Black History, Business
Charles Clinton Spaulding
(b. Aug. 1, 1874, Columbus county, N.C., U.S.–d. Aug. 1, 1952, Durham, N.C.), American business leader who built the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company into the nation’s largest black-owned business by the time of his death, when it was worth about $40 million.
At the age of 20, Spaulding left his father’s farm and moved to Durham, N.C., where in 1898 he completed what was equivalent to a high school education and became the manager of a black-owned grocery store. In 1899 he was hired as a part-time agent by the recently established North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association; the following year he was promoted to full-time general manager, the company’s only full-time position. Spaulding was an early proponent of saturation advertising, inundating local businesses with promotional items bearing his company’s name.
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Black History, Business
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), founder and principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, organized the National Negro Business League in 1900 to promote “commercial, agricultural, educational, and industrial advancement … and the commercial and financial development of the Negro.” Washington believed that blacks should “leave political and civil rights alone” in order to “make a businessman of the Negro.”
Washington was hoping that the League would encourage blacks to start their own businesses, thus proving that they were as capable as whites of economic success. This in turn, Washington reasoned, would eventually lead whites to allow blacks — or at least certain blacks — their right to vote and due process of law. The League’s membership included a number of successful black businessmen (and women) and professionals and a large number of the black middle class “strivers” who hoped to start their own businesses.
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Black History, Business
On 1905-09-21, the Atlanta Life
Insurance Company was founded. They are the largest black-owned stockholder insurance company in America.
Founded by former slave, Alonzo Franklin Herndon, he purchased a small benevolent association for $140 and, with the acquisition and reorganization of two other companies in that year forming the Atlanta Mutual Insurance Association. In June 1996, Charles Cornelius began as the fifth president and chief executive officer and carries on the company’s proud legacy.
Today, Atlanta Life has assets of over $200 million and operates in 17 states.
Black History, Business, Education
Richard Robert Wright, Sr.
Despite being born a slave on May 16, 1855, Major Richard Robert Wright, Sr. was a post-reconstruction pioneer and trailblazer, who made remarkable contributions in education, banking, politics, publishing, journalism, real estate, and civic affairs. Among his many accomplishments, he founded a high school, a college, and a bank; and owned several newspapers.
He also founded the National Freedom Day Association, and worked toward establishing a national day to commemorate freedom for all people.
On February 1, 1941, Major Wright invited national and local leaders to meet in Philadelphia to formulate plans to set aside February 1st each year to memorialize the signing of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution by President Lincoln on February 1, 1865. One year after Wright’s death in 1947, a bill passed both U.S. Houses of Congress, making February 1st National Freedom Day, and was signed into law on June 30, 1948. (more…)
Black History, Business
eorge B. Vashon
George Boyer Vashon, attorney, scholar, essayist and poet, made noteworthy contributions to the fight for emancipation and education of blacks. He was born on July 25, 1824, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the third child and only son of an abolitionist, John Bethune Vashon. At the age of 16, Vashon enrolled in Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio. On August 28, 1844, Vashon earned his Bachelor of Arts degree with valedictory honors, becoming the college’s first black graduate. Five years later, Vashon was awarded a Master of Arts degree in recognition of his scholarly pursuits and accomplishments.
After returning to Pittsburgh, he studied law under Judge Walter Forward, a prominent figure in Pennsylvania politics. After two years of reading law, Vashon applied for admission to the Allegheny County bar. His application was denied on the grounds that colored people were not citizens. This inequitable act led to Vashon’s decision to emigrate to Haiti. Before leaving the United States, Vashon went to New York to take the bar examination, which he successfully completed on January 10, 1848, thus becoming the first black lawyer in New York. (more…)
Black History, Business, Government
William E. Sauro/The New York Times
Andrew F. Brimmer in 1974, shortly after he resigned from the Fed board.
Andrew F. Brimmer, a Louisiana sharecropper’s son, was the first black member of the Federal Reserve Board. Dr. Brimmer, an economist, held a number of high-ranking posts in Washington and taught at Harvard, but the economic conditions of poor, powerless, uneducated blacks was an abiding concern. He spoke about what he called the “schism� between blacks who were educated and had marketable skills and those who did not. In later years he spoke frequently about how government policies no longer supported programs to help blacks enter the economic mainstream.
Dr. Brimmer was the assistant secretary of commerce for economic affairs when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to the Fed board in 1966.
At the time, the Federal Reserve was bitterly divided over monetary policy. The chairman, William McChesney Martin Jr., threatened to resign if Mr. Johnson appointed a liberal who would vote in favor of lower interest rates. (more…)
