How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable

Author:Manning Marable
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, African-American
ISBN: 978-1-60846-512-5
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2015-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

II

The origins of Black Capitalism are found in the development of a small but affluent propertied Black elite which emerged before the Civil War. In Northern cities, some Blacks owned surprisingly large amounts of real estate. Properties owned by Blacks in Philadelphia were valued at $400,000 in 1847 and $800,000 in 1856. In 1840, Blacks in Cincinnati had accumulated real property, excluding church and personal property, valued at $209,000. Real estate owned by Blacks in New York City and Brooklyn in 1853 was valued at $755,000 and $79,200 respectively. Black entrepreneurs were involved in a wide variety of antebellum commercial activities. In Manhattan, by 1840, Blacks owned one cleaning firm, two dry goods stores, two “first-class restaurants in the downtown financial district,” four “pleasure gardens,” six boarding houses, one confectionery and two coal yards. In the 1840s, one Black clothing and tailoring firm in Detroit, owned by James Garrett and Abner H. Frances, boasted annual gross profits of $60,000. Black entrepreneurs in Cincinnati were particularly successful. Samuel T. Wilcox, a Black boat steward on the Ohio River, initiated a wholesale grocery store in the downtown business district in 1850. Quickly he became “the largest dealer of provisions in the city,” establishing commercial links with New Orleans and New York. By the mid-1850s Wilcox’s annual gross profits were estimated at $140,000. In 1851 two Black businessmen acquired a contract with Hamilton County, Ohio, worth $10,000 to plaster all its public buildings. Henry Boyd, a former slave artisan, established a furniture store in the late 1830s in Cincinnati. By the 1850s he regularly employed 20 to 50 Black and white cabinet makers and workers, and was worth $26,000.9

Under the slavery regime Black entrepreneurial activities were difficult, but not impossible in the South. In 1860, there were 348 free Blacks in Baltimore whose total property was worth $449,000. Eight hundred and fifty-five free Blacks in New Orleans owned 620 slaves and real estate worth $2,462,470 in 1836. By the outbreak of the Civil War, conservative estimates of property and business owned by the New Orleans free Black community exceeded $9 million. The vast majority of Blacks engaged in activities which provided goods and services to white patrons—tailoring establishments, saloons, eating houses, barbering and stables. The total value of all free Black-owned establishments and personal wealth in the U.S. in 1860 was at least $50 million dollars—half of which was based in the slave South.10

Of course Black business was not without certain risks in a racist society. Northern and Southern whites found it difficult to tolerate the economic success of any individual Black person, fearing that even isolated instances of Black financial ability would threaten the racist order. In 1844, Virginia authorities revoked the license of mulatto innkeeper Jacob Sampson without explanation. In 1852 Maryland prohibited Black membership in building and homestead associations. Blacks who saved their money to purchase farms discovered that many white homesteaders did not want them in their states or regions. White insurance companies usually refused to do business with Blacks, and white bankers drew the color line against Blacks desiring credit.

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