Ohio History Journal

CHRISTOPHER G. WYE

 

Merchants of Tomorrow: The

Other Side of the "Don't

Spend Your Money Where You

Can't Work" Movement

 

For the most part the racial ideologies expressed by black leaders

during the nineteen thirties can be classified on a rough continuum

from the traditionally conservative and accommodationist Urban

League, through the more activist and protest-oriented NAACP, the

labor movement and the rise of industrial unionism, and finally the

Socialist and Communist parties. One significant ideological manifes-

tation, however, has not been extensively discussed in terms of its

position in the spectrum of black thought. This aspect of black

thought was reflected in a series of urban-based campaigns whose

essential theme was summed up in the catchy slogan, "Don't Spend

Your Money Where You Can't Work."1

These campaigns appeared largely in the urban North where they

were confined to a handful of major cities, including Boston, New

York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. Although they were

never brought together in a single organizational framework, they

were similar in many respects from city to city. They were frequently

 

 

 

 

Christopher G. Wye is Director, Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, Depart-

ment of Housing and Urban Development.

 

1. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in

a Northern City, 2 vols. (New York, 1945), II: 733-34; Abram L. Harris, Tie Negro as

Capitalist: A Study of Banking and Business Among American Negroes (New York,

1936), 180-84; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 2 vols. (New York, 1944), I:

313-14; Roi Ottley, New World A-Coming: Inside Black America (Reprint, New York,

1969), 113-22; Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (Reprint, New York, 1968).

181-262; Roi Ottley and William J. Weatherby, eds., The Negro in New York: An In-

formal Social History (New York. 1969), 282; Selection from Ralph J. Bunche, "The

Programs, Ideologies, Tactics, and Activities of Negro Betterment Organizations" (Un-

published memorandum prepared for the Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro in

America, 1940), in August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, and Francis L. Broderick, eds.,

Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed., (New York, 1971), 122-32.

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Merchants of Tomorrow                                        41

led and supported by young, bright middle-class blacks who were in the early stages of their careers. Their protest activities were char- acterized by the use of economic boycotts and picket lines by black consumers against ghetto-based businesses. Their goal was to force the employment of black workers in stores supported by black con- sumers.2 From one perspective the "Don't Spend Your Money Where You Can't Work" campaign can be seen as representing a more assertive mode of protest than that of either the Urban League or the NAACP. Its emphasis on economic issues-issues which both the NAACP and the Urban League were slow to address in these years-and the use of direct action tactics, tactics which both the NAACP and Urban League found objectionable, clearly reflected a new and more forceful response to black issues. From another perspective, however,     2. Ibid.

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42                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

the boycott campaign was an expression of a black capitalist ethic

with accommodationist undertones.³

Some of the movement's leaders saw the effort to obtain jobs as

only a first step toward the long-range goal of training future black

businessmen. The idea was to get young blacks into clerical positions

in ghetto-based stores so that they could learn the trade, move up

the management ranks, and ultimately either assume major leader-

ship positions in ghetto-based white enterprises or establish inde-

pendent black ventures of their own. To this extent, the ideology of

the movement had a distinctly accommodationist element, an ele-

ment deeply rooted in the convervative self-help, racial solidarity,

group pride cluster of values articulated by Booker T. Washington

years earlier.

This is, of course, not to deny the obvious, dramatic, and impor-

tant function of the movement as a protest technique for widening

black employment opportunities. Securing employment rather than

establishing businesses had to be an immediate practical concern.

Nor is it to overlook the possibility that the movement can be seen as

including strains of both accommodationist and protest thought.

Clearly the accommodationist position, as represented largely by the

Urban League, would not support direct action techniques such as

the boycott and picket line. In fact, few members of the period's

most widely supported protest organization, the NAACP, would sup-

port such confrontational techniques, at least not until the passage of

time had made such techniques more acceptable. The ideology of

the campaign was, therefore, clearly more aggressive than those rep-

resented by both the Urban League and the NAACP. But in its long-

range goal-the establishment of an access route for the development

of black businesses-the movement was as old and conservative as

the self-help accommodation advocated by Booker T. Washington in

the late-nineteenth century.

This aspect of the movement was particularly well-developed in

Cleveland where the history of the campaign offers an opportunity to

explore its extent and meaning in considerable depth. The boycott

movement got off to a shaky start in Cleveland. Throughout most of

the early thirties, at least six newly formed organizations vied unsuc-

cessfully for leadership of the protest campaign. For a brief period of

several months in early 1932, the Economic Race Development Socie-

ty (ERDS), whose membership was drawn almost entirely from the

 

3. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick have noted this tension in the boycott cam-

paigns. See Meier and Broderick, Protest Thought, 122.

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Merchants of Tomorrow                                         43

 

ranks of Messiah Baptist Church, gained considerable influence; but

the ERDS lost its momentum later in the year when its leader suf-

fered a fatal stroke. It was not until 1935 that the Cleveland branch of

the movement emerged as a definite organizational entity with a

single recognized leader. In that year the Future Outlook League

(FOL), established by a thirty-two year old shipping clerk named

John 0. Holly, began to assume a central role.⁴

The League owed much of its success to several factors. First of all,

Holly combined a charismatic presence with considerable organiza-

tional ability. Unlike most of his predecessors, who usually had ei-

ther one or the other quality, Holly could both excite the passions of

the black masses and channel their discontent into an effective pro-

test organization. Also important in explaining the League's rise to

prominence was the remarkable cohesiveness of its leadership core.

While similar campaigns in Chicago and New York eventually fell

prey to factionalism and disintegrated into a number of warring splin-

ter groups, the Cleveland movement actually gained in stability

through to the early forties when the availability of jobs in war in-

dustries sapped interest in its program.⁵

Nevertheless, the FOL probably would not have progressed be-

yond the initial stage of obtaining a few jobs in small neighborhood

stores without the strong support it received from the Call and Post, a

militant black newspaper edited by William O. Walker, which some-

what fortuitously was revived in 1934 following a period of decline.

Prior to the resurgence of the Call and Post, earlier boycott cam-

paigns were handicapped by a lack of publicity, since the Cleveland

black community was served by only one black newspaper, Harry C.

Smith's Gazette, a conservative journal which had essentially ig-

nored the movement. In Walker, Holly found an ally who believed

strongly in the boycott strategy-particularly its business applications

-and who, as a consequence, not only opened up the columns of his

newspaper to the fledgling organization but also frequently repre-

sented the League in negotiations with white merchants, functioning

as a mediator when deliberations became deadlocked.⁶

 

 

4. Cleveland Gazette, March 28, 1931; April 25, 1931; July 1, 1931; November 21,

1931; January 22, 1933; September 15, 1934; Cleveland Call and Post, September 1,

1934.

5. Charles H. Loeb, The Future is Yours: The History of the Future Outlook League,

1935-1946 (Cleveland, 1947), 15-18, 22-24; Cleveland Call and Post, May 5, 1938; Ken-

neth Zinz, "The Future Outlook League of Cleveland: A Negro Protest Organization"

(Unpublished M. A. thesis, Kent State University, 1973), 1-3.

6. Loeb, Future is Yours, 33-34; John O. Holly to William O. Walker, September 12,

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44                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Stability, the support of the Call and Post, and able leadership

brought the League notable success in its campaign for jobs. Al-

though the organization's claim that between 1935 and 1939 it se-

cured 1,200 jobs is undoubtedly inflated,⁷ it is almost certain that it

obtained at least 500 positions, since this was the dues-paying mem-

bership of its Employee Association, a unit consisting of all the people

who had been placed in jobs.⁸ The FOL conducted a number of

successful campaigns to secure jobs for blacks. Through these cam-

paigns the League obtained positions for blacks as clerks in small gro-

ceries, pharmacies, hard good stores, large five-and-ten-cent stores,

and food chains, beginning in 1935; as ushers and ticket takers in

theatres in 1936; as drivers on milk trucks in 1937; as bakers at the

National Biscuit Company in 1942; and as clerks at the downtown

Ohio Bell Telephone Office in 1943.⁹

Yet, while the League was vigorous and successful in its efforts to

widen employment opportunities, it consistently declared that its pri-

mary purpose was to encourage the development of black business.¹⁰

Its first objective, stated its constitution, was "To establish, build

and preserve all legitimate community businesses." The attempt to

"create employment for Negroes" was listed second.11 This position

was affirmed several months after the constitution was drawn up

when, in response to questions from reporters, Holly insisted that one

of the League's goals was "to defend Negro business from unfair

competition."¹² After the FOL had achieved its first victory-ob-

taining jobs from local five-and-ten-cent-stores-Holly urged blacks

to "first patronize your own group and second patronize the business

that will give you employment."¹³ As late as 1941, League Officials

urged blacks "if necessary, to go out of their way to spend their

 

 

 

1935, Future Outlook League MSS, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland,

Ohio.

7. Cleveland Call and Post, April 8, 1939.

8. John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972.

9. Zinz, "Future Outlook League," 150-52; Loeb, Future is Yours, passim.

10. Other scholars and writers have noted the implications of the "Don't Spend

Your Money Where You Can't Work" movement for black business, although none of

them has systematically explored this facet of the campaign. See Drake and Cayton,

Black Metropolis, II: 733-34; Harris, Negro as Capitalist, 177-82; Ottley, New World,

119-20; McKay, Harlem, 210; Ottley and Weatherby, Negro in New York, 282; John H.

Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in America

(New York, 1970), 371; and Bunche, "Programs, Ideologies, Tactics, and Activities,"

124.

11. Loeb, Future is Yours, 23-24.

12. Cleveland Call and Post, May 4, 1935.

13. Ibid., November 29, 1935.

• 5
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                     45

 

money first with the Negro if possible."¹⁴ Moreover, ten years after

the FOL was formed, Charles H. Loeb, the managing editor of the

Call and Post and a man who, like Walker, worked closely with

the League, wrote: "The years have broadened this initial statement

of objectives ... but it should be noted that the League's first

objective was to strengthen the backbone of existing Negro

enterprises." 15

The League's business emphasis appears to have been a natural ex-

tension of the philosophies and careers of its leadership core, all of

whom evidenced a strong entrepreneurial bent. Harvey J. Johnson,

the League's legal counsel and the only member to have a college de-

gree, was born in Griffin, Georgia, in 1901. As a young man Johnson

revealed an enterprising nature, first by establishing a bait business

which catered to white sport fishermen and later by building up a

successful car-washing venture. After putting himself through Knox-

ville College, Johnson came to Cleveland in the mid-twenties. When

he joined the FOL in 1935, he had just graduated from Western Re-

serve University Law School and was struggling to build up a private

law practice.¹⁶

Julius C. Wright, the League's financial secretary and frequent

negotiator in discussions with white businessmen, was born in

Haynesville, Alabama, in 1900. As a youngster he attended Tuskegee

Institute, where he acquired a strong commitment to the economic

self-help philosophy of the school popularized by its founder, Book-

er T. Washington. "Real independence," wrote Wright on one occa-

sion, "entails the necessity for financial independence which in turn

means that the race must own industries as well as labor." He felt

that until blacks owned the means of production, they could "never

make a secure place for themselves in the American scheme of

life."17

The head of the important Employee Association, Robert Warren,

was one of the League's most aggressive promoters of black business.

Warren was born in Ocla, Florida, probably sometime between 1900

and 1910. He came to Cleveland during the World War I migration

when large numbers of southern blacks came north in search of war-

related jobs. Just before joining the League, Warren had been asso-

ciated with M. Milton Lewis, who also became a member of the FOL

 

 

14. The Voice, March 15, 1941.

15. Loeb, Future is Yours, 23-24.

16. Zinz, "Future Outlook League," 143; Harvey J. Johnson, Interview, March 29,

1972.

17. Zinz, "Future Outlook League," 7, 29, 143.

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46                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

leadership core, in a laundry concern, the Douglass Laundry. Incor-

porated in early 1934 with capital of 5,000 dollars, the company em-

ployed fourteen persons before the year was out. By 1935, however,

competition from white laundries involving a white-instigated price

war forced the company out of business.¹⁸

Shelton Baines, who served on the League's Executive Committee,

was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1908. Baines completed high

school through the eleventh grade at which time he and his father

left Memphis, traveling to Colorado, Kansas, and New York before

eventually arriving in Cleveland in 1929. He worked with his father as

a painter and decorator for a short time until the business dried up

with the onset of the Depression. Baines felt that the only hope for

blacks was to support their own economic development, "to build up

Negro business, to give Negroes a place to train."¹⁹

Holly himself was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1903. During

World War I his family migrated northward to Roanoke, Virginia,

where young Holly completed his high school education. In 1923 the

family moved to Detroit, where John O. Holly, Sr., started a hauling

business while his son took a job finishing gas tanks at the Packard

Motor Company. For the next two years Holly traveled from one place

to another, finally coming to Cleveland in 1927. After a brief stint as a

porter at a downtown department store, he secured a job as a ship-

ping clerk at the Federal Sanitation Company. In 1933, finding him-

self with a wife and two small children to support and feeling that his

career was at a standstill, Holly began to attend lectures, join civic or-

ganizations, and to "listen seriously to all sorts of proposals aiming to

improve the economic status of Negro people."²⁰

Like others who later joined him in organizing the FOL, Holly

came to the conclusion that the black community needed to develop

a larger business establishment. The main obstacles to this goal, he

felt, were the domination of the ghetto market by white businessmen

who took black dollars while offering the black community no jobs,

training, or capital in return, and the related tendency of many blacks

to shun black concerns for those operated by whites, feeling that the

white man's goods and services were superior.²¹ "He reasoned,"

wrote Charles H. Loeb in his history of the League,

 

 

 

18. Ibid., 142; Cleveland Call and Post, December 29, 1934; M. Milton Lewis, Inter-

view, May 26, 1972.

19. Zinz, "Future Outlook League," 144; Shelton Baines, Interview, March 29, 1972.

20. Loeb, Future is Yours, 15-18; Cleveland Call and Post, August 10, 1940.

21. John O. Holly, Interview, December 24, 1971.

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Merchants of Tomorrow                                        47

 

that if the Central Area [ the local euphemism for the black community] had

been white, there would be store owners, manufacturers, bankers, profes-

sionals, clerks, salesmen, and promotions and incomes would be higher

since people would be allowed to get employment in places where they

traded. The millions of consumer dollars would remain in the community in

the form of profits and wages.²²

What was needed, Holly reasoned, was a strategy which would,

first, compel white-owned stores in black neighborhoods to employ

blacks, thus providing jobs for those who needed them, training for

blacks who wished to become entrepreneurs, and consumer pur-

chasing power for the support of black enterprises, and, second, edu-

cate black consumers to patronize businesses operated by members

of their own race. Always, in his mind, the twin strands of opening up

jobs and developing black business were linked. "What good would

it do," he argued, "to demand jobs to keep money in our own neigh-

borhoods and then send it out through another source." Black dol-

lars should support black business.²³

Almost certainly influenced by the "Don't Spend Your Money

Where You Can't Work" campaigns launched earlier in Chicago,

New York, and Cleveland itself (though he maintains to this day that

the idea was original with him), Holly viewed the boycott strategy,

with its race-conscious emphasis on harnessing the power of the

black dollar, as a vehicle well adapted to overcoming the twin prob-

lems of opening jobs and establishing black businesses.24  In a re-

vealing letter written less than a year after the FOL was formed, Holly

seemed to sum up the essence of what he was trying to do. "We are,"

he said,

teaching Negroes (even children) to trade with Negroes first and second

with those who are employing Negroes. The men and women who are being

placed in the various stores of today will take the place of the white man and

be the merchants of tomorrow [emphasis added], with the experience ac-

quired under the white man's instructions.²⁵

In short, the League's short-range goal was to obtain jobs but its

long-range objective was to develop black-owned or operated enter-

prises.

M. Milton Lewis, who as head of the FOL's Investigation Bureau

 

 

 

22. Loeb, Future is Yours, 19.

23. The Voice, March 15, 1941.

24. John O. Holly, Interviews, December 24, 1971; May 16, 1972.

25. John O. Holly to H. G. Emerson, February 12, 1936, Future Outlook League

MSS.

• 8
 

48                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

which selected boycott targets was second only to Holly among the

League's top leadership, was the most articulate spokesman for the

business ethnic. Born on a small farm in Haynesville, Alabama, in

1898, Lewis might never have escaped the poverty of a rural southern

farm had it not been for a chance visit from a representative of Tuske-

gee Institute who convinced his father that his son should go to

school and learn a trade. Although he did not attend Tuskegee,

Lewis did complete a course of instruction at Calhoun Carord Indus-

trial and Normal School in Haynesville, an institution whose program

was an elaboration of the self-help economic philosophy expounded

by Booker T. Washington. From his experience at Calhoun, Lewis

developed a life-long commitment to the great Tuskegeean, whom he

once described as "my idol."²⁶

After graduating from Calhoun in 1919, Lewis headed north in

search of a career in business, first stopping at Cincinnati and Detroit

before settling in Cleveland. In the years before he joined the Future

Outlook League, Lewis acquired a firsthand knowledge of the diffi-

culties facing black entrepreneurs. As a salesman with the Hope-Aid

Company, a local black insurance firm, he did fairly well for several

years. But as the country moved toward the Depression and custom-

ers began to default on their premiums, the company was forced into

a merger with the Crusaders of the World, another local black insur-

ance company. Eventually this firm too closed its doors. Lewis then

secured a position with Atlanta Life, which opened a new Cleveland

office in the early thirties, but found that he could not make a decent

living on only a trickle of commissions. In 1934 he joined Warren in

the ill-fated Douglass Laundry.²⁷

If Holly was the League's orator and leader, Lewis was its publicist

and theoretician. Through speeches to the organization's member-

ship and, later, the columns of the League's own journal, he urged

blacks to launch out on their own, arguing that "we must own and

operate businesses and pay rent to ourselves. You owe it to yourself,"

he wrote, echoing the philosophy of hard work, self-help, and thrift

advocated by Washington, "to go out through hard work, dependa-

bility, honest effort, and make something of yourself." He felt it was

better to "start out at the little end of the horn and come out the big

end as Booker T. Washington did.^"28

Lewis also urged blacks to be more race conscious, particularly in

 

 

26. M. Milton Lewis, Interviews, December 24, 1971; May 26, 1972.

27. Ibid.

28. The Voice, November 12, 1940; April 13, 1940.

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Merchants of Tomorrow                                       49

 

patronizing their own businesses. "Self preservation," he wrote, "is

the first law of nature." Therefore, blacks should trade with blacks

first. Strongly critical of black housewives who shunned black clerks

and proprietors because "they wanted Mr. Heinz to wait on them,"

Lewis felt they should be more careful with their dollars. "The

women of our group," he said, "must take the right stand regarding

Negro business .... Women, a great responsibility rests on your

shoulders. Stick to your men and they will stick to you."²⁹

Like Holly, Lewis saw the program of the FOL as a means of over-

coming some of the limitations of black business development. He

saw the organization's emphasis on husbanding black dollars as de-

veloping race consciousness and pride among black consumers. He

viewed the League's job placement effort as a means of introducing

young blacks to business training. "We were concerned," he remem-

bered years later, "about the ultimate inspiration that they would get

to operate their own business and be able to use their own experi-

ence with the white firm for their own." We thought they could

learn to "make connections with larger furnishing groups ... to learn

how to buy." Being able to buy, he felt, was the "biggest job in

business, because if you can't buy right, you lose money."³⁰

William 0. Walker, whose support was a major factor in the

League's success, was perhaps the strongest advocate of black busi-

ness in the Cleveland community. Born in Selma, Alabama, in 1896,

Walker's commitment to black business was deeply rooted in his

family background. His father, Alexander, was one of the city's

oldest businessmen, operating a successful restaurant for many

years.31 At his father's death in 1939, Walker recalled his strong in-

fluence on the thinking of his children. "He reared and educated

his children and maintained his family," the young publisher wrote,

on the patronage of his own people. No man ever had a greater interest in the

promotion of Negro business than my father. When as a boy I was sent to a

grocery store I went to one owned by Negroes. When there was illness in the

family, a Negro physician attended us. The first money I ever deposited in a

bank, I at his suggestion, deposited in a Negro bank. Thus I acquired my

faith in business from the actual practice of it in my home."³²

It never occurred to Walker to seek any career other than that of a

businessman.

 

 

29. Ibid., March 29, 1941.

30. M. Milton Lewis, Interview, December 24, 1971.

31. Cleveland Call and Post, January 19, 1939; March 14, 1971.

32. Ibid., January 26, 1939.

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50                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

After graduating from high school, Walker entered Wilberforce

University, where he graduated from the Department of Business

two years later. By 1918 he had completed a course of instruction at

the Oberlin Business College, supporting himself along the way with

a job as a pullman porter. Thereafter, Walker acquired considerable

experience in the newspaper field: as city editor of the Pittsburgh

Courier in 1919, city editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide in 1920,

and managing editor of the Washington Tribune from 1921 to 1930.

Leaving the Tribune after the death of one of its owners resulted in in-

tense factional bickering among the rest, he accepted a position with

the Fair Department Store, a white-owned venture which he served

successively as advertising manager, assistant manager, and branch

store manager.

Anxious to return to journalism, however, Walker accepted an offer

to go to Cleveland and revive the Call and Post, which had gone un-

der in the early Depression days. With his extensive background in

the publishing field, the new editor not only put the paper back on

its feet but also revolutionized black journalism in Cleveland. Where-

as Harry C. Smith's Gazette was a conservatively-edited personal

journal which devoted itself mainly to local politics, Walker saw to it

that the Call and Post was characterized by sensational headlines,

numerous pictures, human interest features, a full page of society

notes, and active support of civic and racial movements.³³

Billing itself as "Ohio's Fastest Growing Weekly," the first issue of

the revived paper appeared on the stands with a front-page picture

captioned "CUTS SWEETIE IN BREAST," and the beginning of a

series based on original interviews with the Scottsboro Boys. By

1934 Walker had obtained a satisfactory Dun and Bradstreet credit

rating and boosted circulation from almost nothing to 4,000. By 1936

he had increased the paper's size from four to twelve pages and

opened branch offices in Akron and Toledo.³⁴

From his very first editorial, Walker espoused an aggressive version

of the self-help business philosophy of Booker T. Washington. Re-

calling the debate between Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, who

sometimes seemed to advocate college education simply for the sake

of education, Walker wrote, "The most pitiful derelicts washed up on

 

 

33. Ibid., March 14, 1971; William O. Walker, Interviews, October 17, 1969; Septem-

ber 18, 1971. "Cleveland's Call and Post," Crisis, XLV (December, 1938), 383; Cleve-

land Call and Post, March 14, 1970.

34. William O. Walker, Interview, May 15, 1972; N. W. Ayers and Sons, American

Newspaper Annual and Directory, 1934, 705; Cleveland Call and Post, June 6, 1934; July

18, 1935; October 8, 1936; March 14, 1974.

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Merchants of Tomorrow                                     51

 

the shores of charity by the ocean of the Depression are those young

men and women who have the most degrees from our colleges."

Walker felt that unless education could "make a better clerk in a

store, a better insurance collector, a better salesman, we are just

burying our talents in the ground." The black who wielded real

power in a community, he continued, was not the "fellow who holds

some appointed political job or whose employment is at the mercy of

the other race. The independent man or woman is the one who oper-

ates his or her own business."³⁵

In Walker's view, Washington's program had only one flaw-"he

did not carry his industrial education far enough." Washington's

emphasis on the mechanical trades and agricultural education was

too limited. Had he also offered courses in business administration,

the importance of joining trade associations, and competent research

departments to assist young graduates in finding openings for employ-

ment or sites for businesses, "we would not have so many unem-

ployed in the building trades and manufacturing industries, nor

would we have so many college graduates hustling grips at every train

station or making beds on Pullman cars."³⁶

Through the columns of his paper, Walker maintained a constant

propaganda barrage in favor of black capitalism. He urged blacks to

patronize blacks as a means of providing jobs and encouraging race

enterprises. When in the middle and late thirties the Cleveland

black business community showed some signs of revival, Walker took

it as a "fine tribute to the propaganda that has been spreading dur-

ing the last few years." "Nothing thrills me more," he wrote, "than

to walk into a well-stocked store owned by blacks and to be greeted

by courteous clerks. I am conscious of the fact that here is the begin-

ning of something that will do more to help us solve all of our prob-

lems than all the editorials, sermons, speeches, and good theories

combined."³⁷

The League's leadership core implemented its business emphasis

in a variety of ways. Whenever it was possible, the League tried to fill

jobs opened up by its picket lines with young men who were interest-

ed in acquiring the necessary experience to establish their own busi-

nesses. This was less true in the early stages of the campaign when for

strategic reasons it was considered necessary to choose black place-

 

 

 

35. Ibid., May 14, 1936.

36. Ibid., April 1, 1937; William O. Walker, Interviews, October 17, 1969; September

18, 1971.

37. Cleveland Call and Post, May 14, 1936.

• 12
 

52                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

ments who were acceptable to white employers. But once the move-

ment got underway, it became an "essential part" of the League's

program to place in employment individuals who were "potential

merchants."³⁸ Although interviews with former League leaders

failed to reveal an estimate of the number of individuals selected on

this basis more reliable than "quite a few" or "lots of them,"³⁹ the

number was probably relatively small, particularly because many,

perhaps as many as half, of those placed by the organization were

women. Yet, it is significant that the League even made this kind of

effort.

Once they were selected for employment, fresh placements were in-

ducted into the League's Employees Association which, among oth-

er things, served as an indoctrination and training agency. All FOL

jobholders were required to attend the regular Wednesday evening

meetings of the Association. Here Holly counseled his followers on

the virtues of "honesty, punctuality, neatness, and courtesy," and

encouraged them to "assimilate as rapidly as possible all knowledge

of their occupations." Obedience to these guidelines, it was sug-

gested, would prepare the FOL-sponsored trainee for "eventual entry

into his own business." "Study the job to which you are assigned,"

counseled the League's president, "until you have mastered it well

enough to launch a career of your own. When you have displayed

ability to handle a business, there are those in the black community

who will risk their reluctant capital to set you up in business."⁴⁰

The Wednesday evening meetings also functioned as promotional

forums. Some evenings were devoted to particular kinds of busi-

nesses, such as groceries or insurance companies, "to acquaint the

Negro with his own people in business." Any black businessman

who took out a membership in the League was brought to the atten-

tion of the Association members who were urged to patronize his

concern, while entrepreneurs who addressed the meetings for train-

ing purposes rarely failed to close without an appeal for patronage. At

the beginning of each of its job campaigns the League called to the

attention of its followers the blacks operating in that particular field.

For example, at a meeting in 1940, when the organization decided to

 

 

38. Loeb, Future is Yours, 35-36.

39. M. Milton Lewis, Interview, May 26, 1972; John O. Holly, Interview, May 16,

1972; Shelton Baines, Interview, March 29, 1972; Charles H. Loeb, Interview, May 15,

1972.

40. Cleveland Eagle, July 13, 1935; Cleveland Call and Post, January 16, 1936; John

O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1936; M. Milton Lewis. Interview, May 26, 1972; Loeb, Fu-

ture is Yours, 35-36.

• 13
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                       53

 

fight for jobs in white cleaning establishments, it was pointed out

from the platform that the C. H. Cant Valenteria and the East Side

Cleaners were important black enterprises and should be patronized

along with any white concern which agreed to hire blacks. Also, any

FOL member who launched his own enterprise was assured of the

League's support.⁴1

The League's leaders even went so far as to establish their own

business venture when in 1937 they founded the Voice, a four-page

biweekly journal which sold for five cents a copy and one dollar for a

year's subscription.⁴² Upon first reflection it might be assumed that

the new journal was more a broadside than a business, since civic

and protest organizations frequently establish such organs to further

their causes. But in this case the League had no need for a second

newspaper outlet because the Call and Post already gave its program

extensive coverage. From the time of its first boycott victory, FOL

news was featured on the Call and Post's front pages, announcements

and detailed reports concerning its weekly Wednesday evening meet-

ings were a regular feature, and Walker frequently wrote or directed

editorials in support of the League's campaigns.⁴³

The Voice's format, however, suggests that it was much more than

an organizational journal, that it was in fact a sincere attempt to estab-

lish a viable commercial newspaper. Although stories on League ac-

tivities were included in its coverage, they were often less prominent-

ly featured and less detailed than those articles covering the same

events in the Call and Post. Considering that none of the League's of-

fice s had a journalistic background, the Voice was well-edited;

moreover, it stressed straight news reporting rather than sensational-

ism: "I am glad to see one Negro newspaper," wrote one of its read-

ers, "that refuses to play up murders and other sordid aspects of

urban life.^"44 News coverage ranged from stories on local business,

politics, and social and church notes to articles on national news per-

taining to blacks. Even its editorial page revealed no myopic focus on

the boycott movement.⁴⁵ The new journal contained a husky amount

of advertising. Undoubtedly profiting from white employers having

already been intimidated by the FOL's boycott movement, the

Voice was able to attract substantial advertising from ghetto-based

 

 

41. Cleveland Call and Post, May 25, 1935; May 21, 1936; The Voice, January 2,

1939; March 2, 1940.

42. Ibid., January 22, 1938.

43. Cleveland Call and Post, May 13, 1935; May 30, 1935; June 13, 1935.

44. The Voice, April 15, 1938.

45. Ibid.

• 14
 

54                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

white stores which, coupled with business obtained from the few

black enterprises who used its columns, enabled the journal to fill

twenty-five to fifty percent of its space with lucrative advertise-

ments.⁴⁶

Although the Voice may have been a sincere business effort, it was

not a wise one. By 1937 the Call and Post, under Walker's editorship,

was far and away the leading black journal in Cleveland. By at-

tempting to project a bona fide news format, the four-page Voice in-

vited comparison with the twenty-page Call and Post, a comparison

from which it was bound to suffer, given the Call and Post's greater

resources and more complete coverage. Its large percentage of adver-

tising gave it an initial boost, but to be successful it also had to devel-

op substantial circulation, which it apparently did not do. After three

years of publication, the Voice folded in 1939, as the League itself en-

tered a period of decline.⁴⁷

Despite its strong business emphasis and the backing it received

from some businessmen, the FOL attracted almost no support from

the most substantial entrepreneurs of the black community. In fact,

with the conspicuous exception of Walker, the leading black business

and professional men were virtually unanimous in their criticism of

the League. Men such as Alonzo G. Wright, the owner of a chain of

six gasoline stations; M. C. Clark, president of the city's largest black

insurance company; and J. Walker Wills, the owner of the most suc-

cessful black funeral home in Cleveland, would have nothing to do

with the League. Some were openly suspicious of its motives. Why,

they asked, if the League's purpose was to support black business,

did it encourage blacks to patronize white stores in return for jobs?

They reasoned that if more blacks were encouraged to patronize

black stores, these stores could replace white establishments as a

source of employment. Other black businesses felt that boycotts

against white stores located in the ghetto could provoke retaliation

by white stores outside the black community; they might fire their

black help, thereby further reducing black purchasing power. Still

others felt, simply, that "those fellows are going to start a lot of un-

necessary trouble.^"48

 

 

 

46. Ibid., January 22, 1938.

47. John 0. Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972.

48. Loeb, Future is Yours, 32-33; William 0. Walker, Interview, September 18, 1971;

M. Milton Lewis, Interviews, December 26, 1971; May 26, 1972; John 0. Holly, Inter-

views, December 24, 1971; May 16, 1972; Harvey J. Johnson, Interview, March 29,

1972; Clarence M. Smart, Interview, July 27, 1971.

• 15
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                     55

 

But if the more successful businessmen turned their backs on the

League, some of the smaller entrepreneurs actively supported it. Al-

though it is impossible to estimate exactly how many smaller busi-

nesses came within the League's orbit, it can be said that a number

of businessmen and women worked closely with the organization

and that they were almost uniformly proprietors of small or newly es-

tablished concerns. There were, of course, always some small busi-

nessmen who, like their most prominent contemporaries, Shied away

from the League, but the fact remains that those entrepreneurs who

did support the League tended to be proprietors of small concerns.

This was clearly evident at the League's Wednesday evening meet-

ings, where businessmen who attended to promote their products or

to lecture on business techniques were usually small grocers, beauti-

cians, and cleaners.⁴⁹

The League, in what was to become the most distinctive aspect of

its activity in behalf of black capitalism, returned the support of small

businessmen by providing assistance to those who appealed to it for

help. Evidence of the range of support provided by the League

could be found in numerous cases. In 1937 the FOL came to the aid

of a number of black grocers who were being subjected to a cam-

paign of intimidation and violence by white merchants who wanted

them to close their stores on Sundays: the League threatened to boy-

cott any white businessman who attempted to coerce a black enter-

prise. When, in 1939, a number of white landlords began to raise out-

rageously the rents of black retailers in order to pressure them into

moving so that their space could be rented to white businessmen

who could afford to pay more, the League conducted a vigorous and

successful publicity campaign for rent reductions. Two years later the

League functioned in a mediatory role in negotiating a truce between

several independent black jukebox companies and a large white com-

pany after the latter instituted a campaign of violence aimed at forcing

the black operators out of business. Also, in the same year the FOL

joined the Call and Post in a community-wide effort to force federal

administrators in Washington to spare the J. Walter Wills Funeral

Home, perhaps the best-known funeral parlor in the Cleveland ghet-

to, whose property was about to be preempted by the United States

Housing Authority for conversion to public housing.

The League also lent its support to the organization of black entre-

 

 

49. Ibid. Cleveland Call and Post, May 25, 1935; July 4, 1935; June 6, 1940; The

Voice, March 15, 1938; Edward A. Overstreet, Interview, May 22, 1973; Marnette Lee,

Interview, May 16, 1972; Nancy Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972.

• 16
 

56                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

preneurs into affiliated trade associations. This support was clearly

demonstrated in 1936 when black beauticians felt themselves threat-

ened by outside interests. In March of that year, a representative of a

chain of white beauty shops came to Cleveland to start a similar

chain for black women. Rumors abounded that a half million dollars

were to be invested in the venture, and black beauticians speculated

that they would be reduced to serving as chain managers for the cor-

poration. Subsequently, when the first white shop was opened Mrs.

Lorena Williams, a black beautician whose parlor was closest to the

chain outlet, appealed to the FOL for help. League officials respond-

ed by calling for all the black beauticians to meet at its headquarters

to discuss the situation. At the meeting it became clear that the

beauticians were suffering from internal problems as serious as the

threat of chain competition. During the Depression a small army of

"sundowners," amateur hair stylists who operated in their homes

after their regular working day, had driven prices so low that estab-

lished beauty culturists could not earn a decent living. To combat the

white threat and end "sundowning," the FOL therefore organized

the seventy-five beauticians present at the the meeting into the Fu-

ture Outlook League Beauticians' Association as an affiliate organiza-

tion. A constitution provided that the Association's purpose was to

unite all beauty shop owners in an effort to secure state legislation for

the trade, to improve standards of operation, and to campaign against

unlicensed beauticians.⁵⁰

Following the organization of the Beauticians' Association, the

League pressured the white chain-which by this time had in-

vested several thousand dollars in its first location-into closing its

shop by threatening it with a boycott.51 Although as far as can be

determined this was the only instance in which the FOL actively in-

terceded for the beauty shop owners, the Beauticians' Association,

which had been formed under its guidance, went on to become an

effective instrument for the standardization of the industry. In the

late thirties the Association lobbied successfully for laws regulating

beauticians. At the same time, through its affiliate status with the

 

 

50. John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; Frank Evans, Interview, January 24,

1972; Charles H. Loeb, Interview, May 15, 1972; Wendell I. Stewart, Interview, May

22, 1972; "Press Release," December 1939, National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People, Branch Files, Library of Congress. Cleveland Call and Post, No-

vember 4, 1937; June 7, 1941; July 19, 1941; September 6, 1941; Loeb, Future is Yours,

78-80, 86-87.

51. Loeb, Future is Yours, 42-43; Cleveland Call and Post, June 18, 1936; June 20,

1936; July 2, 1936; Cleveland Eagle, June 19, 1936; John O. Holly, Interviews, May 15,

1972; May 16, 1972; Charles H. Loeb, Interview, May 15, 1972.

• 17
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                        57

 

FOL, the Association was able to brandish the threat of boycotts

and pickets, thus enabling it to achieve some measure of success in

policing prices and wages.⁵²

In 1938 the League actually placed pickets in the streets in defense

of a black enterprise-Robert Shauter's Ethical Pharmacy. Robert

Shauter was a remarkable businessman. After spending years work-

ing for a white druggist from whom he learned the trade, Shauter

opened his first pharmacy, Shauter's Drug Store, in 1936. The phar-

macy's former owner, a white druggist, had done only a "feeble"

business. Druggists in general considered it a bad business location,

and no one expected that Shauter would make a profit. But what

had formerly been a drab and unsuccessful business blossomed un-

der Shauter's management into one of the most successful pharma-

cies in the city. Subordinating all of his other interests to developing

this business, Shauter seriously endangered his health. But he was

so successful his exploits were hailed as "magic."⁵³

When Shauter opened his second store, the Ethical Pharmacy, he

faced immediate opposition from worried white merchants aware of

his earlier successful venture. Almost immediately, white competitors

began to harass him by complaining to city inspectors about building

code violations and circulating disparaging rumors. Some of their op-

position was probably due to his success; in 1936 when he had

opened his first store, most other pharmacies in the city were barely

making ends meet, while Shauter's store boomed despite having a

bad business location. But what appeared to bother them more was

that, with his second store, Shauter was venturing into a new territo-

ry for a black druggist. Previously, most black drugstores, including

Shauter's own first venture, made most of their money from soda

fountain and lunch counter business rather than from prescriptions.

But with his second store Shauter proposed to enter the prescription

field on a large scale: The new pharmacy was nicknamed the "Doc-

tor's Drug Store" because it sold only pharmaceuticals. Shauter had

thoroughly canvassed the black community and had secured com-

mitments from almost every doctor, dentist, and nurse to send their

patients to him for prescriptions.⁵⁴

Having witnessed Shauter's successful first store, the white owners

 

 

 

52. Loeb, Future is Yours, 42-43; Charles H. Loeb, Interview, May 15, 1972; John 0.

Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972.

53. Cleveland Call and Post, November 11, 1937; November 25, 1937; February 10,

1938; November 16, 1940; Marnette Lee, Interview, May 16, 1972.

54. Cleveland Call and Post, April 9, 1936; September 24, 1936; June 24, 1937; May

12, 1938; John O. Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972; May 16, 1972.

• 18
 

58                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

were in no mood to see history repeat itself. Soon after he opened the

second enterprise, they pressured the Northern Ohio Drug Associa-

tion into refusing to sell the black druggist any supplies. Shauter then

appealed to the FOL, which, as it had in the past, responded by

threatening the white druggists with a boycott unless they ceased

their intimidation. But this time a threat was not sufficient, and the

FOL was forced into more direct action. The League organized a

boycott which featured the placement of pickets in front of every

white-owned drug store in the Cleveland ghetto. Before the first day

of the boycott ended, Shauter was receiving his usual supplies.⁵⁵

Later, in the early World War II years, the dynamic Shauter went on

to open a third store, this time purchasing the best corner location in

the black community. Thus he became the first black Clevelander to

establish a drugstore chain.⁵⁶

In late 1940 the League came to the aid of black ice and coal deal-

ers. In August of that year the American Federation of Labor's (AFL)

Ice Mens' Local 422, which had all but completed its organization of

the city's ice and coal dealers, attempted to force all members of the

Independent Ice and Coal Dealers Association-some sixty black

businessmen-to join its union. The black dealers were a varied lot,

including a large number of pushcart peddlers, a small group of men

who had horse-drawn wagons, and a tiny number who operated real

business concerns with small truck fleets. Most of them could not af-

ford the twenty-five dollar initiation fee demanded by the union,

and all of them resented the union's stipulation that black members

must confine their sales to black neighborhoods. As a result, they re-

fused to join Local 422.⁵⁷ The white union leaders reacted by taking

immediate steps to cut off ice and coal supplies to the black inde-

pendents. The black dealers obtained their ice and coal from two

sources: the City Ice and Fuel Company and the Cleveland Home

Brewing Company. The Ice Men's Local cut off supplies at the former

by threatening to stop making deliveries and at the latter by persuad-

ing the Brewery Drivers' Union to take the same position. Unable to

purchase supplies and living a hand-to-mouth existence which even

the deprivation of one day's income could seriously disrupt, the

black independents sought the help of the FOL.⁵⁸

 

 

55. Cleveland Call and Post,July 2, 1938; July 14, 1938; September 28, 1939; John O.

Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972.

56. John O. Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972.

57. Cleveland Call and Post, March 20, 1943, December 23, 1944.

58. Loeb, Future is Yours, 70-71; Cleveland Call and Post, August 18, 1940; Frank

Evans, Interview, January 24, 1972; John O. Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972.

• 19
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                    59

As had by now become customary, the League offered affiliate status to the Independent Association, although it should be noted that in this instance the FOL was dealing with an already- established entity. The League then countered the union's supply cut-off by placing pickets in front of the entrances to both companies, daring the union men to pull into their processing stations. Numerous fights broke out between the pickets and union members, and trucks that crashed the picket lines were often found later smashed or over- turned in the streets.59 The following day AFL leaders, apparently worried about their public image and perhaps surprised or intimidated by FOL because they had just launched a city-wide drive to bring blacks into their unions, hastily called a conference with the FOL at which it was agreed that the black independents would be allowed to get their supplies while the dispute was being resolved. Several days later a     59. Ibid.

• 20
 

60                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

more elaborate conference was called which included the city's most

prominent members of the local AFL union council and black civic

leaders, as well as the Ice Mens' Local and FOL. After an initial

deadlock, in which Local 422 insisted that any black allowed to stay

outside the union deprived a white member of a job and the FOL in-

sisted that it could not accept union membership for its clients on the

basis of a restricted status, an agreement was worked out. All black

dealers who operated one-man businesses and did not own a truck

were exempted from joining the union, while those who conducted

more elaborate concerns with one or more trucks had to become

members. Black dealers were not to be limited to serving only ghetto

customers.60

The most bizarre and, at the same time, revealing incident involv-

ing the FOL's attempt to support black business was what became

known as the "Kritzer Affair." In January of 1940 the League initi-

ated an attempt to open jobs for blacks as bakers and drivers on

trucks delivering baked goods within the ghetto by asking the

AFL's Bakery, Tea, Coffee, and Yeast Drivers's Union to accept black

members. When the union refused, the FOL presented its case to

the bakery owners themselves, eventually concluding an agreement

with the Kritzer Bakery. According to this understanding, Kritzer

was to employ several blacks as delivery truck drivers and, some-

what later, as bakers.⁶¹

At the height of the League-Union struggle, the Kritzer Bakery

sought to capitalize on the race consciousness which the League's

campaign had developed within the black community by bringing

out a new product called "Brown Girl Bread." The FOL assisted in

the marketing of the bread by mounting an intensive publicity cam-

paign based on the theme that blacks should purchase the bread

baked by a company which was providing blacks with jobs and

training them to become bakers. The effort was so successful that

sales of the new product increased from 300 to 1,200 loaves a day,

and additional black deliverymen were hired.⁶²

In the end, however, the Kritzer affair ended with a weird turn of

events. In the middle of June, just when it appeared that the League

had successfully established its claim to jobs for blacks as bakers

and deliverymen, the Kritzer Bakery "vanished in the night." A

building that had housed a thriving bakery one day stood as noth-

 

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.; Russell H. Davis, Interview, January 21, 1972.

62. Loeb, Future is Yours, 66-67; Cleveland Call and Post, January 18, 1940; Febru-

ary 26, 1940.

• 21
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                       61

 

ing more than a gutted shell the next. Overnight, Kritzer, his deliv-

ery trucks, and all his expensive baking equipment simply disap-

peared. Although there was never any conclusive evidence to

indicate why Kritzer left town, it was widely rumored that he had

accepted a large sum of money from the Driver's Union and had, at

the same time, accepted a lucrative managerial position with a large

baking concern in another city.⁶³

Disappointed over the failure of its efforts to place blacks as bakers

and drivers but buoyed by the marketability of the Brown Girl

Bread, League officials sought to interest Leroy Crayton, a brilliantly

successful black sausage manufacturer, in starting a black-owned

bakery.⁶⁴ Crayton had started a small grocery in the early days of

the Depression and had gone on from there to establish a highly

successful sausage-manufacturing company in 1936. Within a year he

blanketed the Cleveland area with his product, and by the late

thirties he was making deliveries statewide.⁶⁵ Impressed with the

success of the race-oriented marketing campaign mounted by Kritzer

and the League, Crayton obtained the rights to the Brown Girl

trademark, installed the necessary baking equipment, bought three

delivery trucks, initiated a black-oriented advertising strategy

around the now familiar theme "Demand the loaf made by brown

hands, delivered by brown boys, with the smiling brown girl on

every loaf," and launched the Crayton Bakery, the first black-owned

bakery in the city.⁶⁶

From the Crayton Bakery's inception, however, the extreme com-

petitiveness of the bread industry and the continued antagonism of

the Drivers' Union created a number of serious problems. Black gro-

cers and community institutions would not purchase the bread be-

cause they could get other brands a penny or two cheaper, while

white merchants were not enthusiastic because the black company

lacked a national reputation. Those white merchants who did stock

Brown Girl Bread often hid it behind other merchandise and re-

fused to allow their black clerks to promote it. Truck drivers, mem-

bers of the Driver's Union, for some of the larger companies were dis-

covered purchasing quantities of the bread and either holding it for

several days or punching tiny holes in the wrappers to make it stale

 

 

63. Loeb, Future is Yours, 67-68; The Voice, March 2, 1940.

64. Cleveland Call and Post, August 17, 1972; August 24, 1940.

65. The Voice, June 13, 1940; John 0. Holly, Interview, January 16. 1972; M. Milton

Lewis, Interview, May 26, 1972; Charles H. Loeb, Interview, May 15, 1972; Nancy

Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972.

66. Cleveland Call and Post, December 2, 1937.

• 22
 

62                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

before delivering it to retail outlets. But Crayton's most serious prob-

lem was more fundamental: he could not find enough trained bakers

to keep the quality of the bread consistent. On one occasion, for ex-

ample, an inexperienced worker on the night shift forgot to add yeast

to the batter, resulting in the loaves going out the next day in only

half-filled wrappers.⁶⁷

In desperation Crayton and the League cooperated in a futile cam-

paign to save the enterprise. Crayton tried to improve the quality of

the bread by purchasing 10,000 dollars worth of more advanced

equipment and by instituting more stringent quality-control measures.

At the same time, he sought to increase sales by offering a money-

back guarantee of satisfaction and by enlisting the aid of the church-

es by including in each loaf a coupon which was redeemable in cash

for church-building programs. Simultaneously, the FOL urged its

membership to purchase Brown Girl Bread, threatened a boycott of

all white stores that refused to cooperate, wrote letters to the major

baking companies to protest the sabotage being carried on by some

of their drivers, sent representatives to tour the churches in support

of the product, and persuaded the Progressive Business Alliance,

the foremost organization of business and professional men in the

black community, to pass resolutions condemning Negro institutions

that would not patronize the Crayton Bakery.⁶⁸

Despite these efforts, however, the enterprise continued to stumble

over the problem of insufficiently trained personnel. Although Cray-

ton did employ some competent bakers who were used to train oth-

ers, the lure of higher wages in World War II defense industries con-

stantly drained off new workers. The result was that the quality of

the bread continued to vary, and the black public refused to pur-

chase it.⁶⁹ John Holly himself revealed both the desperation of the

struggle and the debilitated state of the Crayton Bakery when he

wrote:

If Crayton's Bakery is permitted to fail it will be another 40 years before an-

other Negro will take that kind of chance. If Negroes would not stop and

think that at one time Ward's, Bond's, Honey Girl, and N.B.C., and all other

 

 

67. Loeb, Future is Yours, 69-70; Cleveland Call and Post, July 13, 1940; July 18,

1941; Nancy Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972.

68. Cleveland Call and Post, September 27, 1940; The Voice, October 12, 1940;

Nancy Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972; John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972.

69. The Voice, March 29, 1941; John O. Holly to National Biscuit Company, Decem-

ber 10, 1940, Future Outlook League MSS; Cleveland Call and Post, February 1, 1940;

September 21, 1940; March 14, 1942; John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; Nancy

Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972.

• 23
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                      63

 

major baking companies were ... small, crude, struggling enterprises ... It is

inconceivable that any business could be in a position to compete with an-

other business that has been established a quarter of a century and is worth

over a million dollars.⁷⁰

Ironically, then, in the end the Crayton Bakery failed because of the

very problems the League was trying to overcome-the lack of

trained personnel and the unwillingness of some blacks to buy black.

Beginning with an attempt to place blacks as bakers and bakery

truck drivers with white concerns and ending with an effort to estab-

lish a black-owned bakery, the Kritzer-Crayton episode clearly

illustrates the connection which the League saw between opening up

new jobs for blacks and developing the black business community.

Had its interest been only to find jobs for unemployed blacks, the

League probably would have followed the Kritzer phase of the inci-

dent with an attempt to place blacks in another white-owned bakery.

After all, job-finding had already succeeded once as a tactic. But the

League chose a different route. Noting the success of Kritzer's origi-

nal Brown Girl Bread, their entrepreneurial inclination impelled them

to jump over the job-placement or training phase of their strategy to

the immediate achievement of their long-range goal-a black busi-

ness. Although this unfortunately proved to be a tactical error, the

very attempt clearly demonstrated the League's commitment to black

capitalism.

The Kritzer affair and its aftermath proved to be the apex of the

League's business-oriented activity. As the country moved toward

World War II and jobs became more plentiful in local defense indus-

tries, the League's membership began to drift away; and the organi-

zation itself, while continuing to maintain a small office, ceased to take

an active part in community affairs.⁷¹ On an individual basis, howev-

er, the League's leaders persisted in following an entrepreneurial im-

pulse. Almost to a man, the League's inner core became independent

businessmen. In 1939 Milton Lewis opened a concern named, appro-

priately, the Booker T. Washington Laundry. The next year Charles

Warren started a dry goods store, Julius Wright a meat market, and

Shelton Baines a restaurant. Harvey Johnson was now making a com-

fortable living with a law practice built up through the contacts he

had made as the League's legal counsel. John O. Holly alone es-

chewed a business career, preferring instead to use his prestige and

influence to launch a career in local politics. But even he first made a

 

 

70. John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; Nancy Stoveall, Interview, June 2, 1972.

71. The Voice, October 12, 1940.

• 24
 

64                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

stab at his own enterprise: in 1936 the League's president launched

the John 0. Holly Insecticide Company, a firm which retailed a line

of insect sprays, detergents, and waxes. The business was never

more than a sideline, however, and Holly let it slowly die as his polit-

ical activities and work with the FOL began to take more of his

time.⁷²

As World War II defense and war industries ushered in a return of

prosperity, the League's business program left a lasting legacy to its

members: a handful of young men who had won their jobs in the tur-

moil of picket lines and street confrontations now became successful

capitalists. When interviewed specifically on this point some thirty

years later, League leaders tended to exaggerate their influence. John

Holly, for example, maintained that "every Negro business in Cleve-

land today owes its existence in some way to the FOL."⁷³ Although

this is certainly an inflated claim, it is possible to assemble a small list

of League placements who later used their training to launch business

careers. Some, like Marshall Patton, who as a "fair haired boy" was

placed in a Fisher Grocery Store, worked their way up to become the

first black store managers in their respective companies. Others used

their training to start independent ventures: Paul Hamilton started a

radio shop; Robert Pinn a juke box company; Robert Ray a sausage

manufacturing concern; Wendell Bishop a shoe store; James Wilson a

haberdashery; James Pierpont a delicatessen; and Sam Langford,

Oliver Lindsay, and Lester Brown grocery stores. A few became real-

ly outstanding entrepreneurs. Edward Overstreet, who started out on

the picket line, provides an example: trained in a white grocery, he

later opened his own market in 1941, and eventually was cited in Su-

permarket Merchandising, often called the bible of American food

retailers, as the owner of a "model superette."⁷⁴

The League left another legacy in the form of a more unified black

business community. By the late thirties and early forties, most of the

businessmen and professionals who had once been critical of the

League now publicly declared their support for it. The League's sta-

bility and success, its many demonstrations of support of black busi-

 

 

 

72. Zinz, "Future Outlook League," 124-25.

73. M. Milton Lewis, Interviews, December 24, 1971; May 26, 1971; Charles M.

Smart, Interview, July 27, 1971; Clarence L. Sharpe, Interview, July 6, 1972; Shelton

Baines, Interview, March 29, 1972; Harvey J. Johnson, Interview, March 29, 1972;

John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; The Voice, May 11, 1940; April 13, 1940;

Cleveland Call and Post, May 7, 1936; June 1, 1940.

74. John O. Holly, Interview, January 16, 1972; Shelton Baines, Interview, March 29,

1972.

• 25
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                     65

 

ness, and, perhaps, the general radicalization of black thought in the

thirties, combined to make the "Don't Spend Your Money Where

You Can't Work" movement increasingly respectable even in conser-

vative circles. For example, one observer wrote: "The heightened

spirit of race consciousness and race unity is proving a boon to Negro

business generally, dissipating the fear that the continued employ-

ment of Negroes in white establishments might work to the detri-

ment of Negroes in business for themselves." Moreover, by 1940 the

League's weekly journal was reporting "NEGRO BUSINESS BIG-

GEST DONORS IN FOL MEMBERSHIP DRIVE," and by 1942

former antagonists of the caliber of Alonzo Wright, M. C. Clark, and

J. Walter Wills-all scions of the business establishment-were tak-

ing out life memberships at one hundred dollars apiece.⁷⁵

Yet, however real the League's accomplishments, it is difficult to

assess its impact on the black business community in anything but

modest terms. Although evidence has been assembled here to

highlight a neglected facet of the boycott movement, its major imme-

diate function was to obtain jobs. Certainly, it was for this reason

more than any other that the movement took hold among the masses

and attracted as many followers as it did, not only in Cleveland but

all around the country. Nothing suggests this more than the rapid

decline of the organization during the war years when its members

fairly scrambled for the lucrative positions in industry. Even had the

League been dedicated solely to finding training slots for future black

businessmen, it is doubtful that its impact could have been substan-

tial. Most of the jobs opened by the League were clerical positions

providing very little managerial experience. Furthermore, at least half

of the organization's placements were women who would have been

unlikely to go into business for themselves under any circumstances.

In the end, probably the League's greatest contribution to black

business was simply the race consciousness which its program engen-

dered.

Assessing the League's impact on the business community is easier

than placing its ideology within the continuum of black thought.

Some of the evidence suggests that the movement's business empha-

sis was an outgrowth of the self-help ideology promoted by Booker

T. Washington and elaborated on in practice by the class of business-

 

 

 

75. Clarence M. Smart, Interview, July 27, 1971; Shelton Baines, Interview, March

29, 1972; John 0. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; Loeb, Future is Yours, 35-36; Ed-

ward A. Overstreet, Interview May 22, 1972; Cleveland Call and Post, October 25,

1941.

• 26
 

66                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

men who came to prominence in the late twenties in many urban ghet-

toes. Certainly it would be going too far to call the League's leaders

businessmen. None but Milton Lewis and Charles Warren had ever

run a concern of their own, and their entrepreneurial experience was

limited to the short-lived Douglass Laundry. But all of them, in one

way or another, through educational training, family background,

regional origin, or personal philosophy, had acquired an interest in

establishing black businesses. Without exception they had been

raised in the South of Booker T. Washington, in the days when the

self-help philosophy was at its zenith. All came north during World

War I and the years immediately following, when Washington's dis-

ciples were laying the foundations for separate black communities in

urban areas all over the country. Two, Julius Wright and Milton Lew-

is, had attended schools which elaborated the industrial education

view of the great Tuskeegean. Three, Sheldon Baines, John Holly,

and William Walker, had fathers who had established business con-

cerns of their own. And, to a man, they reflected a belief in the need

for a viable black capitalism.⁷⁶

Yet, if the boycott movement was related to the self-help family, it

certainly was a prodigal son, for Washington's accommodationism

would never have countenanced violence and street demonstrations.

But it does seem possible that the movement can be related to Wash-

ington's program as a variation in desperation. It may be that the

boycott movement represented, in part, the self-help ideal radical-

ized by Depression-generated frustrations. In this connection it may

be relevant to note that some of the League's founders were men who

had sought business careers in the late twenties but had failed.

They were, like their more successful contemporaries who arrived in

Cleveland earlier, recent arrivals from the South in search of careers.

But there was a difference, for these men had achieved no success.

At the outset of the Depression, they were less businessmen than

men on the make with business on their minds. Their protest empha-

sis, therefore, may have been an outgrowth of their frustration. Using

a tool that allowed them to strike out at the white businessmen

whose success mocked their own failure, they employed the boycott

to encourage black economic independence through the control of

black dollars, the exchange of black dollars for jobs and training,

and ultimately, the development of black businesses. Thus the boy-

 

 

76. John O. Holly, Interview, May 16, 1972; M. Milton Lewis, Interview, May 26,

1972; William O. Walker, Interview, October 17, 1969; Loeb, Future is Yours, 68-69:

Cleveland Call and Post, March 28, 1940.

• 27
 

Merchants of Tomorrow                                    67

 

cott could have been viewed, in part, as a means to make a balky sys-

tem work for men who had been spurned by it.

That the more established businessmen did not at first support

the League's aggressive version of the self-help ideology might, per-

haps, be explained by status differentials. Since their own busi-

nesses were suffering during the Depression, it might be assumed

that the more successful entrepreneurs would have supported a

movement that struck back at white merchants who were raking

black dollars out of the ghetto market. But these were men for whom

the system had worked. To be sure, they were suffering a decline in

economic well-being, but many of them had achieved elite status in

the community; to align themselves with a movement of street radi-

cals would have endangered their prestige. It is not surprising that

the established businessmen drifted toward support of the League

in the late thirties and early forties, for by then the black upper class

in general was moving in that direction.

It is, of course, possible that the Future Outlook League was unique

in the amount of attention it gave to the support of black business.

And, it is certainly true that the League's quest for jobs was the

better-known and more widely-supported aspect of its program. But

it is also possible that its activist support of black business was a cry

of anguish from those young men recently-arrived from the South

who, having been inspired by Booker T. Washington's vision of eco-

nomic independence, were prevented by the Depression from realiz-

ing their dream of being the "merchants of tomorrow."

• 28