Black $ green: black entrepreneurs wage uphill struggle in 20th century - excerpt from 'The Shaping of Black America' - part 2

Ebony, Oct, 1997 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

The meaning of these figures was ominous: The relative position of the Black entrepreneur had declined sharply. The war boom of the '40s changed this picture slightly, but the same process that characterized the Civil War was at work. In other words, White businesses improved their position so dramatically on war profits that the net result was a relative impoverishment of the Black entrepreneur.

Nevertheless, internal progress was evident everywhere, as African-Americans made their most significant occupational gains since World War I. This change, in turn, stimulated the real estate market and created new opportunities for realtors, financiers, and advertisers.

The Black movement of the '50s and '60s accelerated these changes by raising the consciousness of Blacks and forcing substantial government intervention. By the late '60s there was flurry of activity by a number of government agencies, including the Small Business Administration. Critics said this government action was a classic example of "too little given too begrudgingly too late." They said, in general, that none of the programs dealt with the imperatives of fundamental change, the imperatives of redistributing the national income and transforming the Black community by massive doses of capital controlled by Blacks.

If the new climate of the '50s and '60s did not, as the critics charged change the economic position of Blacks, it did at least change the morale of Black entrepreneurs, who seized and held new ground. A good deal of light is thrown upon the temper of the new entrepreneurs by the careers of two men who heralded the new age and played central roles in it.

The first man is John H. Johnson, who is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of Black business. In 1942 he borrowed $500 on his mother's furniture and started Negro Digest and Johnson Publishing Company. Three years later, in 1945, he produced the first issue of Ebony, the most successful Black commercial publication in history. By 1997 Ebony had achieved a circulation of some 2,000,000, and Johnson had been honored by numerous organizations. By that time, he had expanded his operation to include other magazines, including Jet, EM and Ebony South Africa, Fashion Fair cosmetics, a haircare company, and a TV production company. In 1982, Forbes magazine named him to its list of the 400 richest Americans.

Another loan, $700 from a credit union, was the seed that enabled Berry Gordy Jr., a young Detroit automobile assembly worker, to start Motown Records, Under Gordy's leadership, Motown became a leading force in the entertainment industry, creating stars like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and giving Blacks, for the first time since the turn of the century, a measure of economic control over the fruits of their talents. In 1990, Gordy sold Motown to White interests but retained movie, television and sheet-music subsidiaries.

These men indicated the new possibilities of an age which witnessed important changes in the position of the Black entrepreneur. According to the first comprehensive survey of the Black business field, there were 163,000 Black-owned businesses in 1969 with total receipts of $4.5 billion and 151,996 employees. This compared favorably with the number of Black-owned business reported in 1930 and unfavorably with the total number of businesses (7,489,000), of which Black-owned businesses constituted a tiny 2.2 percent.