African-American town promoters established at least eighty-eight, and perhaps as many as two hundred, black towns throughout the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black towns, either mostly or completely African-American incorporated communities with autonomous black city governments and commercially oriented economies often serving a hinterland of black farmers, were created with clearly defined economic and political motives.
Merchants and artisans lived in “Black Towns” in cities such as Madras. The “blacks” or native traders and crafts persons were confined here while the “white” rulers occupied the superior residencies of Fort St George in Madras or Fort St William in Calcutta.