Coleman Manufacturing Company
The Coleman Manufacturing Company (1897–1904) had the first cotton mill in the United States owned and operated by African Americans. Organized in 1897 by Warren Clay Coleman and others, and operating under original leadership until 1904, it was located in the Piedmont area about two miles from the county seat of Concord, North Carolina in Cabarrus County. Textile manufacturing had been established here before the American Civil War, but the mills hired only white industrial workers. The Coleman property later became part of Franklin Cotton Mills and a Fieldcrest Cannon plant.
The Coleman Manufacturing building, circa 1900.
Warren C. Coleman, circa 1900.
A Coleman Manufacturing Company stock certificate from 1899
The Coleman Manufacturing Company board of directors, circa 1900.
Warren Clay Coleman was an African-American businessman in south-central North Carolina known as a founder of the Coleman Manufacturing Company, which built one of the first black-owned and operated textile mills in the United States. The Coleman-Franklin-Cannon Mill still stands in Concord, North Carolina, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Warren Clay Coleman