A barber is a person whose occupation is mainly to cut, dress, groom, style and shave men's and boys' hair or beards. A barber's place of work is known as a "barbershop" or a "barber's". Barbershops are also places of social interaction and public discourse. In some instances, barbershops are also public fora. They are the locations of open debates, voicing public concerns, and engaging citizens in discussions about contemporary issues.
Madam C.J. Walker was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records. Multiple sources mention that although other women might have been the first, their wealth is not as well-documented.
A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment dealing with cosmetic treatments for men and women. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, and medspas.
The Cotton Club was a nightclub located in North Portland, Oregon. Located at 2125 N. Vancouver Avenue, the club gained attention during the 1960s as the "only nightclub on the West Coast with wall-to-wall soul." Celebrities such as Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis, Jr., Cass Elliot, the Kingston Trio, Joe Louis, and Archie Moore would visit the nightclub when they were in town.
Legacy Emanuel Medical Center is a hospital located in the Eliot neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1912, it is one of only two Level I trauma centers in the state of Oregon, and home to the only burn center between Seattle and Sacramento. The hospital is also home to the Life Flight Network (MEDEVAC), the first of its kind instituted on the U.S. West Coast. The 554-bed facility provides a full range of services, including conventional surgery, heart treatment, critical care, neurology/stroke care/brain surgery, and care for high-risk pregnancies. Legacy Emanuel also houses the Randall Children's Hospital. It is one of the hospitals in the area where gun shot victims are routinely brought in.
E. F. Young Jr. was an American businessman in Meridian, Mississippi, who built a business related to services, such as barber shops and beauty shops. He also manufactured and sold hair care products developed for African Americans. Young manufactured products in Chicago, Illinois and Meridian.
Johnson Products Company (JPC) is a privately-held American business based in Chicago, Illinois. It is best known for manufacturing a line of hair care and cosmetic products for African American consumers under the names Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen. The company was a longtime sponsor of the syndicated US television dance show Soul Train until that program's cancellation.
The Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company was a cosmetics manufacturer incorporated in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1910 by Madam C. J. Walker. It was best known for its African-American cosmetics and hair care products, and considered the most widely known and financially successful African-American owned business of the early twentieth century. The Walker Company ceased operations in July 1981.
Martha Matilda Harper was an American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and inventor who launched modern retail franchising and then built an international network of 500 franchised hair salons that emphasized healthy hair care. Born in Canada, Harper was sent away by her father when she was seven to work as a domestic servant. She worked in that profession for 25 years before she saved enough money to start working full-time producing a hair tonic she invented. The product, and the creation of special hair salons that utilized it, was successful. Harper began franchising the salon model to low-income women, and by its peak the company included more than 500 franchises and an entire line of hair care products.
The Peter Jeppesen House is a house located in north Portland, Oregon listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
James Albert Markham is an American hair stylist and serial entrepreneur, who has founded four hair care companies– Markham Products, ABBA Pure and Natural, PureOlogy Serious Colour Care, and, most recently, ColorProof Color Care Authority. He was also celebrity stylist Jay Sebring's protege and successor of Sebring International after Sebring was murdered by the Manson Family. Markham is known for advancing the Sebring cutting technique and introduced a generation of men to a new way of cutting and caring for their hair in the early 1970s, which emphasizes cutting hair in the direction it grows, daily washing and conditioning, and blow-drying. By 1973 Markham had improved upon the concept and took it nationwide over the next decade, coining the technique The Markham Method. Under his men's hair care line, Markham Products, he personally trained and certified thousands of barbers and stylists as Markham Style Innovators. The stylist's client list included many notable celebrities including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Peter Lawford, Wolfman Jack, among many others. He also taught film producer and celebrity hairstylist Jon Peters the Sebring method.
North Williams Avenue is a north-south street located in Portland, Oregon, United States, and it defines the eastern boundary of North Portland. North Williams Avenue stretches from its southern terminus at Northeast Winning Way, near the Moda Center, to its northern terminus at North Winchell Street, a distance of 3.3 miles (5.3 km). It is a street common to the Portland neighborhoods Eliot, Boise, Humboldt, and Piedmont.
Black-owned businesses, also known as African-American businesses, originated in the days of slavery before 1865. Emancipation and civil rights permitted businessmen to operate inside the American legal structure starting in the Reconstruction Era (1863–77) and afterwards. By the 1890s, thousands of small business operations had opened in urban areas. The most rapid growth came in the early 20th century, as the increasingly rigid Jim Crow system of segregation moved urban Blacks into a community large enough to support a business establishment. The National Negro Business League—which Booker T. Washington, college president, promoted—opened over 600 chapters. It reached every city with a significant Black population.
Albina is a collection of neighborhoods located in the North and Northeast sections of Portland, Oregon, United States. For most of the 20th century it was home to the majority of the city’s African American population. The area derives its name from Albina, Oregon, a historical American city that was consolidated into Portland in 1891. Albina includes the modern Portland neighborhoods of Eliot, Boise, Humboldt, Overlook, and Piedmont.
Northeast Portland is one of the six major divisions of Portland, Oregon.
Geneva's Shear Perfection Barber & Beauty Salon was a barber shop and salon in northeast Portland, Oregon's King neighborhood, in the United States. The shop was located along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and has been described as a "cornerstone" of the city's African-American community. Geneva's closed in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
James A. Merriman was an American physician and newspaper publisher. Merriman was the first African American physician to practice medicine in Portland, and perhaps the first in the state of Oregon; he was recruited to care for Black workers of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1903. He was a cofounder of Portland's second Black newspaper, The Advocate, and edited The Portland Times from 1913 until 1926. Merriman was also active in civil rights and community leadership, serving as the first president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP.
The Lewis and Elizabeth Van Vleet House, also known as the Yee House, is a historic building located in the Eliot neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States, on the plat of the former town of Albina. Built in 1894, it was the home of Lewis Van Vleet (1826–1910), the United States Deputy Surveyor for the Pacific Northwest for 40 years, among other accomplishments. Starting in 1956, it was the home of Rozelle Jackson Yee (1913–2000), a leader in the African American community who was active in promoting neighborhood involvement in the redevelopment projects that vastly altered the Albina area in the latter half of the 20th century. The house is architecturally important as a high expression of the Queen Anne style with extensive stained glass windows from the prominent Povey Brothers Studio. It is one of relatively few vintage houses in Albina to survive the period of redevelopment projects.
The Otto and Verdell Rutherford House is a historic building in Portland, Oregon, United States. Otto Rutherford (1911–2000) and Verdell Burdine Rutherford (1913–2001) were leaders in the civil rights movement in Oregon, importantly as president and secretary of the NAACP Portland branch. Their house became a center of meeting, organization, planning, and publishing in support of the African American community's struggle for equal rights. A notable success came with passage of the 1953 Oregon Public Accommodations Act, attributable in large measure to the Rutherfords' work.
