Carlisle Post-Civil WarFollowing the Civil War, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, saw a rise in its black community. Former slaves like Watts, Spradley, and Pinkney moved to the town to escape slavery and find work.
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Map of Carlisle Square. Courtesy of Carlisle History.
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Religious LifeThe church made up an important part of the Black life in Carlisle following the Civil War. Churches included the A.M.E. Zion Church that Henry Spradley and Noah Pinkney were members of and the Methodist Church that Jim Powell was a member of.
Black Church Studies: An Introduction provides an introduction to denominations of Black churches throughout the 1800s. It details the growth of denominations such as the Baptist, A.M.E., A.M.E. Zion, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. The Black Church in America also maps the history of the creation of Black denomination. However, it focuses on the Black churches' roles in shaping and leading social and political movements. |
Odd Fellows Manual. Courtesy of Odd Fellows Collection at the Dickinson College Archives.
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OrganizationsThe Colored Odd Fellows was one organization that African Americans were able to take part in. It was an fraternal organization for adult Black men. In addition to a website that describes its creation and roles, there is an 1896 Philadelphia ledger.
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Cover of the index for Black businesses in Carlisle. Courtesy of the "Black History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1865-1976."
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Black Business in CarlisleThe Pennsylvania Negro Business Directory, 1910: Industrial and Material Growth of the Negroes of Pennsylvania provides an important view of the type of businesses African Americans ran in 1910. Listing pictures of and information regarding businesses such as Noah Pinkney's restaurant, the directory details the various businesses that made up Carlisle, Cumberland County, and Pennsylvania as a whole. It also breaks down the businesses within specific counties and towns.
According to The House I Live In: Race in the American Century by Robert J. Norrell, while there were no “white only” signs in the North, segregation existed in unwritten rules. Serving as a comparison between Reconstruction in the North versus Reconstruction in the South, this source looks at daily conditions for African Americans from education to businesses. In its cross-cultural comparison, the source claims that African Americans in the North found voting conditions and education were much better than in the South. However, not everything was better in the North.
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This book claims that African Americans were often not permitted in certain neighborhoods, restaurants, hotels, and other public places. In addition, Northern African Americans, according to this book, often found work as “caterers, cooks, maids, waiters, and coachmen” but were often not allowed to do much else. Often not allowed to work among white Northerners, African Americans faced a segregation post war that, as this book claims, was not well-known to Southern African Americans who were sometimes hired by city governments. In addition, the flood of immigrants before the turn of the 20th century took many of these jobs open to African Americans. This source’s analysis of businesses and jobs for Northern African Americans focuses on segregation, claiming it was just as prevalent just not as outward in the North as it was in the South.
