James Okafor
“My father's shop was the second one to open on the block after the war. By the time I was ten, half the street knew our names.”
James Okafor’s family ran a tailoring and alterations shop on Elm Street starting in 1946, one of the first Black-owned businesses on the block. In this interview, he describes the mutual-aid networks that let small shops like his survive the lean years after the war, and the informal credit his father extended to neighbors he knew could pay him back when they could.
He later apprenticed under his father before taking over the shop himself in 1968.