Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915 (Blacks in the New World)by Loren Schweninger

Reviewed by Adib Rashad ~

 This review was published in four Black newspapers about nine years ago; however, I, through passion and historical commitment, felt that it was more than relevant to republish same via this technological medium.
More importantly, the timeliness and timelessness of this subject  bespeaks continued attention.

One of the basic components of life is economic efficiency. No people or nation can advance in moral, social, spiritual, and cultural life that does
not have a sound economic system.

Where extreme poverty exists, cultural, moral, educational, and social
endeavors will be at an extreme low ebb, and although wealth will not
necessarily usher the above aspects of civilization into existence, it will
at least grant an opportunity for acquiring some of those features.
Therefore, in the study of the progress of any people or nation the
economic factor is most important.

Considering the above, however, stimulating and intellectually provocative,
the study of African American history neglects one of the most significant
aspects of the African American experience during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries--the struggle of African Americans to enter the economic
mainstream of American life.

Contrarily and interestingly, several scholars, and their pioneer studies
have been written pertaining to this unique subject. These primary studies
were written between 1924-1943 and as recent as 1992. These works are
"The Negro as Capitalist," by Abram L. Harris, "Free Negro Owners of Slaves
in the United States in 1830," by Carter G. Woodson, J. H. Harmon, Jr.,
Arnett G. Lindsay and Carter G. Woodson's "The Negro as a Business Man," Luther
Porter Jackson's "Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia,
1830-1860," and John Hope Franklin's "The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860,"
and "The Free Negro in the Economic Life of Antebellum North Carolina."

Recent works include Kenneth Hamilton's "Black Towns and Profit," and John
Sibley Butler, Entrepreneurship and Self-help Among Black Americans,"
and of course, the above mentioned book under review.

All of these works emphasize the fierce determination of African Americans,
despite slavery and racist obstacles, to accumulate wealth and property.
Unfortunately, until Schweninger, Hamilton, and Butler's works--Harris
can be excluded -- primarily focused on North Carolina and Virginia. They
lacked research support, technological tools, and other adequate means.
Therefore, they had to depend largely on the United States census returns or on
local tax records.

Fortunately, because of those path-breaking studies, modern technology, and
eager persistent scholars such as Hamilton, Butler, and Schweninger an
appreciable body of information has come to the forefront manifesting
and extolling the African American businessman, businesswoman and property
owner.

These intellectual detectives gleaned from those various primary and
secondary sources (microfilm, estate papers, records, papers, manuscript
census returns, land deeds, periodicals, state and government
documents, state tax assessment books, etc.) extensive biographical information
about African Americans who ascended to the top of the economic ladder.

Schweninger, for instance, was able by way of his methodological
approach to ascertain the gender, place of residence, political activity,
status of parents, social club membership, religious affiliation, estimated
property holdings, occupation, and an individual's estimated total property
holdings at various times during his or her life.

His early research findings were amazing. He titled one document "Who's
Who Among Negro Wealth Holders." The information informed(s) us that
241 African Americans acquired the bulk of their estates (with minimum
realty holdings of $20,000) during the last third of the nineteenth or early
twentieth centuries.

Moreover, Schweninger's earlier findings regarding the wealth of African
Americans in Louisiana were also very impressive. He pointed(s) out
that free African American/Black property owners (total number was 1,244)
controlled an average of $3,646 worth of real estate in1850, and within ten
years that dollar figure increased to $4,370. Ironically, some of that
dollar figure included slaves.

Schweninger's studies encompassed various regions of the United States. He
revealed(s), for example, that average real estate holdings among the nearly
7,000 free African American/Black families in the lower states stood at $742
in 1850, which was three-fourths of the average for European
Americans.

He provided(s) copious information about African Americans/Blacks in
fifteen southern states and the District of Columbia--namely one of free
Black heads of family that owned at least some real property (total
number was equivalent to 9,640 in 1860). Black people had acquired at least
$1,000 in real and/or personal holdings and another 157,000 had managed to
move out of a propertyless group.

Interestingly, a total of 43,268 had become landowners. By 1910, this
phenomenon had risen to the startling number of 426,449. Blacks in
the South were owning their own farms or homes (out of about 1,741,019 families)
and others owning various tracts of rural land and undeveloped city lots.

It would be sheer negligence not to mention that Schweninger devotes an
entire chapter to African slaves in America who owned various types of
property. A number of slaves, with their so-called master's consent,
utilized what was called a "hiring out" or "self-hired" system to earn wages.
The hiring out system provided incentives to both master and slave.
Slave masters could hire out their existing slaves (men and women) and
obtain profits that would in turn offset the steadily rising prices for
slaves.

Conversely, despite this limited controlled situation, hired-out slaves
responded to this opportunity enthusiastically. Hired-out slaves gradually
came to expect extra compensation for their labor. Those who were
employed as dining room servants, porters, draymen, and coachmen collected
tips; barbers, laundresses and marketwomen kept some of their earnings;
skilled carpenters, masons, industrial workers, and factory hands received
cash payments.

Furthermore, skilled slave ironworkers could earn overwork payments
for producing more than their required quota of iron, while ore-bank hands
could collect for mining and washing extra ore, shoemakers for making extra
shoes, colliers for tending the charcoal pits at night, and common laborers
for working extra hours. Most hired slaves--whose masters did not exploit
them--used their earnings to purchase extra clothing, food, a relative's
freedom, chickens, hogs, horses, and whenever possible parcels of
land.

The "self-hired" slave, according to Schweninger, extended back to the
colonial period when some slaves, usually the most skilled, were permitted to
contact a potential employer, make arrangements for wages and working
conditions, and secure their own food and lodging.

This system lasted from generation to generation, for the most part, because,
as with the "hiring-out" system, it benefited both master and slave.
"Self-hired" slaves often worked all day, sneaked away at night and worked
until dawn the next morning, and returned to the fields. The overly
industriousness of these slaves enabled them to save a great deal of  money.
Those who managed small businesses or peddled confectionary, bread,
cooked fish, rice, fruit, oysters, and other commodities, or who were highly
skilled as cabinetmakers, joiners, or coopers could sometimes earn as much as
Caucasian workers.

As a result of the above, "self-hired" slaves usually manifested an
independence, high self-esteem, and even arrogance which mocked and
insulted Caucasians who believed that slaves were or should be docile, humble,
self-deprecating, and lackadaisical.

Professor Schweninger, after supplying us with enormous information about
the slaves that fared under the two hiring systems, introduced(s) us
to, what he called(s) partially free-slaves, that actually established
businesses.

Virginia's Robert Gordon sold "Slack" from his Caucasian master-father's
coal yard to local blacksmiths, thereby amassing a small fortune of $15,000
by 1846; he purchased his freedom and moved to Cincinnati. Kentucky's
Frank McWorter set up a crude saltpeter manufactory (the main substance used
in gunpowder) in Pulaski County at the start of the war with Great
Britain in 1812, and expanded it considerably.

Mississippi's Benjamin Montgomery operated a retail dry goods store
selling various items to his fellow slaves in exchange for wood, vegetables,
chickens, and eggs.

Future Reconstruction Congressman Benjamin Turner, while still in bondage in
Alabama, acquired a livery stable and considerable other properties in Selma.
Turner, in addition to managing his own business, also conducted his
master's financial affairs.

In Bennetsville, South Carolina, bondsman Thomas David owned a construction
business, negotiating contracts, hiring fellow slaves, and supervising the
erection of numerous houses as well as several larger buildings
Professor Schweninger is an intellectually vast researcher; he enhances
this study by citing a number of slave women who started various types
of businesses. In the lower south, female plantation slaves were involved as
much as the men in the retailing of various crops to their masters or
local factors.

They also established stalls and small stores on the edges of towns
and cities, selling various products. In the upper south, they managed
businesses as seamstress, weavers, laundresses, and shopkeepers.

Property ownership among slaves remained relatively small during the
eighteenth century, but by the eve of the Civil War a considerable
number of slaves had become property owners. As indicated earlier, they owned
cattle, milk cows, horses, hogs, cotton, rice, chickens, gold and silver
coins, wagons, buggies, fancy clothing, and in some instances even real estate.
As stated above, Professor Schweninger, through the use of voluminous
sources, petitions, probate court records, tax assessment rolls, manuscript
censuses, correspondence records, an essay on sources and methodology,
countless notes, and a significant bibliography, showed(s) that these
bondsmen, bondsmen, and free Blacks were motivated by a work ethic and
a competitive impulse.

They frequently spoke about "getting ahead" and "accumulating wealth"; they
were described by many Caucasians (southern and northern) as "very
acquistive" or having a "passion for ownership." In other words, the despair
of perpetual enslavement stimulated or aroused in some a passionate
yearning for possessing even a few things they could call their own.

Additionally, Professor John Butler in his highly informative book,
"Entrepreneurship and Self-help Among Black Americans," concurs with
Schweninger that before the Civil War, African American businesses
fell into two categories: the first was composed of free African Americans who
accumulated capital with which to generate business activity. They developed
enterprises in almost every area of the business community prior to the Civil
War, which included merchandising, real estate, manufacturing,
construction trades, transportation, and extractive industries.

The second group consisted of slaves--as a result of thrift, native
intelligence, industry, and the liberal or "ulterior paternalism" of
their meager, but significant business enterprises.

Equally important, these enterprising skills and ambitions impelled former
slaves, Isaiah Montgomery, Joshua P. T. Montgomery and Benjamin Green
(Isaiah's cousins) to purchase land for settlement.

Kenneth Hamilton in his "Black Towns and Profit" states that freed Blacks
who believed in economic self-help were assisted in their quest by such men
as the aforementioned. As a consequence, of these enterprising pioneer
efforts, five major towns--Nicodemus,Kansas, Mount Bayou, Mississippi,
Langston, City, Oklahoma; Boley, Oklahoma and Allensworth, California
were established over a thirty-one year time span.

In conclusion, the study of African Americans/Blacks in business is
the culmination of African American/Black history. The prevailing
political and economic malaise that engulfs Black people demands another, and more
extensive examination of all facets of African vis-a-vis African
American history.

Addendum: Page xii cites a profile of prosperous Blacks: Black wealth
holders with minimum estates of $20,000, acquiring bulk of estate from
1870s to 1915.
1. Leading Black wealth-holding parishes in Louisiana, 1860 119
2. Rural Black realty owners in the South, 1850 to 1870 154
3. Total value of Black-owned real estate, upper and lower south,
1850 to 1870 158
4. Black home ownership in Arkansas, 1870 to 1915 171
5. Black owned farm property in Virginia, 1891 to 1915 175
6. Percentage of Black owned farms by states in the South, 1910 176
7. Number of owners and acres of farm land owned by Blacks in 56
typical counties of Georgia, by classified size of holdings, 1899 274
8. Rural free Black realty owners in the lower south, 1850 to 1860, 81
9. Rural free Black realty owners in the upper south, 1850 to 1860 75
10. Black homeowners in the upper south, 1870 to 1910 180
11. Occupations among propertied Blacks in the South, 1850 286
12. Total estate holdings among Black men and women, 1870 294

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Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915 (Blacks in the New World)

*=====
Adib Rashad (RashadM@aol.com) is an education consultant, education
program director, author, and historian. He has lived and taught in
West Africa and South East Asia.

This article was previously published by theMarcusGarveyBBS (an entity of TheBlackList)
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