November 01, 2024 A Community Vanished

A labor of love, this collaboration between life-long Madison resident Lillian Sue (Wells) Livers and the staff here at the JCHS History & Art Center. Intended first to be simply a pamphlet for a walking tour, the final product turned out to be so much more as we realized a pamphlet would leave far too much information out.

We felt it was important to tell the whole story, and believed that any final product edited down by people who did not live in Madison’s Black community — or, more importantly, did not share the same experiences as Black residents — would be worthless.

So, it was expanded to 26 pages, complete with photographs from the JCHS archives and photos loaned to us, helping to tell about the individuals and families who lived and worked in this community. The book also tells the community’s iconic buildings, such as the Broadway Second Baptist Church, which still stands and remains active, and the Broadway School, which was a center of the community for nearly a century before integration of Jefferson County’s schools and was lost in a fire on New Year’s Eve 1969.

The book also gives a visual representation of what the neighborhood looked like in the early years and its gradual disappearance over time, as King’s Daughter’s Hospital expanded and grew, and after Madison passed Fair Housing ordinances that no longer restricted Black residents to just this portion of the city. Also included is information about the founding of the Madison chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and it’s predecessor, the Negro Welfare League.

Address by address, the book documents the houses, businesses, and other buildings in the community bounded by West Fifth Street to the north, West Third Street to the south, Elm Street to the west and West Street to the east. A fold-out map shows the location of each address, and indicates whether a building exists, or if it has been moved or demolished.

Research conducted by JCHS staff and volunteers helped expand the wealth of stories provided by Livers, incorporating information found within city directories, family files, genealogies, digital photographs, and other resources here at the History & Art Center’s Research Library, and through online services, including Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org.

We invite anyone connected to the people, places, and things that made up Madison’s segregated Black community to contact us with more information or memories, and we would welcome additional photographs, provided on loan or as donations, that we can scan and add to our digital collection.

“A Community Vanished” is on sale here in our website shop in both PDF and hard-copy formats, and at the History & Art Center Museum Gift Shop.