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Download Download W. E. B. Du Bois, F. B. Ransom, the Madam Walker Company, and Black Business Leadership in the 1930s Mark David Higbee" From the 1870s to the 1930s, the development of business en- terprise was widely seen as the one essential ingredient for Afri- can-American progress. Yet neither African-American business enterprise nor the political roles of black entrepreneurs have been adequately studied by historians. Accounts of African-American ec- onomic hardships during the Great Depression have slighted the important political debates that these hardships produced. Simi- larly, writings on W. E. B. Du Bois, the black scholar and founder of the twentieth-century civil rights protest tradition, have ne- glected his distinctive vision of African-American business enter- prise. Consequently, a little known 1937-1938 dispute between Du Bois and Freeman B. Ransom, an African-American businessman and Indianapolis community leader, demands attention. Ransom and Du Bois viewed the proper aims of business enterprise in rad- ically opposing ways. The Ransom-Du Bois dispute provides an op- portunity to examine the differing ways these two leaders approached the problems of the Depression as well as how African Americans reconsidered older ideas of black business enterprise and political leadership. Studying the 1930s is acutely important because during that decade faith in business as the basis for Afri- can-American leadership was supplanted by political and labor strategies. * Mark Higbee is completing a dissertation on W.E.B. Du Bois at Columbia University, New York. He thanks the following people for their comments on vari- ous drafts of this essay: Barbara Bair, Eric Bates, Martha Biondi, Jonathan Bir- enbaum, Elizabeth Blackmar, Eric Foner, Wilma Gibbs, Sarah Henry, Kate Levin, Judith Stein, the members of Col'umbia University's U.S. History Dissertation Group, and the anonymous readers for the Indiana Magazine of History. An early version was presented at the Indiana Historical Society's annual meeting in Novem- ber, 1991. INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, LXXXIX (June, 1993). 8) 1993, Trustees of Indiana University. 102 Indiana Magazine of History The issues that undergirded the Du Bois-Ransom dispute of 1937-1938 were a reprise of the famous Booker T. Washington-Du Bois debate of the early 1900s.’ Washington and Du Bois had de- bated whether blacks should accommodate to America’s segrega- tionist racial order. Thirty years later Ransom and Du Bois disagreed on the equally basic question of how much of America’s existing social and economic system should be embraced and how much rejected by African Americans. On December 18, 1937, Du Bois used his column in the Pitts- burgh Courier to criticize the Indianapolis-based Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the famous African-American hair and beauty products enterprise. The attack was part of Du Bois’s long-running critique of what he perceived as the failure of black businesses to address the basic needs of black Americans. Although Du Bois praised the accomplishments of the late “Ma- dame Walker and her hair culture business” as “epoch-making,” he attacked the firm: “Since Madame Walker’s death the business has fallen, I have been told, mainly into the hands of white capi- talists.” Further, the company had based itself “on the usual ex- ploitation of labor.” Du Bois suggested an alternative vision of how the business might have developed: a little broader knowledge and far-seeing advice might easily have turned the Walker hair culture business during her [Walker’s] life into a co-operative enter- prise and this co-operation, instead of being simply a group capitalistic movement, could have been given the form of a socialistic mass movement, not only in hair culture but in other lines. What is true of the Walker business can be true of the whole inner economic organization of American Negroes2 Ransom was the Walker Company’s manager and attorney. In an open letter to Du Bois published in the Pittsburgh Courier, he angrily protested the attack. “There is not now, or has there ever been,” Ransom insisted, “one share of stock of the Mme. C.J. Walker Mfg. Company owned by any white man” or “ ‘by white capitalists.’ ” Only “members of the Walker family” had ever held shares in the firm. While Ransom ignored Du Bois’s comments about cooperative business enterprise and Du Bois’s broader cri- See chapter 3 in William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), and Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tus- kegee, 1901-1915 (New York, 1983). Du Bois’s column, “Madame Walker,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 18, 1937 (hereafter cited as Du Bois, “Madame Walker”). Du Bois’s newspaper columns have been reprinted in Herbert Apthek’er, ed., Newspaper Columns by W.E. B Du Bois (2 vols., White Plains, N.Y., 1986); “Madame Walker” is in Volume I, 258-59. Du Bois’s allegation that the Walker Company exploited its workers was not directly challenged by Freeman B. Ransom, and Du Bois never reiterated it. The actual relations between the firm and its employees call out for study. FREEMANB. RANSOM Courtesy Indiana Historical Society Library, Indianapolis. 104 Indiana Magazine of History tique of black business enterprise, he demanded an apology and a published c~rrection.~ Emanating from the nation’s most prominent black intellec- tual and appearing in what was the nation’s leading African-Amer- ican newspaper (the Courier’s 1938 circulation was a quarter million copies a week), Du Bois’s allegation that whites controlled the firm contradicted the image that the Walker Company was a company run and owned by African Americans and an employer that created opportunity and self-respect for its black employees and agent^.^ And Du Bois was wrong: “white capitalists” did not control the firm. Du Bois replied privately to Ransom on December 22, 1937: I am sorry that my reference to your company in the ‘Pittsburgh Courier’ did not altogether please you. You will remember that I did not say that the business had fallen into the hands of white capitalists. I said that I had been told it had. Nor was there anything in my statement or intention to decry or injure your business in any way. Most of us, are engaged in work which is directed wholly or in part by white capital. That fact in itself is not at all derogatory. I merely mentioned the rumor in this case because the matter was of importance in the possible development of co- operative business among 118.5 The letter hardly satisfied Ransom. He again wrote Du Bois, de- manding a published correction and hinting at a lawsuit. He also scoffed at Du Bois’s claim that he meant nothing “derogatory.” The purpose of Du Bois’s comments on the Walker Company’s pur- ported fall to “white capitalists,” Ransom believed, was to blame its management for failing to advance African-American economic development. But Du Bois was unmoved by Ransom’s protest. In early January, 1938, Du Bois told the Courier that he had no plans to apologize or make any admission of error.6 Two days later, Ransom wrote Du Bois a third letter “to in- quire as to just what you plan to do before I take further action in the matter.”7 Ransom’s threat finally moved Du Bois to seek advice from Arthur Spingarn, a lawyer, a top official of the National As- Freeman B. Ransom to Du Bois, December 20, 1937, reel 48, frame 327, mi- crofilm edition, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts). Reel and frame references to the Du Bois Papers are hereafter cited together, as in this case for example, “48:327.”F. B. Ransom, “Whites Have Never Owned One Share of Stock in Mme. C.J. Walker Co., F.B. Ransom Writes in reply to Article Penned by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 1, 1938, sec. 2, p. 2. ‘Du Bois, “Madame Walker”; and Ransom to Du Bois, December 20, 1937, 48:327, Du Bois Papers. For the Courier’s circulation figures, see Rayford Logan’s biographical sketch of Robert Vann, the paper’s publisher, in Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York, 19821, 615. Du Bois to Ransom, December 22, 1937, 48:328, Du Bois Papers. Ransom to Du Bois, December 28, 1937,48:329, ibid.; Du Bois to Ira F. Lewis, January 5, 1938, 49:425, ibid. Ransom to Du Bois, January 7, 1938, 49:794, ibid. W.E.B. DLJ BOIS(1868-1963) IN HIS SEVENTIES Photograph by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy of the Archives, University Library, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 106 Indiana Magazine of History sociation for the Advancement of Colored People, and a long-time Du Bois friend. Spingarn warned Du Bois that a court could find his statement libelous and injurious to the Walker Company. At the very least, such a suit would be expensive to defend. Spingarn also told Du Bois that “the moral side of it requires some form of correction.”8 With this stern warning from an old friend, Du Bois retreated. In the Courier of January 23, 1938, Du Bois retracted his claim that white capital controlled the Walker Company: “I am glad to withdraw the statement and I am sorry if what I said did any harm.” Du Bois added that he was pleased with the firm’s suc- cess and with its having remained “under Negro control.” This apology ended the exchanges between Ransom and Du Bois. Ran- som wrote Du Bois that he considered the matter closed.
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