Barbers, beauty culture, physicians, undertakers · the early professions

1877 – 1952

The professions a segregated economy allowed: Black Fort Wayne's first documented businesses served the community itself. The Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center's Marsha Smiley Collection — its "Crossing Opportunity's Threshold" profiles of Black pioneers — records Frances and Emma Anderson as beauty shop owners in 1877, among the earliest Black businesswomen in the city's record. Medicine came next: Warner Anderson was, by the collection's account, the first African American to graduate from the Fort Wayne College of Medicine, in 1895. Dr. W. H. Conner began his medical practice in Fort Wayne in 1914. Leah H. Reeder's survey of Fort Wayne firsts in Frost Illustrated (5 September 2015) names the early twentieth-century practitioners: Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Borders, a Howard University graduate; Dr. Roland B. Wilson, on staff at three different city hospitals — the Smiley Collection styles Wilson the first African American doctor in a city hospital in Fort Wayne; Dr. Roland B. Walter; Dr. James Graham; and Nancy Lester, R.N., whom the Smiley Collection names St. Joseph Hospital's first African American registered nurse, with Grace Brooks the first African American hired by that hospital. Reeder also records Arrie Stovall, a graduate of the Madam C. J. Walker Beauty College of Birmingham, Alabama; her son Dr. Alfred Stovall, a Howard Medical School graduate, with Dr. Jeff Towles, a University of Louisville medical graduate, opened a full-service medical facility at Lafayette and Pontiac streets in 1993.

The funeral homes — a first that two records claim: The Black funeral home was an institution of the first rank — the business that buried the community, extended it credit, and anchored its blocks — and Fort Wayne's record carries two competing foundings, printed here as they stand. The Smiley Collection profiles Charles William West under the style "1st Black Owned Funeral Home in Fort Wayne / 1921." Reeder's Frost Illustrated survey states that in 1925 Ellis Micheaux Sr. opened the first funeral home in service to the African American community; after his death in 1952 his widow, Josie (Bryant) Micheaux, operated it until it closed in 2002 — and the Smiley Collection also profiles Micheaux, under the style "1st African American Owned Funeral Home." The two claims are not reconciled in the sources reached, and neither is silently preferred here; what is certain is the institution's span, from the 1920s to 2002, and its place in the neighborhood's memory — the city's 2026 East Central mural names the Ellis Funeral Home among the neighborhood's historic buildings. The Smiley Collection adds Helen S. Pickett, the first Black female licensed mortician in Indiana.

Sources:

1. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Marsha Smiley Collection, "Crossing Opportunity's Threshold" — the profile styles for Frances and Emma Anderson (1877), Warner Anderson (1895), Dr. W. H. Conner (1914), Dr. Roland Wilson, Nancy Lester, Grace Brooks, Charles William West (1921), Ellis Micheaux, and Helen S. Pickett.
2. Leah H. Reeder, "Your black history matters! Can you afford to lose your history?," Frost Illustrated, 5 September 2015 — Borders, Wilson, Walter, Graham, Lester; Arrie and Alfred Stovall and the 1993 Lafayette and Pontiac facility; the Micheaux funeral home, 1925–2002; as compiled in ACGSI, "African-Americans of Allen County, Indiana."
3. City of Fort Wayne, "Mayor Tucker Unveils New Mural in East Central Neighborhood" (29 June 2026) — the Ellis Funeral Home among the historic buildings portrayed in the Rich History, Bright Future mural.