Saturday, February 13, 2016

HERBERT "HUB" DUDLEY -



    “Hub” Dudley was a credit to his race, the human race.  In an era when it seemed that the frayed chain  of humanity was going to explode into a mass of broken fragments, Dudley, a Dublin businessman, was the indestructible center link which bound the two races of Dublin and Laurens County together in the calm of a maelstrom which swirled about the country.

Herbert Horatio “Hub” Dudley was born in Cordele, Georgia in 1897.  “Hub” came to Dublin with his parents, Clayton D. Dudley and Katie Ford Dudley.  The Dudleys came here for a new beginning, a beginning which  led to a dream which still lives on today almost twelve decades later.

Clayton Dudley set out to build a business empire to meet the needs of African-Americans, who were not being completely served.   “Hub” adopted that same philosophy.

“Hub's philosophy on life was to build businesses and offer what was needed by the black community," his niece,  Thomaseanor Pearson, remarked. "Whatever we had, we had because it was needed," Mrs. Pearson told Theresa Harvard of the Courier Herald in a 1996 interview.

Herbert Dudley married Mayme Ford, a Washington, D.C. school teacher.  Her sister, Jenny Ford, was the mother of Thomaseanor Pearson.  He and Mayme  virtually adopted Jenny’s daughter, Mayme Thomaseanor, who would marry Alfred Pearson, Sr. to become the matriarch and patriarch of the Pearson family in Dublin.

The Dudleys opened a meat market and grocery store in 1922  in the building now occupied by Dudley Funeral Home.  Over the next two decades, the father and son team built an empire along East Jackson Street and the Five Points area of downtown.

There was a savings and loan, a restaurant, The Dudley Motel (modernized in 1958,) the Laborers-Mechanics Realty and Investment Company (a savings and loan association),  a shoe shop, a saw mill, a roller skating rink, a drug store, a poolroom, a barbershop, a guest house, The Laurens Casket Company, Dudley's Funeral Home, and in September 1936, the Amoco # 2 service station.   Dudley established a beauty shop and named it for his foster daughter, Thomaseanor, who was never a beautician.  The Dudleys also developed “Dudley’s Retreat” in the rear of the service station as a gathering place for the community. During World War II, Dudley worked to establish a USO for black servicemen on South Lawrence Street.


Dudley Funeral Home 

Dudley, a home schooled student and an aspiring student of the law, was  hired by W.H. Lovett, owner of the Courier Herald, to write a column relating to the activities of African Americans in the community.  Dudley called his column, Of Interest to Colored People.  It ran from November 11, 1935 through the end of 1936.  Before and after then beginning in June 1930 and  until September 18, 1968, the section was called Colored News.

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