1905

Sarah Breedlove — later known as Madam C.J. Walker — began developing and selling her specialized hair care products for Black women around 1905 in Denver, Colorado. She built a direct-sales business model employing thousands of Black women as "Walker agents" across the country. Walker would become the first self-made female millionaire in America, transforming both the beauty industry and economic opportunity for Black women.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Monroe Trotter convened a group of Black leaders near Niagara Falls, Canada, to form the Niagara Movement, demanding full civil and political rights without compromise. The movement explicitly rejected Booker T. Washington's strategy of accommodation and economic focus over political rights. It served as the direct organizational precursor to the founding of the NAACP in 1909.

Alonzo Herndon, a formerly enslaved man who became Atlanta's wealthiest Black citizen through his barbershop empire, founded Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1905. It became one of the largest Black-owned financial institutions in America, providing economic security to millions of Black Southerners excluded from white-owned insurers.

Alonzo Herndon founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, which would grow into one of the largest Black-owned businesses in American history, providing economic security to Black families excluded from white insurance companies.

Sarah Breedlove, later known as Madam C.J. Walker, began developing and selling her hair care formula for Black women in Denver, Colorado, laying the foundation for what would become the first American woman's self-made million-dollar fortune.

By the mid-1900s, Black jockeys who had dominated American horse racing — winning 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies — were effectively barred from major tracks through exclusion from jockey clubs and physical intimidation, erasing a proud tradition of Black equestrian excellence.

Founded in Durham in 1898, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company under John Merrick and Aaron McDuffie Moore expanded rapidly in the early 1900s, becoming known as 'The Largest Negro Business in the World' and anchoring Black Wall Street in Durham.

The Boston Guardian under Monroe Trotter solidified its position as the most militant anti-Bookerite newspaper in America, its uncompromising protest journalism shaping Black political thought and inspiring the Niagara Movement's founding.

Sutton Griggs published 'The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist,' a protest novel responding to Thomas Dixon's racist 'The Leopard's Spots,' distributed through Black church networks across the South as an act of literary resistance.

Jack Johnson compiled a dominant record in the mid-1900s but was systematically denied fights against top white heavyweight contenders who refused to face a Black challenger, forcing Johnson to fight Black opponents and travel internationally to build his case for a championship shot.

Dunbar's final poetry collection, published the year before his death, showed his continued mastery and the toll tuberculosis was taking; the book received wide critical recognition as part of his enduring legacy.

Internal disputes over publishing house control led to a major division in the National Baptist Convention, the largest organization of Black Christians in America, demonstrating both the institutional power and the political tensions within Black religious life.

W.E.B. Du Bois founded 'The Moon Illustrated Weekly' in Memphis, one of his early ventures into Black periodical publishing before The Crisis, seeking to create a sophisticated magazine for Black readers independent of Booker T. Washington's influence.

Launches the paper that becomes the most influential Black weekly and a fuel of the Great Migration.