Richard B. Fitzgerald
Richard Burton Fitzgerald (c. 1843 – March 24, 1918) was an American brickmaker and business man who lived in Durham, North Carolina.
After building his enterprise, he became president of the black-owned Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Durham, and was involved in other business ventures throughout North Carolina.
He served as first president of Coleman Manufacturing Company, established in 1897 as the first cotton mill in the United States to be owned and operated by blacks.
Born free in New Castle County, Delaware to a white mother and mixed-race father freed from slavery, Fitzgerald and siblings moved with their family in 1855 to Chester County, Pennsylvania to reduce the risk of being taken by slave catchers and sold into slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Growing up, Richard was described by his great-niece Pauli Murray as a "sturdy, rough and tumble fellow... who could work hard but cared more for good times" than he did for studying.
At the beginning of the American Civil War, Fitzgerald joined the Quartermaster Department as a civilian contractor in Philadelphia, as blacks were not yet allowed to serve in the military.
[1] In late 1869, Fitzgerald and his brother Billy joined their family on a farm east of Hillsborough, North Carolina, where they had settled after moving from Pennsylvania and purchasing the land.
[2] Several years later, with his brother Robert, in 1879 Fitzgerald moved his own family to Durham, based on potentially favorable financial prospects within the developing tobacco manufacturing economy.
"In Durham Richard Fitzgerald bought a large tract with a good vein of clay for brick in the vicinity of later Gattis and Wilkerson streets... here he began a brickyard and built an eighteen-room house shaded by a grove of maples and magnolias".
[3] According to his grandniece Pauli Murray, "Within the next fifteen years Uncle Richard became Durham's leading brick maker.
By 1910 Fitzgerald was producing "30,000 brick a day from his $17,000 plant, but owns besides 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land within the city limits and has $50,000 worth of real estate."
It was "formed under the laws of the State of North Carolina to promote manufacturing and mercantile interests" for African Americans.
[8] Fitzgerald was among the original incorporators of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, which received its charter from the State of North Carolina in 1907.
The posthumous recognition was bestowed upon the group for their contributions to Durham as innovative leaders who established one of the nation's strongest African American entrepreneurial enclaves.
