Black Entrepreneurship In Pulaski, Tennessee
Black owned grocery story, 1910, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
Dr. Alvenia M. Fulton (1893-1999) hailed from Pulaski in Giles County, Tennessee. Pulaski had thriving black owned businesses. In fact so many that the city’s African-American entrepreneurs organized a chapter of Booker T. Washington's Business League. In addition, Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had chapters in more than seven locations throughout the state of Tennessee including Nashville (75 miles away from Pulaski). The UNIA championed black cultural nationalism, self-determination, and Black entrepreneurship. Garvey founded the Negro Factories Corporation (NFC) in 1919 and offered stock in it to African Americans as a means to help black people to achieve economic independence. Among its many activities, the NFC ran grocery stores and restaurants in the early 1920s.
