Entry · catalog no. 3612
Orange Mound
/ /ˈɔrndʒ ˌmaʊnd/ /ORNJ mownd
noun · Memphis, Tennessee · 1890s
✓ Verified
1.
A neighborhood in southeast Memphis, platted in 1890 on old Deaderick plantation land as the first American subdivision laid out specifically for Black buyers, and built up by the people who bought there.
“Both his grandparents bought in Orange Mound in the forties.”
2.
In Memphis speech, an origin claim — a way of saying which Memphis you are from.
“Ridgeway raised him, but he reps Orange Mound.”
Origin & Attribution
Memphis, 1890. Elzey Eugene Meacham, a white developer, bought roughly sixty-four acres of the Deaderick plantation over the seller's objection to selling to Black buyers, and platted it in lots of twenty-five by one hundred feet at forty dollars apiece, sold on fifty-cent deposits and weekly payments. The correction matters and it cuts both ways. The land was platted and sold by a white man; the houses, churches, schools, and businesses were built by the Black families who bought the lots — roughly nine hundred and eighty-two shotgun houses to start. And the claim repeated everywhere, that this was the first neighborhood in America built by and for Black people, is overstated: Brooklyn, Illinois was founded by Black families in the 1820s and incorporated in 1873. The defensible claim, and the one the federal record makes, is the narrower one — the first subdivision planned specifically for African Americans. It is enough.
1890
The subdivision is platted and the first lots sell at forty dollars on weekly payments
2016
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation names Orange Mound a Preserve America Community in October
2021
The New York Times covers the neighborhood's preservation effort on 23 November
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Memphis, Tennessee · 1890s
Spoken by
Black Memphians — Orange Mound families across four generations, and Memphis rappers claiming where they are from
$ORANGEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Revived136 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1890
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Laura Nickas, "Orange Mound," Tennessee Encyclopedia, Tennessee Historical Society
encyclopedia
■
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, "Orange Mound Neighborhood — Memphis, Tennessee," Preserve America Community designation, October 2016
federal record
■
Charles Williams, African American Life and Culture in Orange Mound, Lexington Books, 2013
book
■
+ Cite a sourceSeth Berkman, "Revitalizing Black Neighborhoods by Preserving Their History," The New York Times, 23 November 2021
newspaper
See also