The Negro in Business: Report of a Social Study Made Under the Direction of Atlanta University, Together with the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, Held at Atlanta University, May 30-31, 1899

Atlanta University Publications #4

by W.E.B. Du Bois (Editor), W E Burchardt BuBois (Editor)

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82 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1899

About the author

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

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Reviews

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The report of the 4th Atlanta University study, the 2nd under W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois outlined the scope of the studies: "the different subjects each year have had a logical connection, and will in time form a complete4 whole." Starting with the first study on the death-rate of Black people, "this led to a study of their condition in life, and the efforts they were making to better that condition" (4).

Du Bois commented on the effects of slavery on Black businesses: "It would not have been wonderful or unprecedented if the Freedman had sunk into sluggish laziness, ignorance, and crime after the war. That he did not wholly, is due to his own vigor and ambition, and the crusade of education from the North. What have these efforts, seconded by the common-school and to a limited extent the college, been able to accomplish in the line of making the Freedman a factor in the economic re-birth of the South?" Indeed, those questions would take up future studies, including the 5th Conference on "The College-Bred Negro" (1900).

In all this is a fascinating stud of Black-owned businesses in the South in 1899. There are so many particulars that would be interesting to know more about, like the one Black-owned "Book-store" (8), or the Jewelers, Confectioners, Florists, or the "cooperative grocery store," (43).

The conference papers are also interesting. John Hope gives expression to a strong pro-Black sentiment in "The Meaning of Business": "I do not believe that the ultimate contribution of the Negro to the world will be his development of natural forces. It is to be more than that. There [are] in him emotional, spiritual elements that presage gifts from the Negro more ennobling and enduring than factories and rail-roads and banks" (59) -- very consonant with Du Bois's own "Conservation of Races."

Miss Hattie Escridge, in "The Need of Negro Merchants," expressed the collective strategy: "Let us keep our money among ourselves. Let us spend money with each other. Let us protect each other, as the other races do" (61).

Of note to me was Du Bois's lisst of "periodicals published by Negroes in the interest of the colored people," particularly the Herald, in Live Oak, Floriday (which, I believe my great-great-great-grandfather J. L. A. Fish was involved in), and the Appeal of St. Paul, the only Minnesota paper on the list.

Note: This book can be found in the first collection of the Atlanta studies: Atlanta University Publications: Nos. 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

It can also be accessed for free online here:

http://archive.org/details/negroinbus...