African Americans in Oklahoma Before 1954
African American Business in Oklahoma
After emancipation, opportunities in the ways a Black person could earn a living expanded dramatically. Racist views held by non-Blacks often limited their interest in providing goods and especially services to Black communities, and the demand for these goods and services were often met by Black men and women with an entrepreneurial spirit. Some chose to self-fund while others appealed to the community, sometimes through small loans from penny banks or mutual aid groups, for assistance in opening a business. The earliest businesses in any community revolved around basic needs: barbering, restaurants, rooming houses, and funeral services. The development of All-Black towns and expanding economies in urban areas meant greater purchasing power in Black communities, and a greater diversity of business offerings reflected these evolved economies. At times and in some places, these business operators found themselves with non-Black clients, confronting the segregated system in place. Regardless of who choose to patronize these businesses, untold numbers of Black entrepreneurs found a level of success in Oklahoma.
Advertisements from Boley’s newspaper The Beacon, March 12, 1908.
Postcard of Dr. M. B. Moore’s clinic in Oklahoma City, 1946 (image courtesy Metropolitan Library System).
Lyons’s product advertisements can be found in almost every issue of the African American newspapers published in the first half of the century, The Tulsa Star, February 14, 1920.
Sydney D. Lyons
Sydney Lyons (Choctaw) was born in 1860 or 1861 in either Choctaw Nation or Arkansas. He grew up in Texas. As a young man, he developed a hair product called “The Texas Wonder,” which he marketed to Black women. Lyons came to Oklahoma as a participant in the first land run. He settled in Guthrie and opened a grocery store serving the Black community. He resumed manufacturing and marketing his hair product under the name “The East India Hair Grower.” This product met with significant success, and it was distributed and sold all over the country. He used the profits from The East India Hair Grower to invest in other business enterprises. He owned a section of buildings in the Oklahoma City neighborhood called Deep Deuce. When the oil and gas industry began to boom, he made investments in land that offered the potential for oil production. This, too, proved successful. He discontinued the hair product in 1935 and focused on his real estate holdings. He died of heart failure in 1942.
O. W. Gurley
Originally born in Alabama, Ottawa W. Gurley moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as a child. He married Emma Evans in 1888. He remained in Arkansas and worked as a letter carrier after attending Branch Normal College until 1893, when he participated in the Cherokee Outlet land run. He managed to stake a claim in Perry, and became an important figure in this community, working as a school principal, participating in politics, and running a grocery store. In 1905, the couple moved from Noble County to Tulsa. Gurley purchased 40 acres of land north of the Frisco tracks. He built one of the first businesses, a rooming house, on what would become Greenwood Avenue, the main street in the historic neighborhood of the same name. The population in Tulsa and Greenwood exploded, and Gurley made shrewd decisions as a business owner and real estate investor. He built the Gurley Hotel and owned several other buildings, which were rented by other businesses.
The Gurleys lost everything in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Shortly after, O. W. Gurley was arrested for incitement, but was released and the case never went to trial. He and Emma moved to Los Angeles where they ran a small hotel until his death in 1967.
O. W. Gurley in 1921 (image courtesy Tulsa Historical Society and Museum).
Loula and John Williams
Loula Williams was born in Tennessee in 1879. John Williams was born in Mississippi in 1882. They met in Mississippi and moved to Arkansas, where Loula worked as a teacher and John worked for a railroad. They moved into Greenwood as it was welcoming its first residents in the early 1900s. John, an exceptional mechanic, worked a skilled job as an ice cream manufacturer and Loula worked as a teacher in a suburb of Tulsa called Sand Springs. They earned enough to purchase luxuries and begin investing. With the purchase of their vehicle, John learned automobile repair and offered his services as a side job. Eventually, he grew his client base large enough that he was able to quit his job and open his own auto repair shop.
They used the profits to build the Williams Building, a three-story building that housed Loula’s candy shop and soda fountain on the first floor, their home on the second, and office space on the third. The next business they developed was the Dreamland Theatre, which opened in Greenwood just as films became a commercial venture. This proved so successful that Loula and John opened at least two more Dreamland Theatres in other towns. Their property would be destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre and insurance companies refused to pay claims afterward. They had to use the profits from their other theaters to rebuild. A new theater went up in 1922 but Loula suffered poor health for the remainder of her life, eventually being declared incompetent. She died in 1927 while John lived until 1940.
Loula, John, and W. D. Williams in their 1911 Norwalk (image courtesy Tulsa Historical Society).
The Mann Family
Five brothers in the Mann family, known by their initials: M. M., B. H., O. B., P. M., and J. D., were originally from Texas. They built three grocery stores in Greenwood and one in Okmulgee beginning in 1919. During the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the brothers attempted to protect the community and their property. Of their three stores, one was completely destroyed, and another suffered major damage.
In the aftermath of the massacre, one of the brothers, O. B., was indicted on charges as white Tulsans attempted to blame Black Tulsans for the attack. O. B. vanished for several years but later returned to Greenwood and the grocery business.
By 1935, the Manns had rebuilt their businesses and added others, such as a luncheonette. M. M. would establish the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce in 1938. The family continued in the grocery business until the 1970s, when urban renewal destroyed the neighborhood.
Mann Brothers Grocery (image courtesy Tulsa Historical Society and Museum).
Simon Barry
Born in Mississippi in 1890, Simon Barry moved to Tennessee, where he taught auto mechanics to students at a small college. He moved to Tulsa in the 1910s. He started a jitney service for Greenwood residents and visitors in 1919. Jitneys were vehicles for hire, but they did not provide private rides; if other people were going the same way, they joined you in the car. There were no other transportation services available for Blacks, so Barry’s jitney service was able to expand. With profits from his first business, Barry established an auto repair shop and taught others how to repair vehicles.
It is unclear where Barry was during the Tulsa Race Massacre, but some of the jitney drivers drove back and forth, ferrying Black residents out of danger.
In 1925, Barry indulged his passion for airplanes and purchased one with a partner. This proved to be a wise decision, as many people associated with the oil industry were willing customers for a charter airplane service. Barry continued to refine his businesses. He began buying buses and he received permission from the City of Tulsa to operate the bus line. In the 1940s, he sold his bus line with the requirement that the Black drivers and mechanics would keep their jobs. Eventually, the City of Tulsa would gain ownership of Barry’s bus service.
Simon Berry with his airplane (image courtesy Greenwood Cultural Center).
Florence Kemp
Born in Boley in 1931, Florence Jones Kemp moved to Oklahoma City with her mother as a teenager. An excellent seamstress at an early age, she thought tailoring or fashion would be her future career. Her mother taught her to cook because she sometimes had to work and was not available to prepare meals. Kemp spent a summer in California visiting family who owned a restaurant. She worked there, learned how restaurants operated, and saved her wages and tips. When she came back to Oklahoma City, she opened Florence’s Restaurant in Deep Deuce in 1952. In the beginning, she mostly served workers on their lunch breaks, but it did not take long for other customers to learn about the soul food restaurant. Because of urban renewal, Florence’s Restaurant was forced to relocate to NE 23rd, where Kemp continues to operate to this day. Florence’s Restaurant is the only Oklahoma recipient of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award, which recognizes chefs, restaurateurs, authors, and journalists.
Florence Jones Kemp (image courtesy The Oklahoman).
The Rolfe Family
Robert H. Rolfe was born in 1886, and very little is known about his early life. His parents may have come to Oklahoma to participate in the Land Run of 1889. He married Nannie Mare in 1910. During the early part of his career, he established a broom factory in Oklahoma City. Eventually, it grew to be the largest broom manufacturer in the southwest. In 1933, he left that business because of health reasons, and two years later he opened Rolfe Funeral Home. His two sons, Henry and Walter, took over the business in the 1940s after earning degrees in funeral science. Both men worked in the Black community in Oklahoma City for their entire careers. All three men participated in civic and philanthropic organizations such as the NAACP and the YMCA and were deeply involved in their churches.
The Temple Family
Earl Temple was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1910. After the death of his parents when he was young, he was reared by an aunt in New Jersey. He moved to Morristown, Tennessee, to earn a degree in funeral science and opened his first funeral home there. After service in World War II, he and his first wife, Odessa, opened a funeral home in Oklahoma City in 1947. During his career, Temple was heavily involved in civic and professional organizations. He was a Mason, a congregant of Tabernacle Baptist Church, and a lifelong member of the NAACP. He was appointed to the Oklahoma State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors and served two five-year terms. Temple’s sons, Mark, Christopher, and John, and John’s wife Joh’Re, learned the business and continue to operate it.
Earl Temple (center), participating in a civil rights protest at Anna Maude’s Café. Photo by Johnny Melton (20246.38.281.1, John Melton Collection, OHS).
Percy James
Percy James was born around 1889 in Louisiana. It is not clear when or why he moved to Oklahoma. In the 1910s, carbonated beverages were becoming more popular in the country. The Oklahoma Coca-Cola Bottling Company successfully supplied the white areas of the city, but they refused to deliver to Black businesses and neighborhoods. Around 1918, Percy James stepped in and established a beverage company for African American communities. Initially, he called his signature beverage Afri-Cola but changed it to Jay Kola after a couple of years. He added other flavors and offered a full line of soft drinks to his customers. Jay Kola was delivered throughout the state and is fondly remembered by many Black Oklahomans. Percy James invested in other businesses with his profits. He sponsored a Black baseball team called the Jay-Kola Giants. He also built a movie theater in Deep Deuce, Oklahoma City’s segregated Black neighborhood, and named it the Jewel Theatre after his daughter. He opened Jewel Theatres in other towns with a large number of Black residents. The Jay Kola business came to an end upon his retirement in 1963.
Various beverages manufactured by Jay Kola (2012.201.B0230.0111, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
The Jewel Theatre and various shops were located on NE 4th Street in Oklahoma City. The building that housed the theater still stands today (image courtesy The Oklahoman).
J. J. Simmons
Joseph Jacob “Jake” Simmons Jr. (Muscogee) was born in 1901 in Haskell, Oklahoma, the ninth of ten children born to a Freedmen family. Simmons’s father was a well-to-do rancher who worked in the cattle industry. Jake Simmons Jr. told his father at an early age that he wanted to be an oilman. He attended Tuskegee Institute on advice from Booker T. Washington during his stay on the Simmons’s ranch. Since Simmons was born before the cutoff for allotments, he received 160 acres. This land contained significant oil deposits. This resulted in a flush of wealth for Simmons and the beginning of his career as an oilman. He started by working as a broker, buying and selling leases. He diversified his investments by purchasing farmland and dealing in real estate, cattle, and insurance. He expanded his brokerage to other states. Simmons worked with the early oilmen of Oklahoma such as Frank Phillips. He eventually developed a global reach, focusing on the newly independent countries in Africa. Simmons was appointed to the National Petroleum Council in 1969.
Simmons was critical to the Civil Rights Movement in Oklahoma. He was a party to a civil rights case, which settled in the Supreme Court in 1938 that argued Black residents should not have to pay for a bond passed to support the white schools. He also served as president of the state chapter of the NAACP and the Negro Business League. He provided untold monetary support to other civil rights campaigns.
Jake Simmons (right) with E. Melvin Porter, 1964 (2012.201.B1028.0119, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
Viola Watkins
Viola Watkins was born in Texas in 1904. The youngest of thirteen, she moved to Oklahoma to attend Langston University. After graduating, she taught in Guthrie schools for 25 years. Watkins moved to Oklahoma City. The house she chose was within walking distance of her church and she became an active member of St. John’s congregation. Other church members asked Watkins to care for two elderly family members and she agreed, moving them in with her. Other church members sought her out to care for their vulnerable family members, and Watkins found herself with a new career. She opened a series of facilities, increasing in size and capacity throughout the late 1960s, leading to the opening of Skyview Nursing Center, a 68-bed skilled nursing facility. Working with members of her family, Watkins was able to pay off the half-million dollar loan in five years because of her skill in business and her popularity in the community. She owned the largest Black business in Oklahoma owned by a woman. Watkins died in 1984, but Skyview continues today as Voyage Long Term Care.
W. J. Edwards
Born in Mississippi in 1891, Walter J. Edwards moved to Wellston, Oklahoma, in 1907. In 1915, he began working as a laborer in an Oklahoma junkyard. Frugal with his money, Edwards was able to open his own business in a short period of time. He continued to invest in new businesses and owned a diverse cross-section of businesses, including gas stations, an iron foundry, and a baggage-hauling company. He lost his fortune in 1929 with onset of the Great Depression and set out to rebuild. He began in the scrap metal business and owned Edwards Scrap Metal and Junk Yard. From this base, Edwards operated several other businesses including a taxi service, auto repair, and pharmacies.
W. J. and Frances Edwards (image courtesy W. J. Edward Memorial).
In the late 1930s, W. J. Edwards identified a need for Black families to have choices about where to live. In Oklahoma City, the Black section of the city was very small and densely populated. In 1936, the segregation ordinance that constrained Black families to this area was struck down. Edwards purchased land outside of the segregation zone and found a white man to subdivide the land to avoid attention. Then he began selling the land to Black families. He even found federal financing for some of these purchases. This was extremely uncommon because of a federal policy called redlining, which denied government financing to homes in Black neighborhoods. They built and sold over 750 homes for Black families in Oklahoma City.
Edwards built two separate business empires in his lifetime. He and his wife, Frances Gilliam Waldrop, also contributed to their community with generosity. When constructing their housing addition there were too few skilled Black workers, so they hired unskilled workers and trained them in the construction trades. In the 1940s, Frances Edwards needed hospital care and the only medical care available to Black people in Oklahoma City was in a poorly equipped basement. Her condition did not improve and the doctors said she needed adequate facilities with trained staff. The Edwards’s used that experience to inform them of the need for a hospital to serve the Black community. They built the hospital, which offered a better care for patients and training opportunities for Black doctors and nurses. They remain known as important philanthropists in Oklahoma.
Edwards Memorial Hospital, 1947 (2012.201.B0265.0345, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
