Some began before Black Americans could vote, and a few before some of their founders’ relatives were free. All of them are still trading, which is the remarkable part. The businesses below survived Reconstruction, Jim Crow, redlining and the routine denial of loans and insurance to Black owners. Continuous operation across that history is not a small achievement, and every one on this list is still open.
E.E. Ward Moving
Widely recognized as the oldest continuously operating Black-owned business in the country, founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1881. It began as a two-horse operation whose earliest work reportedly included ferrying people to freedom, and it is now a multimillion-dollar company.
The Philadelphia Tribune
The oldest Black-owned newspaper still publishing, founded in Philadelphia in 1884 by Christopher J. Perry when he was twenty-eight. It has covered Black American life continuously for over 140 years.
North Carolina Mutual Life
Founded in Durham in 1898 and once the largest Black-owned business in America, at the heart of the district known as Black Wall Street. It was created to insure a community that white insurers would not.
Jones Bar-B-Q Diner
Often called the oldest Black-owned restaurant in the country, with roots in Marianna, Arkansas dating to around 1910. It became the first restaurant in Arkansas to win a James Beard Award, for a business run out of a modest building with no menu.
Scott’s Funeral Home
Funeral homes are among the most enduring Black-owned businesses in America, because segregation meant Black communities buried their own and white competitors ceded the trade. Many were founded in the early twentieth century and remain family-run institutions in their cities today.
Atlanta Life Insurance
Founded in 1905 by Alonzo Herndon, a formerly enslaved man who became one of Atlanta’s wealthiest citizens. The insurer he built became a cornerstone of Black economic life in the South and endures today.
Citizens Trust Bank
Chartered in Atlanta in 1921, one of the oldest Black-owned banks in the country, founded to extend credit to a community that mainstream banks refused. It remains a functioning community bank a century on.
The Afro-American Newspapers
Founded in Baltimore in 1892 and among the longest-running Black-owned newspapers in the nation, still family-owned across generations. It documented Black America through the eras that most needed documenting.
Ben’s Chili Bowl
Opened in Washington, D.C. in 1958 and a landmark of U Street, it fed the neighborhood through the 1968 riots and the decades of decline and revival that followed. Younger than others here and every bit as historic.
The Chicago Defender
Founded in 1905 by Robert Abbott, the Defender was one of the most influential Black newspapers in history and helped drive the Great Migration. It shifted to digital in 2019 rather than closing, continuing a run of well over a century.
Black Bookstores
A tradition of Black-owned bookshops that stretches back generations, several running continuously for decades as community anchors as much as shops. Washington’s MahoganyBooks is a modern standard-bearer for the lineage.
The Amsterdam News
Founded in Harlem in 1909, one of the oldest and most influential Black-owned newspapers in the country, still publishing. It chronicled Harlem through the Renaissance and every era since.
H.J. Russell & Company
One of the largest Black-owned construction and real estate firms in America, founded in Atlanta in 1952 by Herman J. Russell, who started with a plastering business and built landmarks across the city. Still operating and still family-controlled.
Why They Lasted
The common thread is that many began by serving needs the wider economy refused to meet: insurance, banking, burial, credit and dignity. That created loyal customers and durable institutions, and it is why so many of the oldest survivors cluster in exactly those trades.
How To Support Them
Most of these are still open for the ordinary reason any business is: customers. Eating, banking, subscribing or buying from them is the most direct way their next century gets funded, and it is a considerably better tribute than a plaque.
