James P. Thomas, a formerly enslaved man who gained his freedom and became a prosperous entrepreneur, died on this day in 1913. After opening a barbershop in his home in Tennessee, Thomas went on to build an impressive financial legacy, amassing nearly $100,000 in assets and property over his lifetime — an extraordinary achievement for a Black man in the post-Civil War South.
His life is a testament to Black resilience and entrepreneurship during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Thomas’s story was preserved in his autobiography, “Life and Times of James P. Thomas, Written by Himself.”
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