A little more than 100 years ago, the South's first black millionaire tapped real estate holdings to purchase the first city bond issued by Memphis, TN as it struggled to regain its city charter from bankruptcy.

It wasn't until 1984, 50 years after his death, that the Memphis Chamber of Commerce honored Robert Reed Church Sr. as one of Memphis' pioneer businessmen.

Later Church's daughter, Mary "Mollie" Eliza Church, born in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, went on to champion, among other causes, women's rights including Susan B. Anthony's women's suffrage movement.

History often overlooks the achievements of African Americans in American history. African American history often overlooks the role real estate plays in some of those achievements.

A host of blacks have carved out a place in history largely due to their savvy real estate moves.

Church tapped his real estate holdings to help save Memphis, which, by the end of the Civil War, had firmly planted its roots as the bustling regional economic hub it remains today. Fed by the Mississippi River, Memphis hosted a naval shipyard and enjoyed the economic benefits from the completion of the Memphis-Charleston Railroad during the time.

Memphis was also an educational and business development center for former slaves, according to historic accounts from Memphis-based Don S. McClure Consulting a consulting and marketing company that developed the 28 Days of February program in honor of Black History Month.

Unfortunately, just as Memphis' economy was booming, a yellow fever epidemic wiped out half of Memphis' population of 16,000, bringing economic and social progress to a halt. Many who did not succumb to the disease fled the area and, in 1879, Memphis declared bankruptcy, gave up its city charter and became a Taxing District of Tennessee.

Further exacerbating economic downturn, another epidemic hit the south -- public lynchings and discriminatory Jim Crow laws.

"This wave of southern violence was probably more responsible for the lack of immigrants and finance capital than was the disease itself," McClure says.

Much of the African-American population survived the disease and, enduring the violence, remained to begin rebuilding the city as an African-American enclave of flourishing soci-economics where businesses thrived and a strong black middle-class developed.

That paid off for a city that knew the blues.

A resident considered the South's first African-American millionaire, Robert Church, Sr., a former slave, in 1893,bought the first bond issued after Memphis began its attempt to regain its charter.

Historic accounts aren't clear about Church's real estate holdings or how he first acquired them, but born in Holly Springs, MS, on June 18, 1839, as the son of a white steamboat captain, Charles B. Church, and a black slave seamstress, Emmeline, Church was also a land holder and businessman with a hotel, restaurant and saloon.

In 1899, he also opened "Church's Park and Auditorium" to provide otherwise unavailable recreational facilities for blacks at a cost of $50,000 pumped into a property valued at $100,00. With a seating capacity for 2,000, the auditorium hosted keynote speeches from President Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White and it featured the entertainment of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and of the "Father of the Blues," William C. Handy who Church hired as orchestra leader.

After years of neglect, the auditorium was torn down and the land acquired by the city as park property. In 1993, the property became part of the Beale Street Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1909, Church also founded the Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Co, the first black bank in Memphis. In the same year, Church, also a philanthropist, saved the Beale Street Baptist Church (now the First Baptist Church of Beale Street) from foreclosure

Robert Church died in 1912. More than a half-century later, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce honored Robert Reed Church, Sr. in 1984 by naming him one of Memphis' pioneer businessmen.

One of his children, Mary "Mollie" Eliza Church became a leader in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a merger of Susan B. Anthony's group and its rival suffrage effort, to address the particular concerns of black women.

Church became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women, an organization which worked to achieve educational and social reform and end discrimination and eventually become a charter member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

Her final act as an activist was to lead a successful three-year struggle against segregation in Washington, D.C.'s public eating places and hotels.

Church died in 1954 -- a year and a half before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

Published: February 3, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.