RESEARCH AND RESOURCE

Dr. Lovelace B. Capehart was a prominent Black physician in Raleigh.

The original house his family lived in was built around 1924-25. Dr. Capehart was born in 1863 in Bertie County to a white father (considered “one of the most substantial white citizens of that section”) and slave mother, Penelope Capehart.  

He attended the State Normal School in Elizabeth City and graduated from Shaw University in 1884. After completing a law degree at Shaw, he became a professor of English and also served as the third principal of Washington Graded School. He also taught at Jackson Baptist College in Mississippi before returning to Raleigh.

He attended Shaw  University's Leonard School of Medicine. He began to practice medicine in 1907.

The other house that he lived in on Smithfield Street (now Martin Luther King Boulevard) was sold to Calvin Lightner in 1941 and became Lightner Funeral Home.

Mary A. Burwell

Mary A. Burwell was an only child, born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, of freed slave parents who were living in “humble circumstances”.  A visiting uncle who was impressed with her disposition asked for her to live with him and promised to have her educated in the city schools of Raleigh.  She was enrolled at Washington School when she was eight years old.

She then entered Shaw University, graduating after completing the remainder of the high school (called Normal Department – a three-year program), with a diploma from the Estey Seminary course. She was a student of Dr. Scruggs.

After graduating, she taught for several years in the public schools.  She then taught at the “colored” Oxford Orphanage, knowing that it was heavily in debt and she would receive no pay.

The orphanage consisted of one wood building with three rooms and housed eight children.  She trained the children for concerts and after a year took them...

The Mary B. Talbert Home for Women was built in 1939 by C. E. Lightner and Brothers Company.  The house stood on E. Davie Street where the playground of Moore Square Middle School is today.[1]

The following information is taken directly out of a personal interview in The Urban Negro in the South.  “….I am a member of the Women’ Club, originally called the Woman’s Reading Club.  It was for married women, and while possible members were discussed, no invitation was necessary to join it.  In late years it started taking in unmarried women too, for we felt that both should belong.  The Mary Talbert Home grew out of this club.

“The origin, development, and functioning of the Mary Talbert Home are especially representative of the implied indirection which has obtained in relationships of women’s formal groups to the Negro Main Street.  The ensuing statements bear this out.

“I organized the Mary Talbert Home for...

Captain James E. Hamlin (1859-1924) was an amazing man whose name is synonymous with Raleigh's Black history.

A graduate of Shaw University, he operated several businesses in the Raleigh area, and worked as a clerk at the Post Office.  The businesses included:

• Green Front Saloon on S. Wilmington Street (1890's)
• People's Drug Store with partner Walter T. Harris (more on that later!)
• Ideal Cafe
• Billiard hall

The Green Front Saloon served as a recruitment center for Blacks who wanted to participate as a regiment in the Spanish-American War (1898).  He helped create the famous Black Third NC regiment of US infantry in the Spanish-American War and became a Navy Captain.  Stationed in the Philippines, they fought bravely in El Caney and Santiago de Cuba.  After the war, he adopted a native young man, Valentin Cortez Hamlin, who became a pharmacist.

People's Drug Store, which was at 13 E. Hargett Street, was the oldest Black pharmacy in the country and the 1st...