East Hargett Street (Raleigh, North Carolina)

[3] In the late 19th century, black businesses were scattered across Raleigh and catered to a racially diverse customer base.

[6] As Jim Crow racial segregation grew more entrenched, black-owned businesses began to concentrate along Wilmington Street.

[7] In 1904 black businessman James Hamlin and Walter T. Harris opened People's Drug Store on East Hargett Street.

[9] The pharmacy filled prescriptions issued by black physicians and maintained a soda fountain which was popular with local students.

[16] Black businessmen and professionals were drawn to the thoroughfare by both being attracted to a sense of community and being forced off of Fayetteville Street.

[14] Unlike other black business districts in the United States during this time, East Hargett attracted a mostly middle class clientele and had a reputation of respectability.

[18] During its existence it was one of two hotels in Raleigh that would accept black customers[11] and hosted musicians Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington.

[19] The building also housed a theater (for both movies and vaudeville performances),[20] a restaurant, barbershop, and the offices of The Carolinian, a black twice-weekly newspaper.

[22] Black civic leader and physician Manassa Thomas Pope maintained offices in the Hamlin building before relocating down the street.

[28] In 1926, physician Lemuel T. Delany arranged for the construction of the Delaney Building and, with dentist George Evans, opened the city's second black dentistry practice.

[22][7] The Great Depression slowed black business development on East Hargett,[16] though the Mechanics and Farmers branch was one of only two banks in Raleigh to not close in wake of the stock market crash.

[32] Some black businesses consolidated or fell under corporate ownership, while other merchants moved their operations elsewhere in search of more space.

[37] A report issued by the Raleigh municipal government in 2007 assessed that there was "very little commercial development" and few African American businesses along the street, and that the surrounding residential area was beset with crime, drug trafficking, with many properties owned by absentee landlords.