William Leabs, Jr., photo courtesy the Archives of Michigan

The description from the Archives of Michigan begins:

Here, we see William Leabs, Jr., an African American businessman. He’s standing in front of his store, the Marquette Shoe Shining Parlor (view larger). This business is listed in the Lansing City Directories of 1902 and 1904, and the photo presumably dates from about that same time frame.

Lansing’s African American heritage is as old as the city itself. Lansing’s first black resident of record is James Little, a freed slave from New York state. Little came to Lansing in 1847 (the year of the city’s founding) and started a farm.

Lansing’s black population increased slowly during the remainder of the 19th Century. Many black settlers came from other Northern states and from the upper South. Some were Canadians descended from escaped slaves. Others came from elsewhere in Michigan, with the majority of those hailing from Cass County (Freed slave communities had been established there before the Civil War.).

You can read more at the Image of the Month for February 2008 and also in Robert Garrett’s article The Birth and Death of Lansing’s Black Neighborhoods in the Lansing City Pulse.

February is Black History Month in Michigan and you can get a ton more articles from Absolute Michigan’s Black History in Michigan.