Slavery to Liberation- The African American Experience, 2019a

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entrepreneurship, King emphasized communal responsibility and his firm belief that
“nobody else in this country has lifted themselves by their own bootstraps alone, so
why expect the Black man to do it?” 62
From OMBE’s inception, middle-class business women were involved in
promoting, and personally receiving, increased benefits from the program. Every Black
woman, according to Elaine Jenkins, “dreams of having all the opportunities that a
White man or woman would have,” and argued that under President Nixon, “Black
business thrived.” 63 Jenkins, who was deeply involved with the Republican National
Committee during the late 1960s and whose father founded the first Black business
school at Wilberforce University, was herself a beneficiary of Black capitalism. Founded
in 1970, Jenkins’ business consulting firm, One America, Inc., became one of the top
one hundred Black-owned businesses within three years. 64
As Jenkins’ success story illustrates in critical ways, the Left’s criticisms of Black
capitalists bore truths. Many supporters of Black capitalism were members of the Black
bourgeoisie and were more than willing to accept government funding to help develop
their own businesses—at the same time they were critical of “welfare dependency”
among working class African Americans. On the other hand, because of the lack of
capital in Black communities and discrimination by banks in granting loans, government
assistance was a needed variable in growing the number of Black-owned businesses.
When it served their needs, many Black conservatives were more than willing to
embrace a system of government assistance that was essential to the expansion of
Black businesses.
Not all Black capitalism supporters, however, relied on government assistance in
forming their own business ventures. Cora T. Walker was a prominent conservative
Black Nationalist in Harlem during the 1960s who held fast to a strict interpretation of
62
Martin Luther King Jr., “Local 1199, New York City, March 10, 1968,” in Michael K.
Honey, ed., All Labor Has Dignity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011).
63
Carol Morton, “Black Women in Corporate America,” Ebony, November 1975, 112;
Jenkins, Jumping Double Dutch, 42.
64
“The Negro: Whether Ward Healer or U.S.,” Ebony, August 1966, 97; Lambeth, 330-
1; Morton, 108.