Business School in 1914
Courtesy of The New York Public Library
Tuskegee Institute President Booker T. Washington had learned, taught and observed that entrepreneurship proved to be one of the best strategies to protect African Americans from hostile oppressive forces in the Jim Crow South (and other parts of the United States). At a time in which school segregation existed, he organized conferences that served as business school workshops. National Negro Business League (NNBL) conference served as places where older black business experts taught younger generations so they could learn and then build on what Washington’s generation had experienced. At a 1914 NNBL conference, Washington taught black farmers to, at the speed of cash, buy more land. In doing so they could raise and sell more corn, livestock, and poultry on their property. With the increased revenue they could invest in building their own banks, drugstores, and dry good stores. When thousands of African Americans in the Southwest have made the most of their agricultural holdings and developed wealth from the sale of potatoes, poultry, hogs, and cattle, they will be able to support throughout the South 1,000 more black owned grocery stores, 500 additional dry good stores, 200 more good restaurants, 200 additional drugstores, and 40 more banks. Washington had been teaching that a successful food system in part required investing in educating the next generation and investing in long term low risk growth opportunities such as the type of profitable businesses he mentioned with cash.
