District History

The Rise of the 4th Avenue Historical District

Prior to 1900, a “Black business district” did not exist in Birmingham. In a pattern characteristic of Southern cities during the Reconstruction Period, Black businesses developed alongside those of Whites in many sections of the city’s downtown area.

After the turn of the century, however, Southern cities began authorizing “Jim Crow” laws that enforced the legal seperation of “the races.” These laws, and racially discriminatory social practices, placed restrictions on Black enterprise, forcing the growing Black community into a smaller area of the city’s downtown, primarily along 3rd, 4th and 5th Avenues North, from 15th to 18th Streets.

Segregation of Blacks and Whites, often enforced by violence and police intimidation, created a small, self-contained world of enterprise were Blacks had open access without fear and where they were accepted and treated with the dignity and respect denied to them in other parts of Birmingham.

Thus, this small area of downtown served as the business, social and cultural oasis for Birmingham’s Black citizens. The businesses in this district included barber and beautyshops, saloons, restaurants, theaters, photographic studios, morturaries, banks, small retail stores, cleaners and tailors, and motels. Most of thse businesses centered on 4th Avenue, the heart of the district.

The Black Business District was not only alive during the daylight hours, but “thrived” throughout the night, especially on weekends. On Fridays and Saturday nights, the streets were filled with crowds of African Americans, some from other parts of the state, visiting bars, going to restaurants, attending social events or just going out for a stroll.

Live entertainment kept the joints jumping and made the District “the place to be” for Blacks. Monroe Kennedy, a blind bookie, made sure that Birmingham’s 4th Avenue hooked its fair share of the big “swing bands” of the ’30s and ’40s, with dazzling performances the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmy Lunceford, and Louie Armstrong, who were known to frequent the Colored Masonic Temple, a seven-story building that served as the District’s main commercial and cultural center.

Other musical luminaries who played in Black Birmingham included Lucky Millender, Charles Hopkins, Sonny Blount (who later became Sun Ra), ‘Fess Whatley (a prominent Birmingham music teacher who also lead the Southland Greatest Swing Band) and Birmingham native Erskine Hawkins, who wrote the famous jazz standard ”Tuxedo Junction.”

Birmingham’s Black business district — with its businesses, social, cultural and spiritual centers — continued as the center for African American life into the 1960s. But it began to experience a downturn once federal laws struck down Jim Crow laws in  Birmingham and throughout the South, and Blacks began to integrate into mainstream society.