By John Broadway

In my previous post, I gave some examples of the different forms of economic exploitation at the root of America's racial hierarchy.

This exploitation sparked various forms of resistance. Let’s take a look at two of the “founding fathers” of the Civil Rights movement whose competing ideologies shaped the fight for economic justice and Black liberation throughout the 20th century and continue to inform the work of our field.

Booker T Washington & Economic Development Initiatives

Booker T Washington was born into slavery, and after being freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, grew into a foundational leader in African-American's fight for equality. Washington believed equality could be achieved through economic development initiatives, through which Black Americans could become self-reliant entrepreneurs and accumulate wealth. Instead of working directly to dismantle Jim Crow, Washington believed Black entrepreneurship and learning hard skills would help all Black Americans “earn” equality and respect.

Washington put these beliefs into action when he founded the famed Tuskegee Institute in 1881, which provided African-Americans with education to learn skills and trades, like carpentry. He followed this up by founding the National Negro Business League (NNBL) in 1900. The organization was a collaborative that promoted African-Americans' commercial and financial development, and it grew rapidly; by 1915, there were over 600 NNBL chapters across 34 states.

Washington participated in speaking tours and debates to promote his pathway to equality and economic advancement, further solidifying his national standing. His influential book, Up From Slavery, found its way into the hands of a Jamaican writer's hands who would become one of the most influential Black leaders of the 20th century: Marcus Garvey.

Washington's self-help philosophy inspired Garvey, and he came to America to meet Washington and learn from him. Like Washington, Garvey was convinced that equality could only be realized through economic and cultural success.

As such, Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association, which became a key organization in the development of Black nationalism. Garvey took Washington's individualistic philosophy and formed his own corporate, nation-building movement steeped in racial pride, unity, and capitalism. He believed Black Americans needed complete autonomy from whites and should all return to Africa to build their own nation.

Like Washington, Garvey sought to provide the resources to support his vision. In 1919 he founded the Negro Factories Corporation, offering other Black folks stock in the corporation with the belief that this corporation would kickstart an independent Black economy. Perhaps his most famous entrepreneurial endeavor was the Black Star Line, a shipping company that promoted trade and transported African-Americans back to Africa.

Stock Certificate for the Black Star Line, signed by Marcus Garvey

Garvey's Black nationalist and economic development-oriented ideology sparked a torch that was carried forth by Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam (NOI), and Malcolm X.

Muhammad was inspired by Garvey’s ideology and used it when he took over as leader of the NOI in 1934. Muhammad combined Islamic teachings, Afrocentricity, and a Garveyite message enhanced Black American’s psychological self-image and focused on helping the Black community develop economic success.

Under Mohammad's leadership, the NOI introduced The Three Year Economic Plan; the plan urged Black people to sacrifice for three years, living within their means and saving money. While he urged this program for NOI members, he hoped that all Black Americans would follow these ideas.

The plan called for allocating large portions of these savings to collective economic development like the purchase of commercial real estate, timberland, and arable land where vegetables could be grown and cattle raised. Members were also required to patronize NOI-owned businesses or open their own economic enterprises advertised in Muhammad Speaks, the NOI's official newspaper.

The NOI's star, Malcolm X, another Garveyite, made the vision of a Black-controlled economy — “Black economics,” as he called it — famous in his revered 1964 speech, The Ballot or the Bullet:

“The economic philosophy of Black nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community...When you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer, the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.”

W.E.B. DuBois & Policy Advocacy

W.E.B DuBois was initially a follower of Washington. However, he eventually came to see Washington as too accommodating to white supremacy.

DuBois found Jim Crow and other injustices too abhorrent to turn a blind eye, something he accused Washington of. In response, DuBois was among a group of activists who founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. DuBois and the NAACP came to represent the “policy advocacy” side of the fight for economic justice; their ideology was defined by highlighting Blacks' elite upper class, the so-called “Talented 10th”, and demanding immediate equality through political agitation.

Just like Washington, DuBois wrote his own influential book that inspired other Civil Rights leaders. Dubois’ "The Soul of Black Folk" inspired Asa Philip Randolph, who credits that book with sparking his passion for civil rights. Randolph became a leading labor organizer; in 1925, he was elected as president of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), a large Black labor union. For the next ten years, Randolph led an arduous campaign to organize the Pullman porters, which resulted in the certification of the BSCP as the exclusive collective bargaining agent of the Pullman porters in 1935. Randolph called it the "first victory of Negro workers over a giant industrial corporation.”

Randolph and fellow activists John P. Davis and James Ford recognized that Black laborers and the working class lacked the policies they needed to overcome economic exploitation. So, in 1936 these three men founded the National Negro Congress (NNC). The NNC was the first organization that specifically sought to organize the Black working class to dismantle the racial hierarchy and economic exploitation so entrenched in American society. They developed a broad policy platform that emphasized African Americans' rights to fair employment, housing, union membership, and educational opportunities.

Randolph spawned a protege, Bayard Rustin, a titan of the Civil Rights movement and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King. Rustin introduced non-violent civil disobedience (which Rustin learned from Randolph) to King.

Together, the three had a plan to eliminate racism of all forms from American society through a national movement that would usher in a second phase, "tackling issues of economic justice." The goal was to unite the civil rights and labor movements around the demands of jobs for all, ending poverty, and building economic democracy.

In 1966 Randolph, Rustin, and King co-authored "The Freedom Budget For All Americans"; this policy platform outlined seven basic objectives centered on achieving economic justice in America. But after King's assassination in 1968, their movement lost momentum.

Rustin, Randolph, John Lewis, Coretta Scott King, Dr. King, and John Abernathy

Together, the legacies of Washington and DuBois should shape our work as economic development practitioners in communities that continue to be left behind. I learned through these two “founding fathers” that the two different forms of resistance they represented, what I have called here economic development and policy advocacy, work best when these efforts are in unison and complement each other.

In order to achieve true equality and progress, we need to both build economic self-sufficiency and demand policies that uphold and preserve economic and social opportunity.

Washington & DuBois; Lessons in the Fight for Economic Justice