BLACK ENTREPRENEURIALISM

A History little Known or Understood

One day,  in the 1980's, while waiting for Peter to arrive for a session at the Drucker Institute, one of the other students in the class asked me why I was in the graduate program.  I replied that I wanted business training to add to my career track that had been up to that time in the public sector.  His response was, I don't mean that, but "there's hard times coming, and we might do something for her (pointing to the only female (white) in the class); but we're not doing anything for you people; you've been here for hundreds of years and you don't own a damn thing!'  I told him he didn't know what he was shooting off his mouth about.  My grandfather started a successful business in 1907, which survived until local politicians destroyed all black businesses in that town in 1957.

That student, speaking like he did, represents a low level of knowledge and defective thinking of many U.S. citizens, of all colors, and a profound ignorance of U.S. history.  My grandfather's sister and her husband were key members of the "Black Wall Street" of Tulsa, Oklahoma (see earlier blog).  The story of the Freedman's Bank, alone,  signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, would have told the jackass how wrong he was.

In fact, business ownership among all minorities is low today, compared to white ownership.  That is the result of a history of government actions, at all levels in this country,  that have served to inhibit the formation and truncate the life of minority-owned businesses.  Beginning with the teaching of thrift and saving to slaves by mostly Methodist and Baptist missionaries, the record of such activity was astonishing by the time of Reconstruction.  The systematic government actions of the Jim Crow area destroyed much of the savings, land ownership, and business ownership in the South and in the border states. Those freed and escaped slaves who found themselves above the Mason-Dixon line also found a business climate that was much less onerous.  Even in the North, race riots and lynchings served to reduce the level of economic wealth of all types.  Restrictions to education in all parts of the United States before the 1970's also had its effects. 

In the 21st century, persons of all colors around the world are emerging from the strictures that have been in place for the past 500 years.  This movement should be applauded and assisted by everyone, not preyed upon as the current crop of Money Boys and Repoobs seem prone to prefer.

For the record, Ray Stannard Baker, writer and, on occasion, adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt, began in 1906 and in-depth study and documentation of economic  progress of former slaves in the United States.  Look up Following the Color Line, Harper & Row, Publishers, Torchbook edition, 1964.

All those who want to see a prosperous future for all, perhaps a wise and lauderous goal, should work to restore those values recorded in Baker's work.


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