Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa

The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy has been one of the most direct attempts to achieve racial transformation in the South African economy. This chapter analyses the BEE programme and its outcomes against a wider understanding of meaningful economic inclusion, and offers a pragmatic, critical view of how BEE’s implementation transpired, and the pathways forward. The chapter builds on a vast literature to highlight that looking only at quantitative outcomes of BEE misses key issues in terms of the high barriers that sustain exclusion and concentration. Although BEE has evolved in the right direction, it has not done enough and a broader, integrated approach is required. Priorities for the pathway forwards include a focus on high barriers that exclude black businesses and people, funding as part of a broader set of interventions, coherence with parallel social and economic policies, and a strategic role for procurement and enterprise development.

Legitimizing black businesses: three examples from the Civil War to civil rights

Purpose In “Reinventing Entrepreneurial History,” Wadhwani and Lubinski (2017) encourage the study of legitimacy, the sense that a new organization or venture “belongs” to, or fits within, the social construct of its time. Design/methodology/approach To this end, this query will consider methods used in the period between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement to show legitimacy in black economic endeavors. Three Atlanta entrepreneurs’ efforts will be used as demonstrative examples. Findings The overarching aim of this investigation of economic legitimization is to give practical examples of three distinct strategies in play: endorsement, authorization and storytelling. In addition, a fourth external actor, social organizations, that exists outside of the realms of media, government and law as noted by Bitektine and Haack (2015) is illustrated to grant validity within the black community. Also, the storytelling strategy is used to illustrate promoters, actors pushing legitimacy to benefit the community at large. Originality/value Arguably the search for economic and collective legitimacy within black businesses is not confined to the past. Stated in another way, black businesses still fight for legitimacy, and future research should be undertaken to show the similarities and differences in the two aforementioned periods.

History Stories

Chapter One argues that history is a central way that Black towns are identified and narrated. The chapter discusses various narratives about Black towns that focus on particular aspects of the towns’ history and show a complicated appeal of the communities, including racial trauma, loss, and social and economic mobility. Highlighted topics include state narratives about Black towns as emblems of economic success and black social mobility in the past; town elders’ narratives about their family members’ traumatic experiences fleeing the Jim Crow South to seek freedom in a Black town; Black town residents’ narratives of Black businesses and land acquisition as a hallmark of Black town success and history; and community narratives of losing celebrated Black town schools to integration mixed with racism.

Growing Up Church

This chapter focuses on Church’s early years by providing an overview of Robert Church Sr. and Anna Church. In particular, it discusses the strategies the black elite used to nurture a new class of leaders during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This chapter discusses Church’s educational background, his initial dealings with his father’s Solvent Saving’s Bank, and his early interest in pursuing a career in politics. Church’s early life serves as a window into the history of the era’s black entrepreneurs, black leadership, and black businesses, all considered against the legacy of slavery.

“Order as well as Decency”: The Development of Order Maintenance Policing in Black Atlanta

In 1971, Ebony magazine named Atlanta the country’s “new Black Mecca,” citing its black political and economic leadership as well as the success of black businesses in the city. At this same time, however, Atlanta, like cities around the country, experienced rising crime rates and economic decline in its urban core. This article examines how Atlanta’s black political leaders, supported by both white and black business owners, responded to the crime crisis by privileging the preservation of order and the protection of capital in their public safety policies. It suggests that this commitment to orderliness, often overlooked in examinations of black political culture, undergirded black political leaders’ advocacy of punitive crime control procedures in the postcivil rights era. Analyzing how black political officials and property owners advocated for intensified foot patrol policing and public decency legislation, this article argues that the city’s black political class were early theorizers and codifiers of order maintenance, or “broken windows,” or still “quality-of-life” policing. Consequently, black business owners and municipal officials sanctioned the expansion of police power in low-income urban neighborhoods in the postcivil rights era.

No Man Is Your Captain

Born in 1898, Louis Austin came of age in rural Halifax County in eastern North Carolina, during an era of increasing oppression of African Americans. Raised in the African Methodist Episcopal church, Austin was greatly influenced by his father, a barbershop owner, who taught his children that all people were equal before God. Austin moved to Durham in 1921 to attend the National Training School, now North Carolina Central University. In Durham, Austin encountered a black community with a thriving black middle class and many successful black businesses, notably North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, two of the largest black-owned financial institutions in the nation.

Rhetorical Narratives of Black Entrepreneurs

Using cultural empowerment as a conceptual framework, this study emphasizes the interrelated role of culture, rhetorical agency, and empowerment in discursive analysis and communicative practice. Twelve black business owners were interviewed using a narrative inquiry approach. Thematic analysis revealed that these entrepreneurs enacted rhetorical agency in ways that work within oppressive systems and resisted damaging dominate discourses about black businesses. By highlighting the rhetorical narratives of black entrepreneurs, this study also addresses the need for a more culturally sensitive approach in business, professional, and organizational communication.