North First Street Corridor, Champaign

North First Street Corridor, Champaign

Image Credit:
North First Street and University Avenue, 1926, Champaign County Historical Archives at The Urbana Free Library, Urbana, IL

North First St., Champaign, IL

North First Street Corridor is the oldest business district in Champaign, dating to the 1850s. A triangular area that originally included East Main Street, University Avenue, and the first two blocks of North First Street, it bordered an integrated working-class neighborhood called Germantown.

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Since its early years, African Americans lived, worked, and owned businesses there. Early Black businesses included barbershops, skilled trades, small restaurants, taverns, and vendors. Enterprises like Columbus Green’s barbershop at 109 E. University Avenue were in operation by the 1870s. As the district expanded, so did types of Black businesses, including the Majestic Theatre, an African American movie house and Vaudeville theater operating in the 1910s at 79 E. Main Street.

After World War I, the adjacent northeast neighborhood increasingly became African American as restrictive covenants and redlining kept them out of developing subdivisions and other neighborhoods. It became known as the North End. By the 1940s, North First Street Corridor—called the Black Downtown—was the main commercial focus of the Black neighborhood. It had become the gateway and face of the North End, attracting Black businesses like Harris and Dixon Taxi Cab Company located on a former island at Main and First Streets. In 1943, Prince Hall Mason’s Lone Star Lodge #18 bought the buildings at 208 and 210 N. First Street, moving from Market Street in downtown Champaign. By the 1950s, over 30 Black businesses operated there. In 1951, Roscoe Tinsley’s Cleaners moved to the first floor of 208 N. First Street, and operated for 20 years.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a transition as older businesses were passed or sold to younger generations. At the same time, the corridor had physically declined mainly due to lack of investments in its infrastructure from public and private capital. Starting in the 1970s, urban renewal initiatives demolished dilapidated buildings leaving vacant lots. Businesses closed, leaving vacant buildings, and parking lots took up valuable commercial real estate. Private support lapsed. What was meant to inspire the redevelopment of the North First Street Corridor left it a ghost of its former self.

Despite it all, the Corridor holds memories of successive Black entrepreneurship. It, like the North End neighborhood, conveys a sense of past and present self-reliance. Through the history of Champaign, it contributed to the twin cities’ economy.

This trail stop is sponsored by:

Ameren

Decade:

1850-1859

Location(s):

  • Champaign, Illinois
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Additional Champaign Trail Sites

Community

Carver Park

In 1951, African American civic leader Charles Phillips saw a need for quality single-family housing in the Black Community. So, he put together a “grass roots” coalition of friends and acquaintances to buy ten acres of farmland and hired developer Ozier-Weller Homes. Each family put up $350.00 to develop the 70-home subdivision named after African American scientist and inventor George Washington Carver. It was Champaign-Urbana’s first subdivision financed and built by African Americans.

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African American Civil War Burials and Mt. Hope Cemetery

Located west of Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Mount Hope Cemetery (611 E. Pennsylvania Ave., Champaign, IL) was plotted and internment began in 1856. Sitting on the dividing line between the two cities, it’s the oldest operating cemetery in Champaign-Urbana. Throughout its 150 years, it has been the final resting place for many local African Americans and their families, including most of those who fought in the Civil War. The majority of these veterans were buried in what was the Grand Army of the Republic’s (G.A.R.) section, now known as the “old” veteran's section, found as you enter the cemetery. It is represented by the Civil War Memorial and a 32-pound canon built in 1851. However, many of the original markers no longer exist for many of these and other Civil War veterans, or they were moved to other locations in the cemetery.

African Americans veterans from various wars including World War I and II are also buried in this section.

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Business

Edward A. Green

Edward A. Green, a freeman, became one of the first African Americans to settle in Champaign County in 1856. Born in North Carolina, he moved to West Urbana (now Champaign) from Union County, Ohio, with his first wife, Georgia Anne, and daughters, Anna A. and Florence E. Green. A carpenter by trade, in 1858 he began purchasing parcels of land throughout what would become Champaign and into northwestern Urbana, ending up with approximately 14 lots. Six lots were located in Urbana between Wright and Goodwin Streets, along Eads and Champaign (now Vine) Streets.

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Military

William F. Earnest American Legion Post 559

African Americans from Champaign County fought bravely, and died, in World War I. Those who served did so with courage, honor, and distinction. Many of those who returned home found community and services at the William F. Earnest American Legion Post 559. Originally located at Fifth and Hill Streets, the Post is now located at 704 N. Hickory in Champaign. It was chartered in 1932 by African American World War I veterans and named for a fallen comrade who was a University of Illinois student-athlete from Homer, Illinois. Earnest served as a sergeant in the all-Black 370th Infantry Regiment from Illinois. One of the columns at Memorial Stadium also bears his name. The founding members of Post 559 were Clifford Caldwell, Robert H. Earnest (brother of William F. Earnest), Dr. L.P. Diffay, Dr. Henry Ellis, Alvin Foxwell, Raymond Hines, Thomas Macklin, Cecil D. Nelson, and George Ray.

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Education

Booker T. Washington School

Booker T. Washington Elementary School was built to replace Lawhead School and opened in 1952. Designed by Berger-Kelley Associates, it was a K-6 building serving Black children in the neighborhood. Odelia Wesley, formerly a first grade teacher at Lawhead, was principal and led an all-Black staff. She remained at the school as principal from 1952–1972. In 1968, Booker T. Washington School was established as a magnet program in partnership with the University of Illinois, as a part of Unit #4’s desegregation plans to promote voluntary integration. While Black families would have to bus their children to southwest Champaign to integrate the schools there, white families could voluntarily choose to send their children to Washington School to access “innovative” instructional programs. Following the retirement of Mrs. Wesley, Mrs. Hester Suggs assumed the principalship (1972–1993) and developed an award-winning arts and humanities-based program which continued under the leadership of Dr. Arnetta Rodgers (1993–2000).

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Community

Albert R. Lee

Albert R. Lee was born on June 26, 1874, on a farm outside of Champaign, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois in 1894, and in 1895 he became the second African American hired at the university. He started as a messenger, but then became the clerk for the Office of the President. Lee served under six university Presidents. At a time when African Americans were not allowed to live on campus, he took it upon himself to assist them with housing and maneuvering through school, becoming known as the unofficial Dean of African American Students.

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