An NJG Series: Our History, Our Journey: Part II: Black-Owned Hotels In Norfolk

By Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter Emeritus  
New Journal and Guide   

After The Civil War, with the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments, enslavement of  Blacks was legally abolished.

But restrictions  on Blacks socially and economically created slavery anew in the form of Jim Crow segregation.

Yet family, fellowship in the pews, and halls of fraternal organizations were the foundations on which enterprises to house, entertain, educate, and manage  Black communities were built.

Hampton Roads was no exception, according to the Guide Archives and other sources.

Neighboring enclaves of Blacks, including in Norfolk’s Church Street business district, fostered entrepreneurs who created capital to build and own spaces for the professional class, pubs, theaters, retail, and parlors for beauty and other personal grooming.

A subset of this entrepreneurial trend in Norfolk were the small family-run hotels located in the Church Street Business District in Huntersville, the city’s oldest Black neighborhood.

Blacks visiting the city for business, families seeking shelter overnight, sports teams, and individuals were hard-pressed to find a hotel, especially in the Jim Crow South and parts of the North.

But from the early 1900s until the mid-50s, patronage of Black-owned hotels operating in the Church Street corridor was common.

The  Mt. Vernon Hotel, later named the Wheaton Hotel at 633 Brambleton Avenue, was defined as the first commercial hotel venue owned by Blacks.

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Another prominent hotel was  developed by a little-known businessman, William H.M. Tatum. He was a Texas migrant who opened the second most prominent hotel, according to Guide Archives.

Tatum owned the Tatum Inn, which once sat on the corner of Charlotte and  435 East Brewer Streets. He also ran a grocery store at 535 East Cumberland Street.

These former sites are now immersed in or near the massive footprint of the Young Terrace Public Housing community.

Tatum lived at 507 E. Freemason and was a member of the St. John’s AME Church and is buried at Calvary Cemetery.

Tatum built his wealth quickly after moving to Norfolk during WWI and the early days of the Great Depression.

A native of Belton, Texas,  Tatum moved to Norfolk in the final months of World War I’s building “boom”  from 1914-1918.  World War I started in 1914, involving mostly European rivals. America entered the war in its final year.

Two years before its end, the federal government began investing heavily in the construction of a huge Army supply center, which would become the largest naval base in the world and the Norfolk Shipyard.

Tatum, in the  May 18, 1929 edition of the Guide, said he had been enterprising since he was a boy. So, the young adventurer did not arrive in Norfolk destitute but seeking to improve upon his fortunes.

Leaving his wife and children back home, he was among the hordes of individual men, or with families in tow,  eager to land jobs paying  – surprisingly – up to $5 a day.

Tatum moved here on September 3, 1917,  and soon found a job as a bricklayer at $5.50 per day, for several months building the Army Base.  He lived in Titustown, then a camp, housing laborers working at the military construction sites. There were also domestics, who worked in the homes of White families in the northwestern corner of Norfolk.

Titustown evolved into a thriving Black neighborhood.

Aside from work, Tatum’s second money-making venture was loaning cash-hungry men money on payday at a lower interest rate to ensure they had enough to take home.

Black peddlers were selling “bootleg” cakes and pies to workmen outside the construction site gates.  So, he got into that game, too, and sent the extra money to his wife back in Texas.

When WWI ended on November 18, 1918,  the federal government reduced construction operations and personnel at the military construction sites.  But many, like Tatum, remained and found work at  the Dominion Docks at the foot of Church Street, where Waterside Drive is now. He lived in the attic of a rooming house at  410 Bute Street, according to the  Guide Archives.

At the same time, according to city history, White and Jewish business owners along Church Street and the east end of Bute, Cumberland, and Brewer and other streets began to exit the area in the early 1900s.

They migrated to other areas, especially downtown westward to Granby Street.

Blacks bought, leased, or rented properties they left and operated retail outlets, theaters, and other businesses, creating the Black Church Street business corridor.

Recognizing a revenue-generating opportunity, he jumped into the  “rooming business.”  He leased a six-room house at 448 Reilly Street and rented the six rooms.

Tatum, according to the Guide archives, took advantage of the shortage of housing for workers who remained in the city after the war and Black veterans returning from overseas.

The  “Great Black Migration” was underway, and families and individuals were moving to Tidewater seeking work and escape from oppressive Jim Crow policies further south.

When the Reilly Street house filled up, Tatum acquired another on St. Paul’s Street between Bute and Brambleton.   He also secured other houses along Bank Street.   Initially, he did not own these houses, but leased them.

This venture fostered big profits and ideas on how to invest it at a time when the bottom was falling out of the economic basket of the nation by 1930.

“I believe the (Great) depression is a good thing, in its way. It brings people down to earth and makes them stop and think, and there is nothing in this world that beats sober thinking.”

That quote was taken from a July 23, 1932, edition of the Guide, in the midst of “the Depression” in an article, headlined: “Life Story of Local Hotel Man Reads Like Horatio Alger Tale.”

From 1926 to 1929, on East Freemason and Cumberland Streets,  Tatum secured large tracts of land and buildings, one of which (in 1926) was the structure that would become the Tatum Inn.

It had three floors, with 36 bedrooms on the two upper floors, a lobby, dining room, studio, kitchen, and storage space.

According to the July 3, 1932 edition of the Guide, the Inn catered to partiers, baseball and football teams, and theatrical folk appearing at  varied Church Street venues

Like the Wheaton Hotel, the  Tatum Inn got high marks for its amenities and customer service,

Tatum was also a Goodwill Ambassador. He traveled to Chicago, New York, and other cities to attend meetings, sharing news of the economic fortunes of Blacks in Tidewater and collecting ideas on service from the hotels he patronized.

Back home, he was a mover and shaker among his fellow Black money elite, especially his closest friend,  P.B. Young, Sr.  He also profited from investing in various enterprises and giving to charity.

He refused a chair on the power-heavy Metropolitan Bank Board of Directors in 1931 due to ill health.

He was a member of the Steward Board of St. Joseph’s AME Church

Tatum died  May 19, 1951, at his hotel.

After his death, the Tatum Inn was run by his family until the first wave of redevelopment of that section of the Church Street business corridor got underway.

Many of the businesses, including  the Tatum Inn, were razed to make way for Young Terrance and other projects in what is now the St. Paul’s Quadrant.