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Business

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2016

Raymond Gavins
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
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Summary

From slavery to the present, business has been and is foundational in black struggles for freedom, citizenship, and equality.

Business began among slaves and free blacks. They forged individual and group efforts to earn money in enterprise while building families; kin support networks; and religious, fraternal, and burial associations. Colonial masters regularly hired out skilled bondmen, such as blacksmiths, for profit. Given a portion of what they earned, hirelings frequently bought themselves. Some opened barber, cabinetmaking, and other shops. A cadre of black freemen obtained land, houses, servants, and slaves. Lower-South slaves used a task system to acquire autonomy and personal property. Finishing assigned tasks by midday, they were allowed to leave the fields and work unsupervised until night. Many fished, hunted, cultivated family garden plots, and sold goods in the marketplace. Black hawkers impressed one foreign visitor in 1784. “There is hardly any trade or craft which has not been learned and is not carried on by the negroes” (Travelers’ Impressions..., 1916, p. 406), he explained. They continued to produce and barter in the wake of gradual northern abolition and rise of the southern Cotton Kingdom, sustaining Free African societies; churches; abolitionist, convention, and emigration movements; masonic orders; and mutual aid groups. Among them, artisans, beauticians, carpenters, dressmakers, and painters were active businesspeople. In 1861, when it seceded from the Union and ignited the Civil War, the South counted 120,000 artisans, 100,000 of them black. Nine in ten were slaves.

Following the precepts of slave and quasi-free forebears, freedpeople organized to uplift their race. They endured the backlash of Black Codes (1865–66). For example, no South Carolina black resident could undertake “trade, employment or business” without a white reference and $100 license ($10 for whites). Yet blacks became wage earners and saved at the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, which had branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia from 1865 to 1874. It failed due to “massive fraud among upper management and among the board of directors” (Hurst) and blacks lost $57 million. Of $1.6 million in deposits at the bank's closing, only half were returned by 1900. Better prospects appeared elsewhere. A federal report classified 4–8 percent of southern blacks as landowners in 1876. Nationally, blacks were increasingly visible as clothing, grocery, and dry-goods retailers; restaurateurs; blacksmiths; shoemakers; builders; and manufacturers.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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References

Hurst, Ryan. “Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company 1865-1874.” Retrieved from www.blackpast.org/aah/freedmen-s-savings-and-trust-company-1865-1874.
“Travelers’ Impressions of Slavery in America from 1750 to 1800,” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 1, October 1916, p. 406.
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2011.
Fairlie, Robert W., and Robb, Alicia M.. Race and Entrepreneurial Success: Black-, Asian-, and White-Owned Businesses in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Walker, Juliet E. K.The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.Google Scholar

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  • Business
  • Raymond Gavins, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The Cambridge Guide to African American History
  • Online publication: 05 March 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316216453.056
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  • Business
  • Raymond Gavins, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The Cambridge Guide to African American History
  • Online publication: 05 March 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316216453.056
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Business
  • Raymond Gavins, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The Cambridge Guide to African American History
  • Online publication: 05 March 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316216453.056
Available formats
×