Church, Robert Reed Sr.

Impact on the world

Born enslaved, Church escaped to freedom when Union forces captured the riverboat where he worked in 1862, then built a fortune in Memphis by buying real estate throughout the city — most aggressively during the devastating 1878-79 yellow fever epidemics, when 25,000 residents fled and land prices collapsed — eventually collecting an estimated $6,000 a month in rents. In 1899 he purchased land on Beale Street to build Church's Park and Auditorium, a 2,000-seat venue that became the first major urban recreational center in the country owned by an African American, hosting Booker T. Washington, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and, in 1902, a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt to a crowd of 10,000; in 1906 he founded Solvent Savings Bank and Trust, Memphis's first Black-owned bank since Reconstruction, which extended credit enabling Black residents to buy homes and start businesses. He survived being shot during the 1866 Memphis Race Riot and later by a local sheriff, and was the first Memphis citizen to purchase a municipal bond after the city's 1879 bankruptcy, helping restore its charter.

Life & background

Born into slavery on June 18, 1839, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the son of an enslaved seamstress, Emmeline, and a white steamboat captain, Charles B. Church, who employed him as a cabin boy and steward on Mississippi River runs to New Orleans, Church learned business and made contacts that later served him well. After escaping enslavement amid the Civil War's chaos, he settled in Memphis in 1862 and built his fortune from a single saloon into a diversified real estate and business empire. His daughter from his second marriage, Mary Church Terrell, became one of the first African American women to earn a college degree and a founding member of the NAACP; his son, Robert Church Jr., became a major national Republican Party figure and NAACP co-founder. Church died in Memphis on August 29, 1912, at age 73; decades later, Memphis Mayor Edward Crump ordered the demolition of the Church family home and surrounding Black neighborhood in an act widely viewed as retaliatory erasure of his legacy.

Sources

1. BlackPast.org; Tennessee State University; Face2Face Africa