James I. Battle is the only known African American to move from a position of service to head his own household on Cooper Street.

Born in 1876 in Georgia or Tennessee (sources vary), by the 1890s Battle had migrated north and settled in Camden. From 1896 until 1899, he worked as a live-in janitor for the Camden Republican Club at 312 Cooper Street. He left this job and the housing it provided in 1899, when he married another African American migrant from Georgia, Hattie Daniels.

The Battles made their home at 403 Friends Avenue for most of the first quarter of the twentieth century, but for four years (1909-1912), they returned to Cooper Street. City directories and the U.S. Census of 1910 find them at 63 Cooper Street, a three-story brick row house that they rented just east of Front Street. At that time, their house and two adjacent (61 and 65) belonged to the Victor Talking Machine Company, where James also worked as a steward. Their departure from the Cooper Street home in 1912 coincided with Victor's plans to build its new headquarters on the same site at Cooper and Front Streets. The Battles, who had no children, returned to 403 Friends Avenue until the 1920s, when they moved to Atlantic City.

According to his later obituary in 1929 in the Philadelphia Tribune, Battle also worked for J.R. Evans and Company, a leather manufacturer at Second and Erie Avenue in North Camden. He achieved enough financial success to build "a beautiful home" in Atlantic City, the newspaper reported. Battle is buried in Mount Peace Cemetery in Lawnside, New Jersey.