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  • Description is exactly "This is a collection of materials relating to Constance Perkins, Jr. According to Florence historian Lee Freeman: "Constant, Jr., a son of Constant, Sr. and Victoria Perkins, also worked as barber. By 1900 he was in business, probably with black barber Jack Gray, in the firm Perkins & Gray, Tonsorial Artists.” In 1915 he opened “a very handsome barber shop” at the Jefferson Hotel, first door south, on Intelligence Row (behind the courthouse, named because of all the law offices that were located on that street). In 1895 Constant, Jr. drew up the plans for St. Paul AME Church’s new sanctuary, built on the corner of Court and Alabama Streets, after the congregation demolished their old building. In 1903 Constant, Jr. was awarded the contract to deliver the US Mail in Waterloo, replacing African-American Ab McKelly. In 1904 he built “one of the neatest cottages erected lately in Florence,” on South Court Street, near St. Paul’s AME Church. Afterward, for a brief period, Constant played in Mahara’s Minstrels with a young W. C. Handy. Constant was reportedly forced to leave Florence around 1921 over his refusal to comply with Florence’s segregation laws and relocated to Kentucky. Constant, Jr. was married twice, his first (unknown) wife dying by 1910 after giving him at least one daughter Emma (1890-1902); his second wife was a widow named Willie Bertha McMillan (1890-aft. 1942) and they had at least two children, sons Carranza and Christopher Wallace Perkins, born in 1915, who became a noted Jazz musician in Cincinnati. Constant, Jr. died in Kentucky in 1942.""
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