Plot

A film about black-owned businesses on U Street, known as "The Black Mecca". Family-owned businesses such as Lee's Flower Shop, family Owned Since 1910, Ben's Chili Bowl, family-owned since 1958, The Industrial Bank.

A film about black-owned businesses on U Street, known as "The Black Mecca". Family-owned businesses such as Lee's Flower Shop, family Owned Since 1910, Ben's Chili Bowl, family-owned since 1958, The Industrial Bank of Washington stand as a testament to the black business movement that began in the 1880s in downtown Washington and spread to the U Street area by the 1900s. The bank was founded in 1913 by laborer and entrepreneur John Whitelaw Lewis as the Industrial Savings Bank. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael made this their think tank.—Epic

A film about black-owned businesses on U Street, known as "The Black Mecca". Family-owned businesses such as Lee's Flower Shop, family Owned Since 1910, Ben's Chili Bowl, family-owned since 1958, The Industrial Bank of Washington stand as a testament to the black business movement that began in the 1880s in downtown Washington and spread to the U Street area by the 1900s. The bank was founded in 1913 by laborer and entrepreneur John Whitelaw Lewis as the Industrial Savings Bank. It first opened at 2006 11th Street, NW, in the Laborers' Building and Loan Association building, which was designed by Sidney W. Pittman and built by Lewis. (It has been razed.) A few years later the bank moved to its current building, which was financed and built by Lewis and designed by Isaiah T. Hatton. When it opened, Industrial Bank was the only black-owned bank in the city. In 1932 the bank was forced to close, as were many others, because of the national financial crisis that caused the Great Depression.

Jesse Mitchell, a Howard University Law School graduate (class of 1907), reopened the bank as the Industrial Bank of Washington in 1934. After his death in 1955, his son, B. Doyle Mitchell, Sr., assumed leadership of the bank. Industrial Bank remains a family-owned business. The African American Civil War Memorial Museum, in the U Street district of Washington, D.C., recognizes the contributions of the 209,145 members of the United States Colored Troops, Lincoln Theatre is a theater in Washington, D.C., located at 1215 U Street, next to Ben's Chili Bowl. The theater, located on "Washington's Black Broadway", served the city's African American community when segregation kept them out of other venues. The Lincoln Theatre included a movie house and ballroom and hosted jazz and big band performers such as Duke Ellington. The theater closed after the 1968 race-related riots. It was restored and reopened in 1994 and hosts a variety of performances and events. The U Street Metro station, which opened in 1991, is located across the street from the Lincoln Theatre.