Business Life and Philanthropy Behind the Veil

Abstract

Business Life and Philanthropy Behind the Veil Anton D. House (bio) Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow By Tyrone McKinley Freeman (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Pp. ix, 278. Notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $110.00; paperbound, $24.95.) The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire By Robert E. Weems Jr. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Pp. ix, 210. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $110.00; paperbound, $24.95.) The period between Reconstruction and World War I was one of the most transformative in United States history. During the late nineteenth century, Black and white Americans began leaving their small rural communities for urban sprawls. They transitioned from agriculture and farming to industrialization and mechanization. To add to the angst of urban living and dislocation, the influx of immigrants brought job competition, racial tension, and overcrowding to the growing cities. Unrestricted capitalism gave rise to large corporations and new forms of governmental corruption. While this period was rife with social issues, worker clashes, and violent racism, it was also the zenith of Black race enterprises and cooperatives. [End Page 286] By the late nineteenth century, African Americans had lost the political gains of Reconstruction. During the rise of Jim Crow, when they were forced out of government and public space, many African Americans turned inward to build community. By the 1880s, they made social and economic advances in banking, business cooperatives, and industrial insurance. Following slavery, they entered a mass movement for institutional development. They organized schools, churches, and literary societies. However, the most essential institutions, which served as a lever for economic progress, were the fraternal mutual aid benevolent societies. These organizations offered unity, friendship, and social and extrafamilial relationships. Their members paid entrance fees and dues and purchased burial and, later, insurance policies. While American society was becoming more segregated, the emerging industrial economy was extended to all. Even as robber barons raided the economy, African Americans became fortuitous beneficiaries of this rapidly expanding and growing economy. When years were good, the members of fraternal mutual aid benevolent societies paid their financial obligations and survived, and the societies saw burgeoning coffers. They used such funds to advance loans to the community or create businesses and buy property. In fact, many of these societies served as business schools and trained members in commerce and finance. They had a nationwide membership that included women—the most successful and prominent mutual aid societies were gender equal—and owned many businesses, including insurance companies, banks, grocery stores, and a retirement community. These Black enterprises taught their members and children the value of Black economic achievement and cooperation. The advent of the National Negro Business League (1900) marked a turning point. Instead of being one of many in a fraternal mutual aid society, some members left and established their own societies and businesses. They embraced the era of the self-made man; in the Black community, this included self-made woman as well. The rise of the individual Black capitalist coincided with African American migration to midwestern states and cities. It marked a shift from the old guard to the new: the cooperative Black business culture and ethos of the fraternal mutual aid benevolent society was supplanted by the individual capitalist. The former created Black America’s economic foundation from which individualistic Black capitalists sprang. They obtained their training, operations, and business practices from these cooperatives. While cooperatives had collectivist goals [End Page 287] and aims, including racial uplift, a new generation of Black capitalists believed they could be representatives of racial advancement and success, and use philanthropy to aid the people, while living lives equal to or better than those of their white counterparts. Anthony Overton and Madam C. J. Walker epitomized this second wave of Black business development in the United States’ industrial economy. Using private papers, newspapers, and government documents, historian Robert E. Weems Jr. reconstructs the life of Anthony Overton in The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire. He takes the reader from the South to the Midwest, painstakingly trying to tie...