Enterprising Southerners: Black Economic Success in North Carolina, 1865-1915 (review)

A good deal of post-Civil War southern historiography has focused on how and why African-Americans in the South failed to achieve their dreams of economic independence. Kenzer analyzes why some blacks fulfilled their dreams in North Carolina between 1865 and 1915. Using a wide array of sources, including credit ratings of black businesses, census materials, records of black organizations, and manuscript collections, Kenzer fashions a comprehensive study of nearly every “enterprising black” in the Tarheel state. Farmers, professionals, businessmen, and businesswomen all come under the author’s scrutiny. The book is both a monograph and a source for information and sources about successful African-Americans who overcame racism, economic cycles, disfranchisement, and meager resources to own property, run businesses, attain higher education, and prevail as educators, doctors, and lawyers.

Kenzer picks up a project begun in 1885 by George Allen Mebane, a black North Carolina journalist who sent out a questionnaire to 200 enterprising blacks as part of his effort to gather material for a book called “The Prominent Colored Men of North Carolina.” Mebane’s effort was part of a larger trend lasting well into the next century of black scholars and professionals taking stock of the progress of the race, an effort not only designed to induce race pride and serve as an inspiration to others, but to refute racist assumptions about the limited capacities of blacks to advance in a state of freedom. Mebane never finished the book, but Kenzer benefited from his work and incorporates the findings into the study.

Kenzer comes to several conclusions as to why these extraordinary (they represented only a fraction of the state’s black population) men, and a few women, achieved success. First, echoing John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1943), he concludes that prewar emancipation was a key factor in attaining economic success in the decade after the war, and mulattoes predominated over blacks in this regard. Over time, however, and certainly by the turn of the twentieth century, intermarriage had moderated these distinctions, especially in the countryside. Second, North Carolina’s African-American population fared better in the cities than in rural areas: A more fluid and flexible real estate market, the presence of black social and professional clubs (particularly the Masons and local chapters of the National Negro Business League), and the broader consumer base in urban areas accounted in great part for this difference. Third, political participation and officeholding played key roles in black economic success: The use of patronage, the ability to influence local and state legislation to the benefit of black enterprise, and officeholding as a necessary supplementary income to finance private enterprises reflected the importance of politics. Yet, as Kenzer notes, black property holding and business success continued to advance after disfranchisement in 1900, and business cycles explain black economic progress, or lack thereof, better than racism, legislation, or segregation, though it is impossible to discern how many more success stories there might have been had the state not limited black voting.

These findings are not especially startling, but they are advanced with a solid foundation of evidence and analysis. Still, North Carolina may be a unique case in the South. It was the only state to experience a second reconstruction and redemption in the 1890s. Also, Kenzer might have accomplished more with his prodigious research. Given the crucial role of urbanization, it would have been helpful to learn about how the processes of urban development enhanced opportunities for African-Americans. Kenzer begins to respond to this issue in his discussion of the urban real-estate market, but he needed to do more. There is also the irony of the urban environment providing both an opportunity and a venue for the spread and codification of racial segregation.

Kenzer is aware of the historiography explicating the dashed dreams of former slaves after the war; some engagement with that literature would have broadened the interdisciplinary...