Samuel Plato

His work includes federal housing projects and U.S. post offices, as well as private homes, banks, churches, and schools.

These include Louisville's Broadway Temple A.M.E. Zion Church and the Virginia Avenue Colored School, two examples of his contributions to the city's African-American community.

[1][3] Plato began working as a building contractor in the early 1900s, when discrimination against African Americans often relegated them to jobs as unskilled laborers.

Instead, he chose to pursue a career as an architect and building contractor, which provided better employment opportunities and potential pay.

Around 1902, soon after his graduation from college, he moved to Marion, Indiana, where he spent nineteen years as an architect and building contractor before returning to Louisville, Kentucky, around 1921.

[8] During his year in Indiana, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan reached an all-time record half a million members in the state, Plato found support from wealthy business owners John Schaumleffel and J. Woodrow Wilson.

[9][10] One of Plato's best-known residential projects was designing and building the fifteen-room J. Woodrow Wilson House in Marion in 1912.

According to a 1928 national survey that was published in the 1931-32 Negro Year Book, less than 1.2 percent of black-owned businesses employed white workers.

Plato also designed the Virginia Avenue Colored School (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004).

[16][20][21] Plato is best known for his work on federal housing projects and reportedly became the first African-American to be awarded a contract to build a U.S. post office.

[6][1][20][22] Plato's federal government housing projects for defense workers during World War II brought him national attention.

"[1] Elnora Plato "funded the cost of Samuel's sister's new house in Waugh and "on more than one occasion, she was able to keep heir [sic] company from going bankrupt.

"[1] Historians attribute Plato's successful career was due to his persistent efforts and his reputation for quality and integrity.

After visiting Wake and Midway Halls, two of his wartime federal defense workers' housing projects, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about them in her newspaper column, "My Day," on May 20, 1943.

[29] Plato designed and built a variety of structures in buildings Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Washington D.C.