Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York

by Mary White Ovington

[10] See Ulrich B. Phillips' "Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts," American Historical Review, July, 1906.

[CHAPTER V]
Earning a Living—Business and the Professions

If we walk west on Fifty-ninth Street, at Eighth Avenue, we come upon one of the colored business sections of New York. Here, for a block's length, are employment and real estate agents, restaurant keepers, grocers, tailors, barbers, printers, expressmen, and undertakers, all small establishments occupying the first floor or basement of some tenement or lodging house, and with the exception of the employment agency all patronized chiefly by the colored race. Another such section and a more prosperous one is in Harlem, on West One Hundred and Thirty-third, One Hundred and Thirty-fourth, and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Streets. From the point of view of the whole business of the city such concerns are insignificant, but they are important from the viewpoint of Negro progress, since they represent the accumulation of capital, experience in business methods, and hard work. Very slowly the New York Negro is meeting the demanding power of his people and is securing neighborhood trade that has formerly gone to the Italian and the Jew. Husband and wife, father and son, work in their little establishments and make a beginning in the mercantile world.

The Negro, as we have seen, has conducted businesses in New York in the past, businesses patronized chiefly by whites. Barbering and catering were his successes, and in both of these he has lost, despite the fact that one of the city's wealthiest colored men is a caterer. But if he has lost here, he has gained along other lines. Among a number of photographers he has one who is well-known for his excellent architectural work. Two manufacturers have brought out popular goods, the Haynes's razor strop, and the Howard shoe polish. These men, one a barber and one a Pullman car porter, improved upon implements used in their daily work and then turned to manufacture. The headquarters of the Howard shoe polish is in Chicago, where the firm employs thirty people, the New York branch giving employment to twelve.

A wise utilization of labor already trained and at hand is seen in the Manhattan House Cleaning and Renovating Bureau. This firm contracts for the cleaning of houses and places of business and has also been successful in securing work on new buildings, entering as the builders leave and arranging everything for occupancy. In one week the Bureau has given employment to sixty men.

In those businesses in which he comes in contact with the white, the most pronounced success of the colored man has been real estate brokerage. The New York Negro business directory names twenty-two real estate brokers, and though a dozen of them probably handle altogether no more business than one white firm, a few put through important operations. The ablest of these brokers, recently clearing twenty thousand dollars at a single transaction, turned his operations to Liberia, where he went for a few months to look into land concessions. This broker has aided the Negroes materially in their efforts to rent apartments on better streets. His energy, and that of many more like him, is also needed to open up places for colored businesses, better office and workroom facilities for the able professional and business men and women. In New York as in the South the Negro needs to obtain a hold upon the land. In this he is aided not only by his brokers, but by realty companies. The largest of these, the Metropolitan Realty Company, in operation since 1900, is capitalized at a million dollars, and had in 1910 $400,000 paid in stock, and $400,000 subscribed and being paid for on instalment. This company operates in the suburban towns, and has quite a colony in Plainfield, New Jersey, where it owns 150 lots. It has built eighty cottages for its members, and has bought eighteen.

Among the businesses that cater directly to the colored, probably none is more successful than undertaking. The Negroes of the city die in great numbers, and the funeral is all too common a function. Formerly this business went to white men, but increasingly it is coming into the hands of the colored. The Negro business directory gives twenty-two undertakers, one of them, by common report, the richest colored man in New York. Profitable real estate investment, combined with one of the largest undertaking establishments in the city, has given him a comfortable fortune. Another large and increasingly important Negro business is the hotel and boarding-house. As the colored men of the South and West accumulate wealth, they will come in increasing numbers to visit in New York, and the colored hotel, now little more than a boarding-house, may become a spacious building, with private baths, elevator service, and a well-equipped restaurant. In today's modestly equipped buildings the catering is often excellent, and good, well-cooked food is sold at reasonable prices. Occasionally the Hotel Maceo advertises a southern dinner, and its guests sit down to Virginia sugar-cured ham, sweet potato pie, and perhaps even opossum.

Printing establishments, tailors' shops,[1] express and van companies, and many other small enterprises help to make up the Negro business world. One colored printer brings out an important white magazine. There are seven weekly colored newspapers, of which the New York Age is the most important, and two musical publishing companies. All these enterprises are useful, not only to the proprietor and his patrons, but especially to the clerks and assistants who thus are able to secure some training in mercantile work. In the white man's office, white and colored boys start out together, but as their trousers lengthen and their ambitions quicken, the former secures promotion while the latter is still given the letters to put into the mail box. If the Negro lad, discouraged at lack of advancement, leaves the white man and ventures with a tiny capital into some business of his own, his ignorance is almost certain to lead to his disaster. He is indeed fortunate if he can first work in the office of a successful colored man.[2]