








hem upon the soil, upon the solid and nevt deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and ract that have ever succeeded have gotten their start.  Whatever oi thinks of a policy of mass rustication for Black Americans (Toi Brown, in his provocative new book Black Lies, White Lies, co tinues to recommend it in 1995), the point is that neither Washingt nor Hurston nor Fauset lack for boldness of vision or ambition.
The other thing they share is a common idea that Afric American business, art, literature, and social institutions can pi per only through the efforts of their own race. This places the and their heirs outside the bounds of current polite debate. W; ington, Hurston, and Fauset all disdained the enfeebling de; dence on Great White Father State that current establishment li als preach, but they would also scoff at the establishment const
From a	. . mac  	  1995 by the American Enterprise Institute. Reprinted
rorrj rhe American Enterprise, September/October 1995, pp- 55-63. vy
5. AFRICAN AMERICANS
live fantasy that a  colorblind society  is right around the corner and perhaps even resist the desirability of such a society.
This doesn t imply anti-white animus, an emp asis black enterprise, for instance, will actually lead to closer coopera tion and understanding between the races. Booker T. as mg ton believed that the brickmaking program at Tuskegee Institute fostered racial harmony, for  in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of the neighborhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section. 
This theme was taken up in the 1960s by Malcolm X, who said (in a sermon that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is fond of quoting):  The American black man should be focusing his every effort toward building his own businesses and decent homes for himself. As other ethnic groups have done, let the black people, wherever possible, however possible, patronize their own kind, and start in those ways to build up the black race s ability to do for itself. That s the only way the American black man is ever going to get respect. 
This sentiment was distinctly unfashionable when Malcolm X uttered it, and Booker T. 'Washington s emphasis on self-help and mutual aid seemed positively anachronistic to the  60s civil-rights movement, with its single-minded pursuit of things political. In a 1987 profile by Juan Williams in The Atlantic Monthly, Clarence Thomas argued,  I don t see how the civil-rights people today can claim Malcolm X as one of their own. Where does he say black people should go begging the Labor Department for jobs? He was hell on integrationists. Where does he say you should sacrifice your institutions to be next to white people? 
Today, virtually no one except the odd Klansman defends state-mandated segregation. But state-mandated integration, the cornerstone of the last three decades of civil-rights law, is definitely under fire. And the failures of government programs erected under the aegis of  civil rights  are now manifest and massive: the relentlessly ugly and impersonal public housing projects in which the Negro proletariat is warehoused-the coercive experiments in busing and school integration that have waged war on working-class white neighborhoods while belittling black students (whose IQs will skyrocket, they are told merely by rubbing shoulders with white urchins); the widely re  sented quotas that require corporate America to over-promote black professionals, irritating white professionals, while doing absolutely nothing for the kid on a Watts streetcorner.
Faced with this collapse of the 1960s program, many black Americans are suddenly casting about for alternative models and political allegiances. The new exemplars seem, at first wildly incongruous-ranging from Malcolm X to Claren  Thomas to Louis Farrakhan to Colin Powell to Thom c u the Black Panthers. There are J	|homas S Wel110
 mong this group. Recall thaijusfaThom)    mn n Mi'fs 'eUecrual	x
lied with the Black Panthers in their early pre-vk when they promoted neighborhood schooling a community-funded lunches for kids, and the Second
Quite apart from the lynch ropes placed around i a livid civil rights establishment, there are other ties t freethinkers today. Race pride, a fierce independenci buy into the cheap sentimentalities that have debasei currency: these are qualities shared by African-Americ of the 1990s. They are qualities found in Washington Fauset too.
Such qualities explain seemingly inexplicable Zora Neale Hurston s denunciation of the Brown v., cation decision:  The whole matter revolves around t of my people. How much satisfaction can I get froir for somebody to associate with me who does not them?... 1 regard the ruling of the United States S as insulting rather than honoring my race.  Or as Cl; told Reason in 1987,  You don t need to sit next to to learn how to read and write."
Black is Beautiful. So said the slogans of th ment; yet too few black children absorbed t fullness. Some made the leap only weakly, ar in the swamp called   Unblack is Ugly. 
One thing Booker T. Washington, Zora b and Jessie Fauset had in common was a humanil them to celebrate the world of blackness without ther historical fact or the self-regard of their non-t izens. A second shared trait was their view that o America unless one first loves one s very own bit South Carolinian, Methodist, black, whatever. T1 sights, grown rare today, especially joined togetl person. We might yet recreate that wise combinat if we will study the ideas of these distinctive Afi greats and some of their pre-1960s brethren.
lintel. Washington
by Elizabeth Wright
Booker T. Washington might have expressed th different terms, but he probably would have : major theme of Joel Korkin s recent book, Zr lects five of Americas immigrant ethnic groups how each Jews, Chinese. Japanese, British, achieved economic health primarily due to strong ethnic ties.
In each case, cultural identity acted as a positi* the trust and mutual dependence that were the c nomenal success in business. Members of these expanded the American economic pie, but went < own peculiar niches. Each group became, as Kot bedded in the American economy. 
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30. Alternative Afrocentrisms
every member of the pace should strive to make himself the most iodispeosable man hi his community, and la he successful in business, however humble diet business might he, he would contribute much towards smoothing the pathway of bis own and future generations."
At the turn of this century, a very similar idea ruled Washing-on s vision of the role of blacks in America. It was his determination hat his people should create for themselves,  through the struggle oward economic success,  an indispensable place in the American conomy. He spoke of blacks  knitting our business and industrial Nations to those of others, so that the contribution of blacks would become essential to the welfare of the republic. 
In 1900, at the founding convention of the National Negro Busi- ess League, there was good reason to hope that these aspirations vould come to fruition. After all, the purpose of the league was to lelp black men and women who had already achieved success in usiness to become even more effective entrepreneurs.
It is easily seen,  wrote Washington,  that if every member f e race should strive to make himself the most indispensable an in his community, and to be successful in business, however e that business might be, he would contribute much towards oothing the pathway of his own and future generations. 
^a h'^ 1  ^server behavior of other ethnic groups, ln ton reflected on their mutual cooperation, which eased hat^f^ t0 ^Us*ness success. At one point, he cautioned blacks hin t not their place in the economic scheme of ho Ss> there were sure to be more immigrants coming to the wfi  w uld eagerly fill the void.
j| th resources scarce among blacks, Washington stressed hnce m re dle Cfhical importance of group solidarity. Indepen-Vork- and se^ sufficiency could best be achieved when blacks, C 0Peratively, would  gain knowledge, experience, and ^hwuhin our own ranks. 
bla jZl 6 t'me th'5 fi|rst convention of the League, thousands rreies M	demonstrated their capacity to seize opportu-
any engaged in the skilled trades, since every type of craft
had been learned by the slaves. Later, blacks took advantage of the fact that most crafts businesses could be started with little capital.
As noted in a 1950 study, The Negro in American Business, The Negro in the South was not only proficient as a carpenter, blacksmith, shoemaker, barber, tailor, and cook, but as a result of almost two-and-a-half centuries of slavery, up to the outbreak of the Civil War, the knowledge of these skills was concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of the Negroes, free and slave.  
By the late eighteenth century, blacks were an economic presence in several cities. In Philadelphia, which was regarded as the largest and most important center of free black life in the country, a 1798 report showed that almost 25 percent of the black families used their property for business. The city was renowned for its excellent restaurants and caterers both fields monopolized by blacks.
Success stories were common also in southern cities like Richmond, Norfolk, Charleston, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In Virginia, property ownership among free blacks doubled between 1830 and 1860, and in Tennessee, real estate owned by blacks tripled during the decade 1850-60. Before the end of slavery, Savannah had more free blacks and black businesses than any other municipality in Georgia, and there were many successful businesses in Macon. The wealthiest free black in Georgia was James Boisdair, who owned a popular saloon and the largest dry goods store in Dahlonega.
These blacks clearly understood the connection between the ownership of businesses and property and the ability to have greater control over what happened in their lives. Historian Juliet Walker points out:  In pre-Civil War America, even the absence of political freedom did not preclude the business participation of blacks as creative capitalists.... Antebellum blacks developed enterprises in virtually every area important to the pre-Civil War business community. 
The very principle that protected property rights in general, including slave ownership, was what protected blacks  rights to own personal property. Walker writes,  It was the very sanctity of private property in American life and thought that allowed blacks, slave and free, to participate in the antebellum economy as entrepreneurs. 
By the turn of the century, it was clear that a spirit of enterprise prevailed among large numbers of blacks. It was Washingtons mission to find the methods to transmit this spirit to still greater numbers. He made an appeal to group identity, to the individual s responsibility to play his part in uplifting the race.
That it would take black helping black was a given. Selfhelp began with each persons willingness to commit himself to the discipline of work, no matter how modest the labor. Like others before and after him, Washington linked moral virtues to his  bootstraps  philosophy of self-help. The defining expression born in this period, that which exhorted blacks to live their lives so that each would become a  credit to the race,  still rings in the latent memories of many.
Washington s teaching of capital development through work and thrift acknowledged the customs so characteristic of other economically successful groups. By emphasizin
