This cluster of advertisements from the October 24, 1896 issue of The Searchlight promotes two drugstores, and a doctor and a dentist who worked in the same building on 6th Street in downtown Austin. Dr. B. F. Barlow advertised himself as "Colored Dentist" while Dr. J. H. Stevens was a "Physician and Surgeon." In her book on the Freedmen communities of Austin, historian Michelle Mears notes that Dr. Stevens was one of the first black doctors in the city. Both Barlow and Stevens appear in the 1897-1898 Austin City Directory with the notation "(c)" that meant they were colored.
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