Charles Douglass

Resourceful Entrepreneur

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Fall 1993]

Like so many men of his era, Charles Henry Douglass seized opportunities when they came, and created them when they didn't. Confident, enterprising and imaginative, he was perfectly matched for the world of business.

His career as a businessman, in Macon, Georgia, spanned 1898 to 1940, as he successfully weathered even the stock market crash of 1929. In the course of those years, he owned or leased close to 100 properties, along with restaurants, saloons, two movie theaters and a hotel.

He was president of the Middle Georgia Savings & Investment Co. for eight years, afterward serving as a director. Early in his career, he had bought shares in this bank (when it was the Georgia Loan & Savings Co.). It is also the place where he met the bank's cashier, Fannie Appling, who was to become his wife. Respected as one of the black community's most prosperous and influential citizens, he was credited with helping the city of Macon enlarge its business life.

Who was Douglass? He was a man whose mother and father died when he was barely out of his teens, leaving him to figure out how to support his two younger sisters. With only a rural elementary school education, he became an agricultural laborer. He held his next job, as a carriage driver for a doctor, while also working at a candy manufacturing plant. He managed to support the family until the mid-1890s, when both sisters married. Douglass then left Macon for more profitable work in another city. There, he saved money and returned to Macon in 1898, with $24 to spare.

With this, he bought a partnership in a small bicycle repair and rental business. Thus began a brilliant business career, to which he applied his savvy and intelligence. About the bicycle business, he said, "I did fairly well until the automobile craze came, then I sold out and went into the hotel and real estate business, in which I prospered."

And prosper he did. From 1904 to 1915, Douglass acquired substantial holdings of real estate and income-producing properties throughout Macon. During this period, he wrote, "I own thirty tenement houses, ranging from three up to eight rooms; two pressed brick stores with flats overhead on Broadway, which I have leased out for $140 per month; thirty acres of good land just outside of city corporation, for which I paid $10,000 in 1913, to be subdivided in building lots on which I am raising truck, fruits, Duroc and Berkshire pigs and game chickens . . ."

In 1904, Douglas began his career in the theater business by leasing the Ocmulgee Park Theater in Macon. Two years later, he sold the lease in order to buy a building on Broadway, which he renovated and turned into the Colonial Hotel. He then bought the adjacent property, restored it, and opened the Douglass Theater, which was really a complex that included a restaurant, billiard parlor, soda fountain and liquor store.

By 1911, the theater and the hotel (renamed the Douglass Hotel) had become the focal point for black entertainment, which they remained for nearly half a century. The theater showed first run motion pictures, as well as films by independent black film makers. Live entertainment was featured, and performers such as Bessie Smith appeared, along with a host of black stage and screen stars. As profits grew, Douglass and a partner founded a vaudeville group.

Following in the footsteps of other black realtors of the Jim Crow period, Douglass was determined to provide blacks with quality accommodations. He was responsible for the construction of several housing tracts and individual residences throughout the city, as well as a number of office and commercial buildings along Broadway.

He was proud of his theater and the contribution it made to the city. He said, "My theater is kept sanitary, clean, [and with] plenty of oscillating fans and two exhaust fans take away the impure air . . . I have the only Negro Picture Operator that is allowed in the State of Georgia and I believe that I am doing my people good by giving them nice, clean and wholesome entertainment."

A contemporary said of him, "Mr. Douglass does not hoard his money in banks. He spends it and makes employment for our people . . . He has placed his money in circulation in business where it can bless the people . . ." Douglass was well known for his interest in business development among blacks, and gave much of his time to organizations like the National Business Men's League and the Chamber of Commerce.

His skill as a businessman was matched by his concern for the welfare of blacks. He supported several educational institutions and was described as giving "liberally" to many worthy causes.

His 70th birthday celebration (just three months before he died in 1940) was a festive affair attended by his large family, many friends, and business associates. At this event, Douglass asked his two sons, Charles and Peter, to promise that they would carry on his businesses "in an admirable manner."

Both the Douglass Theater and the hotel are now landmarks in Macon. Prior to restoration, a large number of papers were removed from the theater offices for historical assessment and preservation. The Douglass Theater Collection has proven to be a highly significant record of over 800 pieces of advertising memorabilia, correspondence, ledgers, and playbills. These offer insights into operation of the theater, and the early history of the entertainment industry and the vaudeville stage. Also, the collection offers unique information about many of the early independent black film makers, actors and production companies.

Copyright 1993 Issues & Views