Are You Aware? Black Entrepreneurship and Obtaining an Economic Foothold

This is part III in our Awareness Wednesday series for Black History Month 2021. Read the other posts in the series here.

Booker T. Washington said Blacks should obtain an economic foothold before trying to tear down social and political barriers.

There have been, throughout our history, Black people who have prospered as free people — who made a living that allowed them to buy their own freedom or those of other Black family members. But for most, there have been enormous barriers of prejudice and scant means to overcome in their pursuit of success. This post is about those who have worked to secure an economic foothold. The result should be tearing down political and social barriers.

In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the federal government set in place the Freedmen’s Bureau, with the purpose of providing “40 acres and a mule” for freed slaves in the South. It was an attempt to provide an economic start for those freed people. They needed a place to provide for themselves. The land they were offered had been confiscated from Confederates. The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 (voting rights for Black men). There was hope of the possibility of economic and social barriers being lifted.

Unfortunately, due to countermanding orders, and guidance from President Andrew Johnson and his supporters, this was not going to be easy.

Black people contributed money into the Freedmen’s bank, thinking they were depositing money for land ownership. They found, instead, that the money was being pilfered by unethical men.

Before the bank’s collapse, Frederick Douglass, the most famous Black leader of his time, had deposited $10,000 to shore up the bank. This was done to encourage other Blacks to continue to trust the bank. But in 1874, it collapsed. The investors found they had no land that was legally theirs. By that time, federal support had been withdrawn in the South. There were no forces there to support education and voting, or laws protecting freed Blacks. It was at that time that the idea of racial superiority reared its ugly head in the form of white terror groups. So many of the social and political barriers that had been lowered were raised again. Again and again, Black people enjoying economic prosperity were terrorized.

Matthew Dowd, a former Bush chief strategist, said recently:

We never held the people who wanted slavery accountable and responsible, and we never told the truth in the aftermath. And when Reconstruction failed — by and large because Abraham Lincoln was killed — when Reconstruction failed, it led to more than a hundred years where we finally got to civil rights and voting acts. . . . You can draw a straight line between the failure of reconstruction and the inability to tell the truth about our country, all the way through Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, all the way up to Heather Heyer, and all the way up to police shootings that are unjustified. And so that to me is the truth Americans finally have to face.

This statement makes so much sense to me.

It is time to come face to face with our country’s errors.

In spite of an often hostile environment in the country, Black leaders such as W. E. B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington mobilized Blacks to create economic opportunity. They organized the National Negro Business League in the 1880s. By 1900 there were 20,000 Black-owned businesses. But the terror continued.

In Memphis, Thomas Moss had a thriving and growing store, The Peoples’ Grocery. Those jealous of his growing status formed a mob, which attacked and lynched him. A talented Black journalist, Ida B. Wells, put her life on the line and wrote an exposé about this episode. In 1892 alone, there were 162 lynchings across the country, all because of the white resentment of Blacks desiring to be seen as economically, socially, and politically equal. Ms. Wells had to escape after her office was destroyed. She would write further on the effects of racism.

People like Robert Abbott lent their voices. By 1905 the “Chicago Defender,” owner of the most influential Black newspaper, spurred the “Great Migration” that encouraged Blacks to move north to Chicago and other points north of the Mason-Dixon Line to gain economic and social freedom. By 1915, more than 250,000 had done so. In the period leading up to World War I, there were over 100 all-Black towns across the country, especially in the West. One-tenth of Oklahoma’s non-Native settlers were Black. They used their skills gained from experience in kitchens, on farms, and as servants to start their own businesses as caterers, barbershop owners (some even cutting white hair, though in separate shops), tailors, and dressmakers.

In Greenwood, Oklahoma, (Black Wall Street) by 1921, a dollar spent there circulated for five years before it moved out of that local economy into neighboring Tulsa. They were that self-sufficient. But the results were repeated time and time again. When Blacks started exercising economic prosperity, retribution followed.

George Washington Carver provided his expertise in helping poor African-American farmers heal their soil and make it productive. Mr. Carver was lured from Iowa State University — where he was teaching in that white university (a first) — by Booker T Washington, to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1896. As a renowned botanist, he desired to relieve the Black farmer of “ignorance, poverty, and racism.”

But he also had a desire to help all people, regardless of color, and he cared nothing about wealth. And his gifts did help all.

Both Presidents Roosevelt utilized Carvers expertise and counsel in race relations and soil conservation. His work was pivotal during the Dust Bowl. FDR even signed legislation to honor Carver with a national monument. (On a personal note, we took our family to his historical site back in the ’90s. It was so informative.)

Throughout the 20th century, many African-Americans gained recognition for their accomplishments, though at times it was belated. Even with the frustrations of physical danger, of “red-lining,” and other restrictions in financing, opportunities presented themselves. And many have prospered.

Clara Brown, ”The Angel of the Rockies,” was born enslaved in 1800. She made her way west. She worked as a laundress, midwife, and cook. With the money she earned, she invested in the local Colorado real estate and became a philanthropist. She gave aid to Blacks coming to Colorado during the Gold Rush.

Arthur George Gaston was born in 1892 in a log cabin. He died at 103 in 1996, worth $130 million. He saw the need for Blacks to be insured, to have a hotel to stay in, to have finance for a business, and even a place to be buried.

Garrett Morgan, whose parents had been enslaved, invented the traffic light and a smoke hood, which was a predecessor to the gas mask.

John Barfield, an entrepreneur in building maintenance and industrial service, started off in 1955 cleaning homes for builders in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His attention to detail and innovation in skills and equipment allowed him to expand, creating Barfield Companies, and later Bartech Group Inc. The companies he started have grown to be worth billions of dollars. He died in 2018 at the age of 90. By then his children had succeeded him. A great humanitarian, he said, “The more you do for others, the better you feel about yourself.”

John and Eunice Johnson created the print media giants Ebony (1945) and Jet (1951) Magazines, so Blacks could see themselves achieving. I did, as a young girl and woman. I loved the Ebony fashion show that came to my town back in the ’80s!

Cathy Hughes, who started the Radio One station in 1980 in Washington DC, is now a powerhouse in that world. She said, “Do good, before you do well.”

Reginald F. Lewis was a Harvard-prepared venture capitalist who purchased and grew Beatrice International. He became the first Black man to build a billion-dollar company.

I was recently listening to Steven Rogers, an African-American professor at Harvard Business School. He said this:

“Entrepreneurship is a synonym for liberation, because to those that have success with it, it provides them with the freedom to be whatever they want to be. . . . But more importantly, it provides them with the freedom to uplift others.”

I can tell you, my husband and I bought a pharmacy franchise because of the examples of these people who plowed the row before us. It was hard work, but at the end of 25 years, we were rewarded. I have a brother who helped us get started financially, and we helped him later in life in a business venture of his own. We were placed in a predominately African-American neighborhood, with 70 percent of our clientele Black. Our usual comment to them was, “Don’t use our services because we are Black, come because we do a good job.”

Many Black entrepreneurs see their efforts and successes as built on the work of those that came before. We seek to help others with opportunity and experience.