African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary Henderson, Alexa Benson . Business History Review ; Boston  Vol. 68, Iss. 2,  (Summer 1994): 289. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT   African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary, by John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, is reviewed. FULL TEXT   African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. By John. N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman * Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1993. xiv + 806 pp. Appendixes, bibliographic essay, and index. $99.50. ISBN 0-313-27253-0. This volume, comprising more than eight hundred pages, contains 77 comprehensive biographical essays for 123 individual African American business leaders. Taken together, these individuals represent the most historically significant black entrepreneurs from the mid-1800s until approximately the Second World War. Each essay includes up-to-date and extensive bibliographical data, which make this compilation a particularly useful tool for researchers and scholars of African American business history seeking reference materials and new directions for more in-depth studies in these areas. Broadly, too, there is much to be learned by the general student of African American history and also by the casual reader interested in gaining perspective on the post-Civil War experience of African Americans. Moreover, it is an excellent reference work for secondary school and college libraries. The biographical essays cover the range of business endeavors engaged in by African Americans in the period of review. In financial services and insurance, a category that includes banking, loan associations, investors, money lenders, and factorages, seventy-six individual entrepreneurs are listed. In the retailing and service industries, forty individuals and five families are discussed. These include business people engaged in enterprises such as undertaking, barbering, catering, drug and grocery store proprietorships, car dealerships, and general merchandising. Another large segment, comprising seventy-three entries, includes individual African Americans in the publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and other media areas. A final group of entries, totaling thirty-six, is composed of people in real estate, construction, and agriculture. In some instances, an individual business woman or man is counted in more than one category. The essays also reflect African American entrepreneurial endeavors within a group of important southern cities and major northern centers, although the authors state that "some deserving individuals were inevitably left out of this collection" (p. viii). Southern cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Durham, Nashville, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, and Washington, D.C., as well as northern and western cities including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and several others are given broad coverage, but the authors admit that little at.

1. African-American Business Leaders: A
Biographical Dictionary
Henderson, Alexa Benson . Business History Review ; Boston
Vol. 68, Iss. 2, (Summer 1994): 289.
ProQuest document link
ABSTRACT
African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary,
by John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, is
reviewed.
FULL TEXT
African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary.
By John. N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman *
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1993. xiv + 806 pp.
Appendixes, bibliographic essay, and index. $99.50.
ISBN 0-313-27253-0.
This volume, comprising more than eight hundred pages,
contains 77 comprehensive biographical essays for 123

2. individual African American business leaders. Taken together,
these individuals represent the most historically
significant black entrepreneurs from the mid-1800s until
approximately the Second World War. Each essay
includes up-to-date and extensive bibliographical data, which
make this compilation a particularly useful tool for
researchers and scholars of African American business history
seeking reference materials and new directions for
more in-depth studies in these areas. Broadly, too, there is much
to be learned by the general student of African
American history and also by the casual reader interested in
gaining perspective on the post-Civil War experience
of African Americans. Moreover, it is an excellent reference
work for secondary school and college libraries.
The biographical essays cover the range of business endeavors
engaged in by African Americans in the period of
review. In financial services and insurance, a category that
includes banking, loan associations, investors, money
lenders, and factorages, seventy-six individual entrepreneurs are
listed. In the retailing and service industries, forty
individuals and five families are discussed. These include
business people engaged in enterprises such as
undertaking, barbering, catering, drug and grocery store
proprietorships, car dealerships, and general

3. merchandising. Another large segment, comprising seventy-
three entries, includes individual African Americans in
the publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and other media areas.
A final group of entries, totaling thirty-six, is
composed of people in real estate, construction, and agriculture.
In some instances, an individual business woman
or man is counted in more than one category.
The essays also reflect African American entrepreneurial
endeavors within a group of important southern cities
and major northern centers, although the authors state that
"some deserving individuals were inevitably left out of
this collection" (p. viii). Southern cities such as Atlanta,
Birmingham, Durham, Nashville, New Orleans, Charleston,
Richmond, and Washington, D.C., as well as northern and
western cities including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia,
Los Angeles, and several others are given broad coverage, but
the authors admit that little attention is paid to New
England, Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, among others. It is
perhaps significant to note that the largest single
group represents Chicago, with nineteen African American
entrepreneurs included in the volume. A few essays,
from Mississippi and Alabama, show the involvement of
African American entrepreneurs in southern rural areas.

4. References to the place of birth of the business leaders cited
suggest that the southern states of Georgia,
Louisiana, and Mississippi had the largest number, with each
state having fourteen entries. Nine essays attest to
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the leadership of African American women in business.
Among the successful business careers chronicled in the volume
are the uncle-nephew team of newspaper
publishers, Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1868-1940) and John
Herman Henry Sengstacke (1912- ). Abbott, a native
of Georgia, received training in the printing trade at Hampton
Institute and, after relocating to Chicago and earning
a law degree, he entered the newspaper business. In 1905, he
began publishing the Chicago Defender, which by
1915 "had achieved the status of the most successful black
paper in Chicago, and it was well on its way to
becoming one of the largest black-owned businesses in the
United States" (pp. 7-8). At Abbott's death, his nephew,
John H. Sengstacke, assumed leadership and by 1982 headed a
syndicated organization that included "the
Chicago Defender, the Memphis Tri-State Defender, the

5. Michigan Chronicle, and the Courier newspapers published
in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Ohio, Detroit, Georgia and Florida"
(pp. 13-14). Sengstacke, as organizer and first
president, is also credited with founding the National
Newspaper Publishers Association.
In the category of newspaper publishing, essays are provided
also for the father-son team of Richard Henry Boyd
(1843-1922) and Henry Allen Boyd (187-1952) of Nashville,
founder of the National Baptist Publishing Board and
publishers of the Nashville Globe; brothers William Alexander
Scott (1902-34) and Cornelius Adolphus Scott (1908-
), publishers of the Atlanta Daily World and owners of the Scott
Newspaper Syndicate; William Calvin Chase, Sr.
(1854-1921), publisher and editor of the Washington Bee; P. B.
S. Pinchback (1837-1921), publisher of the New
Orleans Louisianian; and Robert Lee Vann (1879-1940),
organizer and publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, an early
rival of the Defender. The authors note that Vann built a black
newspaper with national circulation that, like
Abbott's Defender, was
able to influence millions,...to create patterns of migration from
the South to the North, to define issues and tactics
for fighting discrimination nationwide,...and to create viable
economic institutions that nonetheless managed to be

6. politically sensitive and aware, and which acted as a voice for
African Americans during a particularly critical time
in the nation's history (p. 641).
With the inclusion of more recent African American
entrepreneurs, such as Earl Graves (1935- ), publisher of Black
Enterprise magazine, this reference tool offers a compact
analysis of the leading African American figures in the
print media in the twentieth century.
In the categories of banking, insurance, and other financial
services, the authors provide biographies of the earliest
African Americans to engage in these professions. Essays are
included for Jesse Binga (1865-1950), who operated
the Binga State Bank, described as "the largest and most
important black bank in Chicago" (p. 79); Robert Reed
Church, Sr. (1839-1912), progenitor of the renowned Church
family of Memphis and the leading organizer of the
Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Company; Maggie Lena Walker
(1867-1934), organizer of the St. Luke Penny
Savings Bank and "the first woman bank president in America,
black or white" (p. 670); and Richard Robert Wright,
Sr. (1853-1947), organizer with son Richard Wright, Jr. (1878-
1967) of the Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust
Company of Philadelphia, an enterprise described as "one of the

7. largest, most successful black banks in the North"
(p. 715). Cross-referenced with bankers are biographies of
insurance entrepreneurs Arthur G. Gaston (1892- ), real
estate investor, community leader, and founder of the Booker T.
Washington Insurance Company and the Citizens
Federal Savings Bank of Birmingham; John Merrick (1859-
1919), Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874-1952), William
Jesse Kennedy, Jr. (1889-1985), and later generations of leaders
associated with the North Carolina Mutual Life
Insurance Company, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and Mutual
Savings and Loan of Durham, North Carolina;
Heman Edward Perry (1873-1929), founder of the Citizens Trust
Bank and Standard Life Insurance Company in
Atlanta; and members of the Walker family of Memphis,
organizers of the Universal Life Insurance Company and
Tri-State Bank.
The business careers of African American women are given
least attention in the volume. Besides essays on the
leadership of Maggie Walker and Patricia Walker Shaw (1939-
85), the careers of two pioneering women in the hair
care industry are reviewed: Sarah Breedlove (Madame C. J.)
Walker (1867-1919), organizer of the Madame C. J.
Walker Manufacturing Company, and Annie Turnbo-Malone
(1869-1957), proprietor and promoter of the Poro

8. Manufacturing Company and Poro College. The contemporary
businesswomen cited include Suzanne de Passe,
entertainment company executive with Motown Industries, and
Naomi Sims, fashion model and wig and cosmetic
entrepreneur.
In this publication, Ingham and Feldman make an important
contribution to scholarship that, despite the
exclusions specified and an obvious gender bias, will allow for
fuller inclusion of African Americans when studying
American business leadership. As a biographical dictionary, the
study fulfills its purpose of providing biographical
information on the selected leaders--much of which is
unavailable elsewhere--in a readily accessible format. Its
most impressive features for the researcher, however, are the
compilation and analysis of sources, both primary
and secondary, that conclude each essay and the comprehensive
biographical information on black business and
business leadership in individual cities and states provided at
the end of the volume.
Alexa Benson Henderson is associate dean for undergraduate
studies and professor of history at Clark Atlanta
University. She is the author of Atlanta Life Insurance

9. Company: Guardian of Black Economic Dignity (1990) and of
several articles, including "Heman E. Perry and Black
Enterprise in Atlanta, 1908-1925," Business History Review
(1987). Her current work focuses on African Americans in
banking.
DETAILS
Subject: History; Business ownership; Book reviews; Blacks
Location: US
Classification: 9521: Minority- &women-owned businesses;
9190: US
Publication title: Business History Review; Boston
Volume: 68
Issue: 2
Pages: 289
Number of pages: 4
Publication year: 1994
Publication date: Summer 1994
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Place of publication: Boston

10. Country of publication: United Kingdom, Boston
Publication subject: Business And Economics, History
ISSN: 00076805
CODEN: BHRVA6
Source type: Scholarly Journals
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Language of publication: English
Document type: PERIODICAL
Accession number: 00962717
ProQuest document ID: 274465349
Document URL:
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Copyright: Copyright Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field
Summer 1994

11. Last updated: 2015-08-15
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