 Booker T. Washington, mentioned in his commentary of Durham the level of vocational diversity.He wrote that he had “never seen in a city of this size so many prosperous blacksmiths, wheelwrights, cotton mill operatives, and tobacco factory owners among the Negros.” 
It is important to acknowledge the fact that these aforementioned statistics reflect gross numbers, and realistically much of the wealth was shared among a select few black business elite, not the entire population.Most blacks in Durham, due to financial limitations, were still working in the Duke Tobacco factories or as agricultural laborers after emancipation.