Because of the small size of the African-American population, the Black community of Lowell never concentrated in one area and was primarily spread out in different parts of the city. In the earlier part of the 20th century, several families congregated to the Ayer’s City section. Unlike many other neighborhoods in Lowell, Ayers’ City (bounded by Plain Street, Hale’s Brook, and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad lines) was never occupied by a single large ethnic group. Residents of German, Irish, Italian, French and Yankee descent lived side by side in this area. This made it easier for several African-American families to be accepted in this neighborhood and purchase homes there.

In the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s several new black families moved to the South End which was another neighborhood that had a cosmopolitan mix of Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Polish, and Armenian residents. Much of this area was wiped out to urban renewal, however, with the construction of the Central Plaza commercial development in 1959 – 1961. By the late 1960s and early ‘70s there was a small concentration of African-Americans in the Bishop Markham Housing project in the South End as well as in the Hale-Howard neighborhood which was also razed for urban renewal during the 1970s.

The African-Americans used social clubs and churches as their places of community-building. An early Black church was located in a storefront on Kinsman Street while the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church on Grand Street located there in 1968. Homes also were important gathering places and some of the more frequented places included 85 Main Street and 89 Mount Hope Street which was the location of an Underground Railroad stop.