Madame C.J. Walker

African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary Henderson, Alexa Benson . Business History Review ; Boston  Vol. 68, Iss. 2,  (Summer 1994): 289.

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ABSTRACT  

African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary, by John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, is

reviewed. FULL TEXT  

African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. By John. N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman *

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1993. xiv + 806 pp. Appendixes, bibliographic essay, and index. $99.50.

ISBN 0-313-27253-0.

This volume, comprising more than eight hundred pages, contains 77 comprehensive biographical essays for 123

individual African American business leaders. Taken together, these individuals represent the most historically

significant black entrepreneurs from the mid-1800s until approximately the Second World War. Each essay

includes up-to-date and extensive bibliographical data, which make this compilation a particularly useful tool for

researchers and scholars of African American business history seeking reference materials and new directions for

more in-depth studies in these areas. Broadly, too, there is much to be learned by the general student of African

American history and also by the casual reader interested in gaining perspective on the post-Civil War experience

of African Americans. Moreover, it is an excellent reference work for secondary school and college libraries.

The biographical essays cover the range of business endeavors engaged in by African Americans in the period of

review. In financial services and insurance, a category that includes banking, loan associations, investors, money

lenders, and factorages, seventy-six individual entrepreneurs are listed. In the retailing and service industries, forty

individuals and five families are discussed. These include business people engaged in enterprises such as

undertaking, barbering, catering, drug and grocery store proprietorships, car dealerships, and general

merchandising. Another large segment, comprising seventy-three entries, includes individual African Americans in

the publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and other media areas. A final group of entries, totaling thirty-six, is

composed of people in real estate, construction, and agriculture. In some instances, an individual business woman

or man is counted in more than one category.

The essays also reflect African American entrepreneurial endeavors within a group of important southern cities

and major northern centers, although the authors state that "some deserving individuals were inevitably left out of

this collection" (p. viii). Southern cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Durham, Nashville, New Orleans, Charleston,

Richmond, and Washington, D.C., as well as northern and western cities including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia,

Los Angeles, and several others are given broad coverage, but the authors admit that little attention is paid to New

England, Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, among others. It is perhaps significant to note that the largest single

group represents Chicago, with nineteen African American entrepreneurs included in the volume. A few essays,

from Mississippi and Alabama, show the involvement of African American entrepreneurs in southern rural areas.

References to the place of birth of the business leaders cited suggest that the southern states of Georgia,

Louisiana, and Mississippi had the largest number, with each state having fourteen entries. Nine essays attest to

the leadership of African American women in business.

Among the successful business careers chronicled in the volume are the uncle-nephew team of newspaper

publishers, Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1868-1940) and John Herman Henry Sengstacke (1912- ). Abbott, a native

of Georgia, received training in the printing trade at Hampton Institute and, after relocating to Chicago and earning

a law degree, he entered the newspaper business. In 1905, he began publishing the Chicago Defender, which by

1915 "had achieved the status of the most successful black paper in Chicago, and it was well on its way to

becoming one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States" (pp. 7-8). At Abbott's death, his nephew,

John H. Sengstacke, assumed leadership and by 1982 headed a syndicated organization that included "the

Chicago Defender, the Memphis Tri-State Defender, the Michigan Chronicle, and the Courier newspapers published

in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Ohio, Detroit, Georgia and Florida" (pp. 13-14). Sengstacke, as organizer and first

president, is also credited with founding the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

In the category of newspaper publishing, essays are provided also for the father-son team of Richard Henry Boyd

(1843-1922) and Henry Allen Boyd (187-1952) of Nashville, founder of the National Baptist Publishing Board and

publishers of the Nashville Globe; brothers William Alexander Scott (1902-34) and Cornelius Adolphus Scott (1908-

), publishers of the Atlanta Daily World and owners of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate; William Calvin Chase, Sr.

(1854-1921), publisher and editor of the Washington Bee; P. B. S. Pinchback (1837-1921), publisher of the New

Orleans Louisianian; and Robert Lee Vann (1879-1940), organizer and publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, an early

rival of the Defender. The authors note that Vann built a black newspaper with national circulation that, like

Abbott's Defender, was

able to influence millions,...to create patterns of migration from the South to the North, to define issues and tactics

for fighting discrimination nationwide,...and to create viable economic institutions that nonetheless managed to be

politically sensitive and aware, and which acted as a voice for African Americans during a particularly critical time

in the nation's history (p. 641).

With the inclusion of more recent African American entrepreneurs, such as Earl Graves (1935- ), publisher of Black

Enterprise magazine, this reference tool offers a compact analysis of the leading African American figures in the

print media in the twentieth century.

In the categories of banking, insurance, and other financial services, the authors provide biographies of the earliest

African Americans to engage in these professions. Essays are included for Jesse Binga (1865-1950), who operated

the Binga State Bank, described as "the largest and most important black bank in Chicago" (p. 79); Robert Reed

Church, Sr. (1839-1912), progenitor of the renowned Church family of Memphis and the leading organizer of the

Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Company; Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934), organizer of the St. Luke Penny

Savings Bank and "the first woman bank president in America, black or white" (p. 670); and Richard Robert Wright,

Sr. (1853-1947), organizer with son Richard Wright, Jr. (1878-1967) of the Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust

Company of Philadelphia, an enterprise described as "one of the largest, most successful black banks in the North"

(p. 715). Cross-referenced with bankers are biographies of insurance entrepreneurs Arthur G. Gaston (1892- ), real

estate investor, community leader, and founder of the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company and the Citizens

Federal Savings Bank of Birmingham; John Merrick (1859-1919), Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874-1952), William

Jesse Kennedy, Jr. (1889-1985), and later generations of leaders associated with the North Carolina Mutual Life

Insurance Company, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and Mutual Savings and Loan of Durham, North Carolina;

Heman Edward Perry (1873-1929), founder of the Citizens Trust Bank and Standard Life Insurance Company in

Atlanta; and members of the Walker family of Memphis, organizers of the Universal Life Insurance Company and

Tri-State Bank.

The business careers of African American women are given least attention in the volume. Besides essays on the

leadership of Maggie Walker and Patricia Walker Shaw (1939-85), the careers of two pioneering women in the hair

care industry are reviewed: Sarah Breedlove (Madame C. J.) Walker (1867-1919), organizer of the Madame C. J.

Walker Manufacturing Company, and Annie Turnbo-Malone (1869-1957), proprietor and promoter of the Poro

Manufacturing Company and Poro College. The contemporary businesswomen cited include Suzanne de Passe,

entertainment company executive with Motown Industries, and Naomi Sims, fashion model and wig and cosmetic

entrepreneur.

In this publication, Ingham and Feldman make an important contribution to scholarship that, despite the

exclusions specified and an obvious gender bias, will allow for fuller inclusion of African Americans when studying

American business leadership. As a biographical dictionary, the study fulfills its purpose of providing biographical

information on the selected leaders--much of which is unavailable elsewhere--in a readily accessible format. Its

most impressive features for the researcher, however, are the compilation and analysis of sources, both primary

and secondary, that conclude each essay and the comprehensive biographical information on black business and

business leadership in individual cities and states provided at the end of the volume.

Alexa Benson Henderson is associate dean for undergraduate studies and professor of history at Clark Atlanta

University. She is the author of Atlanta Life Insurance Company: Guardian of Black Economic Dignity (1990) and of

several articles, including "Heman E. Perry and Black Enterprise in Atlanta, 1908-1925," Business History Review

(1987). Her current work focuses on African Americans in banking. DETAILS

Subject: History; Business ownership; Book reviews; Blacks

Location: US

Classification: 9521: Minority- &women-owned businesses; 9190: US

Publication title: Business History Review; Boston

Volume: 68

Issue: 2

Pages: 289

Number of pages: 4

Publication year: 1994

Publication date: Summer 1994

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Place of publication: Boston

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Boston

Publication subject: Business And Economics, History

ISSN: 00076805

CODEN: BHRVA6

Source type: Scholarly Journals

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Language of publication: English

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Accession number: 00962717

ProQuest document ID: 274465349

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Copyright: Copyright Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field Summer 1994

Last updated: 2015-08-15

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