Universal Negro Improvement Association

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1990

In 1964, in the unlikely setting of an abandoned Philadelphia jailhouse, Rev. Leon H. Sullivan opened the first Opportunities Industrialization Center to train Black workers for skilled jobs that discrimination had long kept beyond their reach. Born of the same organizing energy as Sullivan's earlier 'selective patronage' boycotts, O.I.C. paired vocational instruction with dignity and self-reliance, and the model spread from this city to hundreds of centers across the nation and eventually overseas.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2016

Opened in 1968, Sullivan Progress Plaza was the first shopping center in the nation built, owned, and operated by African Americans. It grew from the efforts of Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, members of Zion Baptist Church, and the surrounding Black community, who pooled small investments to create it. Its visible success drew national notice—prompting President Nixon to fund a corporation to spread similar commercial development—and inspired Black-led economic ventures across the country.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

This building has worn many identities across a century and a half—first the home of famed tragedian Edwin Forrest, then the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and later Heritage House. In 1968 it became the Freedom Theatre, a community-rooted Black theater dedicated to professional training in the dramatic arts. Amid the era's civil-rights ferment, it gave African-American performers a stage and a school of their own.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

Built between 1887 and 1897 as a soaring Gothic Revival church, the Church of the Advocate became a spiritual and political anchor for North Philadelphia's growing African American community after 1930. It hosted major Black Power gatherings in the 1960s and '70s, and in 1974 it made history as the site where the first eleven women were ordained Episcopal priests.