Durham, North Carolina, “but if you walked up and a white person walked up later, they waited on the white person first. I mean, it was just a known that you weren’t going to get waited on. Even when I knew that [something] was it, no matter how bad I wanted it, I wouldn’t buy it. I would leave.”[4]