AFRICAN AMERICAN REALTOR

Getting a Start.

Phillip A. Payton Jr. was born and reared in Westfield, Massachusetts. He received his education from Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, and went to New York in 1899 to seek his fortune. Payton's early jobs included being a handyman at six dollars a week, a barber, and a janitor in a real estate office. Intrigued by the boom atmosphere at the turn of the century, Payton entered the real estate business. In an interview he described his first break: "I was a real estate agent, making a speciality of the management of colored tenement property for nearly a year before I actually succeeded in getting a colored tenement to manage," he said, "My first opportunity came as a result of a dispute between two landlords in West 134th Street. To 'get even' one of them turned his house over to me to fill with colored tenants. I was successful in renting and managing this...