Herman J. Russell | Atlanta Innovator and Entrepreneur
Because jobs were scarce, at the age of 8, he decided to become his own boss and create his own jobs (neighborhood handyman, newspaper deliverer) and continued in that entrepreneurial mindset his entire life. His role model was his father, who owned his own plastering business. With the skills his father taught him, he, with the help of friends, built a duplex on a vacant lot he had saved up to purchase. He saved up enough rental income from that duplex to pay for his college education at Tuskegee University in Alabama, where he earned his degree in building construction in 1952 and worked as a subcontractor with his brother Roger Russell assisting. This was also the year that Herman founded H.J. Russell Plastering Company in Atlanta, which would later become H. J. Russell & Company.
The decade of the 1960s was important for both the United States and H.J. Russell & Company. While African American leaders were waging war for civil rights throughout the southern U.S., Herman began his first major project, a development of 12 residential units on South Avenue in Atlanta. A few years later, government programs designed to spur residential construction, particularly in the South, provided the opportunities that made H.J. Russell & Company one of the largest builders of HUD affordable housing. To this day, the company remains a leader in building and managing affordable housing for citizens in the southeast
As the nation’s business environment shifted, so did the company. Watergate, oil shortages and declining real estate markets created uncertainty in every area of the nation. Real estate and property development had always been at the core of the Russell companies, but the unpredictable real estate market created enough concern for the company to look at other areas. While prestigious construction jobs remained at the heart of their activities, diversification was critical to its stability. From founding a beverage distributor company and having a majority share in a company that owned a television station in Macon, Georgia, to establishing airport concessionaire Concessions International to being a part of the Omni Group, which purchased two major professional sports franchises, diversification was the focus of the decade. Today, the various organizations that are operated and controlled by the Russell family include Concessions International, Russell Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Russell Family Enterprises, LLC and Russell New Urban Development, LLC.
When the all-white Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce (MACC) issued an invitation to join, it was unaware that H.J. Russell was African American. He accepted and became a member before the group discovered its “mistake.” He later became the second black president of MACC.
Annual revenues topped $172 million in 1997, and the firm employed more than 1,500 workers (including concessions personnel). H.J. Russell & Company continued to work on high-profile projects in Atlanta and elsewhere in the United States through the decade.
Under the leadership of the Russell siblings, the first decade of the new millennium started with a bang. The firm has landed several key projects, and the patriarch decided to “semi-retire.” However, before doing so, H.J. developed the ambitious, mixed-use $300 million development in Castleberry Hill. In 2001, he continued his personal investment in the revitalization investment of his company’s neighborhood, including the construction of The Castleberry Inn (now the Clarion Inn & Suites Atlanta Downtown), Legacy Lofts, Intown Apartments & Lofts and Paschal’s restaurant.
Herman J. Russell nurtured his children, H. Jerome, Donata and Michael, to carry on his vision: stay focused, be committed, continue to develop expertise and remain on the cutting edge with the best technology and human talent to meet the changing needs of both business and society. The company’s construction, program management, property management and real estate development divisions, along with Concessions International, LLC, Russell Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Russell Family Enterprises, LLC and H.J. Russell Foundation, are all built on a legacy of the company’s founder and are being elevated to the next level by the visions of the new generation.
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McKissack & McKissack | From Slave Labor to a Fifth-Generation Thriving Business
McKissack & McKissack has over 100 years of building to bring change. In 1790, Moses I came to America as a slave from West Africa at 12 years old. Owned by a prominent contractor, he learns the building trade. The McKissack family’s records indicate that the slave owner, also named William McKissack, taught Moses how to make bricks. After he gave Moses his freedom, Moses was able to sell his bricks. His knowledge and passion for building would pass on to the future McKissack generations. In 1905, brothers Moses III & Calvin began the first McKissack company. The grandsons of Moses I launch the beginning of the McKissack legacy and family tradition in the building industry in Nashville, Tennessee. Despite the challenges and obstacles of discrimination of the era, the two brothers were the first and second African American architects registered by the state of Tennessee.
In 1942, the company made history with a $5.7m project. Tuskegee Army Airfield, the home of the Tuskegee Airmen, was the first major Army Air Forces base built by a black construction company and the first and only major military flight training base for black pilots. McKissack & McKissack designed the museum that was built adjacent to the Lorraine Motel, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
In 1983, Leatrice Buchanan McKissack was named CEO. Under her leadership, the firm won major contracts for new buildings and renovations at Fisk University, Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, a $50 million renovation project for Howard University in D.C. and the design of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
In 1991, the company opened its first office in New York City and expanded to Philadelphia in 1993. Business continued to boom through the ’90s as part of a tri-venture; McKissack provided construction management services on the $350 million NFL stadium for the Philadephia Eagles.
McKissack & McKissack of Washington was the lead architect on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in D.C. Later she managed the design and construction of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.
The company has been involved in the construction of Medgar Evers College buildings, Harlem Hospital, Barclays Center, Columbia University and part of the Baton Rouge Program Team providing recovery services following historic floods in August 2016.
McKissack & McKissack believes in paying it forward. Aligning with McKissack’s mission, the Mentor Program increases, facilitates and encourages the participation of minority, women-owned and locally-based enterprises within the construction industry.
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Bernard S. Garrett Sr. | Jim Crow Banker
Born in the small town of Willis, Texas, in 1922, Garrett showed a knack for business early on. He worked odd jobs, completing the 11th grade in Houston and running his own cleaning business. Garrett knew, however, he would need to leave the racial oppression of Texas if he wanted a chance to become a wealthy entrepreneur.
In a beat-up van, Garrett, his first wife Eunice, and their small children drove to California in 1945 in pursuit of opportunity. Once in the Golden State, Garrett started another cleaning service and a business collecting wastepaper, eventually saving enough money to buy property in Los Angeles. But his pathway to wealth accelerated when he met a white real estate investor, whom Garrett formally called Mr. Barker. Barker owned an apartment building for sale in a white neighborhood that Garrett wanted to buy. And with a convincing plan, he did. Barker and Garrett decided to form a partnership investing in properties, where Barker was the face of the deals, and Garrett remained invisible.
By 1954, Garrett was worth $1.5 million, the equivalent of $14.3 million in current times, making him one of the wealthiest blacks in the country. But he wanted to make bigger deals, and after Barker died unexpectedly, Garrett became bolder in his mission. Garrett hired Matt Steiner as the face of the Banker’s Building acquisition, and it worked. Garrett traded his residential property deeds for stock in the Banker’s Building, gaining a controlling interest in the corporation that owned the property.
Garrett wanted to create opportunities for African Americans who were routinely subjected to redlining, where banks denied them loans, relegating them to segregated and impoverished neighborhoods and limited income potential. With capital from Don Silverthorne, president of San Francisco National Bank who knew Morris, in 1963, Garrett and Morris bought the Mainland Bank & Trust Co. in Texas City, Texas, with Steiner as their frontman. Steiner also fronted their purchase of another Texas bank, First National Bank of Marlin.
Garrett’s banks became a lifeline for the black community. Black-owned banks were able to help African Americans participate in the economy in ways they were never able to participate. They were able to purchase homes and take out a small loan to purchase an appliance or a car. Many black churches and schools were helped and saved because of African American-owned banks.
When Steiner made a series of mishaps as banking laws were changing, Garrett and Morris found themselves under a government investigation led by Arkansas Senator John McClellan, an anti-corruption sleuth and a vocal opponent of civil rights legislation. In 1965, Garrett and Morris were sentenced to three years for misapplying $189,000 in bank funds and served nine months. Garrett started other businesses, but none on the scale he had previously known. He died in a Los Angeles nursing home in 1999. His life is portrayed in the 2020 film “The Banker.”
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Sheila Johnson | First Black Woman Billionaire
Entrepreneur Sheila Crump Johnson was born on January 25, 1949, in Pennsylvania. Her father, George P. Crump, was a prominent neurosurgeon, and her mother, Marie Iris Crump, was an accountant. During her early years, her father’s practice at Veterans Health Administration hospitals took the family from town to town. Johnson’s family then relocated to Maywood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where she attended Irving High School and then graduated from Proviso High School in 1966. During this time, Johnson found her first love of music; she went on to become a concert violinist and the first African American to win a statewide violin competition in Illinois. After high school, Johnson enrolled in the University of Illinois, where she met her now-former husband and business partner, Robert Johnson (divorced 2002).
In 1969, Johnson married Robert Johnson, and in 1970, she graduated from the University of Illinois with her bachelor’s degree in music. After graduation, Johnson worked as a music teacher at the private school, Sidwell Friends. In 1975, she founded a 140-member youth orchestra, Young Strings in Action. The group was invited to perform in the Middle Eastern nation of Jordan, where she was given the country’s top educational award by Jordan’s King Hussein.
In 1980, Johnson and her husband co-founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), a cable network geared towards African American audiences. Johnson became BET’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, focusing on issues affecting the communities that BET served. In 1989, Johnson created Teen Summit, a show that dealt with the everyday issues of teens and attempted to motivate teen viewers.
In 1999, Johnson left BET to pursue her own interests and guide her daughter’s equestrian career. In 2002, Johnson became head of the Washington International Horse Show. Johnson purchased a farm in Northern Virginia in Middleburg and turned the 350-acre estate into the Salamander Resort & Spa, an 85,000-square-foot French country resort. Johnson also formed Salamander Hospitality, a hotel resort and spa management firm, to achieve those goals.
Johnson became involved in the Washington Mystics WNBA franchise, and in 2005 purchased it from the former owner, Abe Pollin; this and similar moves in relation to the Washington Capitals (NHL) and the Washington Wizards (NBA), earned her the distinction of being the first woman to be a stakeholder in three professional sports franchises. In 2005, Johnson married William T. Newman, Jr., a judge in Arlington, Virginia. In July 2007, Johnson purchased Innisbrook Golf Resort and its four golf courses outside Tampa, Florida. Johnson expanded her portfolio to include film in 2008 when she was the executive producer of A Powerful Noise. She was an executive producer of the critically acclaimed 2013 film The Butler, which tells the story of a former slave turned White House employee. Johnson is the mother of two children, Paige Johnson and Brett Johnson.
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Charles McMillan | First Black NAR President
Charles McMillan, a REALTOR® from Irving, Texas, was the 2009 President of the National Association of REALTORS®. McMillan was a REALTOR® for more than 30 years, having entered the real estate field in the early 1980s after several years in the U.S. Air Force. For several years he was director of realty relations and broker of record for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Dallas-Fort Worth, acting as the company’s point person for regulatory and legal issues.
McMillan was considered a “members’ president” and said that whatever NAR does must be for the benefit of REALTORS®. He was also the first African American president in the association’s history. During McMillan’s year in office, NAR won passage of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers, launched a foreclosure prevention and response program, worked to improve the short-sales system, claimed victory in an eight-year battle to prevent banking conglomerates from entering real estate brokerage and property management businesses and provided members with millions of dollars worth of free and discounted resources through the Right Tools, Right Now campaign.
Before serving as the President of the National Association of REALTORS®, McMillan was vice president in 2007 and regional vice president for NAR Region 10 in 2001 and 2002. He served on the Board of Directors from 1994 and volunteered his time and expertise in a number of national committees, including chair of the communications, nominating, and state & municipal coordinating committees. He has also been recognized by NAR as an expert in the areas of agency, antitrust, misrepresentation, fair housing and diversity. For the Texas Association of REALTORS®, he held past positions of President, Chairman of the Executive Board, Chairman of the Legislative Management Team, Chairman of Budget and Finance and Chairman of Legal Review. He is also the past president of the Greater Fort Worth Association of REALTORS®.
McMillan was named REALTOR® of the Year by members of the Greater Fort Worth Association of REALTORS® in 1992 and received the association’s REALTOR® Spirit Award in 1986. He was named Texas REALTOR® of the Year in 2000. He was a member of Omega Tau Rho, the honor society of the National Association of REALTORS®, for outstanding accomplishments in the field of real estate.
McMillan had an active civic life and was a Life Member of the Texas Real Estate Teachers Association and an approved instructor by the Texas Real Estate Commission in real estate pre-licensing and mandatory continuing education courses. He was a past chairman of the Community Development Council of Fort Worth, the Tarrant County’s affordable housing task force, the housing subcommittee of Fort Worth and a past director of the United Way of Tarrant County and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
Charles McMillan peacefully passed away on November 9, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Beverly Loraine Greene | Pioneer of American Architecture
By the time Chicago-born Greene arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1930s, the campus was integrated but just barely. She was the first African American woman to graduate with a bachelor of science in Architectural Engineering in 1936 and the first to earn a master’s in city planning and housing the following year. Greene is believed to be the first Black woman licensed as an architect in the United States (Illinois, 1942). A coveted assignment working on New York City’s Stuyvesant Town (a complex in which African Americans would not initially be allowed to live) followed, although Green left the project when Columbia University’s master’s program in architecture wooed her away with a scholarship. From there, the world was Greene’s build site: with Edward Durell Stone, she completed a theater at the University of Arkansas in 1951 and then collaborated with brutalist master Marcel Breuer on the arts complex at Sarah Lawrence College in 1952 and the UNESCO United Nations headquarters in Paris, which opened in 1958. Sadly, her death in 1957 at age 41 meant the first African American woman registered as an architect in the United States didn’t live to see its completion, nor the buildings she designed for New York University.
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American Beach | Amelia Island’s Historic Black Beach
Today the quiet little community of American Beach on Florida’s Amelia Island is in transition. Modest vacation homes dating from the 1930s share space with vacant lots, abandoned buildings and newer, more elegant structures. High-rise condos and beachfront mansions have risen to the north and south in adjacent resorts. Though small in area, American Beach has played a significant role in recent African American history.
American Beach, the only beach in Florida that welcomed black Americans and offered safe, secure overnight accommodations during Jim Crow segregation, was founded in 1935 by the Afro-American Life Insurance Company (AALIC), which was established in 1901 to provide the Jacksonville, Florida black community with life insurance. The firm’s Afro-American Pension Bureau purchased a 33-acre piece of property at the beach on nearby Amelia Island, partly as an investment but also to provide it as a resort area for black Floridians who had been excluded from other beaches. Abraham Lincoln Lewis, the President of Afro-American Life, ironically named the area American Beach because he and others felt that in the United States, beach access should be open to everyone.
Lewis and his partners envisioned a resort that would signify success, self-sufficiency and respectability for middle-class African American families from Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. In addition to having beach access, the planned community also allowed the building of resort and retirement homes. Surveyed and platted on March 12, 1936, the original section of the beach property was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 28, 2002, as being worthy of historic preservation and marker designation.
Florida’s first black millionaires and largest landowners established homes there and encouraged other blacks to build homes and create the small businesses that they often dreamed of owning. Between the late 1930s and the 1950s, tourists traveled for miles to frequent this black-owned oasis, passing dozens of resorts that were off-limits to them, as made evident by the “For Whites Only” signs.
Eventually, prominent entertainers made their way to the famous seaside pavilion, which, over the years, hosted musicians like Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and Duke Ellington. For nearly three decades, American Beach thrived as an all-black recreational beach resort whose population swelled greatly in the summer months.
With the advent of integration, the beach lost customers to other resorts, which were now open to African Americans. Nature, however, played a role in American Beach’s decline as well: In 1964, Hurricane Dora destroyed many homes and businesses and owners either would not or could not afford to rebuild. Consequently, like similar resorts across the nation, American Beach residents often abandoned or sold their properties—or, if they were not property owners, simply stopped visiting.
Nonetheless, a small loyal group of multigenerational American Beach families kept their properties and, by the 1980s, attracted a new wave of prominent owners, including tennis star Leslie Allen, TV actress Barbara Montgomery and Emory University professor Eugene Emory. Prominent educator Johnnetta Cole also encouraged the revival of the resort. She and her sister, MaVynee Betsch, known locally as the Beach Lady because of her long residence in American Beach, have established the A.L. Lewis Historical Society (as a tribute to their great-grandfather who is the founder of the community) and have developed the American Beach Museum to preserve the beach community’s unusual history.
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Alfred F. ‘Tup’ Holmes | Leader of the Desegregation of golf courses
Born in 1917 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes and Patricia Reaves Holmes, Alfred F. “Tup” Holmes was a successful amateur golfer and civil rights pioneer. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1933, Tup left Atlanta to attend Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and continued to develop the golf skills he had learned from his father and the Candler Park Golf Course caddies.
Coached by Mr. William O’Shields, Tup was a successful varsity golfer for Tuskegee Institute, earning titles at the inaugural Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association tournament hosted at Tuskegee in 1938 and again in 1939 and 1940. Despite the successes which qualified him to compete in the NCAA golf championship in 1939, he was denied the opportunity to participate – a taste of racism that would be sure to influence his future pursuit for equality on Atlanta’s courses.
Tup also played on the school’s varsity tennis team and was a member of the “T” Club and the Polka Dot Club. He graduated in 1939 and had his bachelor’s of dcience in Physical Education degree conferred on August 16, 1940. Tup won several collegiate and amateur championships while at Tuskegee and continued to play and win segregated tournaments in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia following graduation.
Returning to Atlanta in 1948, Tup joined the black-only Lincoln Country Club but wanted access to Atlanta’s whites-only and better-maintained public courses. After being denied the right to play on Bobby Jones Golf Course in 1951, Tup helped lead the fight to play on tax-supported golf facilities explaining, “If you give me one good satisfactory reason why I can’t play on the city-owned golf courses, I’ll accept it. If not, we play.” The efforts of Tup, his father Hamilton M. Holmes, and brother Oliver W. Holmes were rewarded four years later with access to all of Atlanta’s courses following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Holmes v. Atlanta decision which ordered the city’s public golf courses to desegregate in 1955.
From evenly cut greens to three sets of tee boxes at each hole, the city of Atlanta’s Alfred Tup Holmes Golf Course is unlike any other 18-hole golf course. This gem of a golf course will provide you with a tremendous yet challenging design and beautiful views of the low rolling hills.
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