CHAPTER 6
FIGHTing for the Soul of Black Capitalism
Struggles for Black Economic Development in Postrebellion Rochester
By 1966, the Rochester uprising, the subsequent organizing frenzy, and FIGHT’s confrontation with the Eastman Kodak Company highlighted the urgent need for economic development in the nation’s ghettos.1 In this new era of Black rebellion, Rochester emerged as a pioneer in the quest for Black economic development, which became something of a buzz phrase in the late 1960s. As urban uprisings swept the nation, the idea of Black economic development acquired wide appeal; it emerged as the latest effort by African Americans to enter the economic mainstream. But in practice, it proved to be a contentious and contested concept. For many, economic development of the ghetto would come to mean employment training and nondiscriminatory hiring practices, leading to job placement in existing, predominantly white-owned businesses. For others, economic development was synonymous with Black ownership, of which two approaches predominated. The first revolved around individual entrepreneurship, usually of small service or commercial-type businesses. The second approach to Black ownership presupposed a separate Black economy, an undertaking in which African Americans, cooperatively and collectively, would own and control the means of production in Black communities. Both approaches were capitalist, in that ownership would be vested in individuals or groups of individuals, although the collective approach also drew inspiration from various socialist economic systems. Proponents of the two approaches, the entrepreneurial and the cooperative, drove the contest in Rochester to define Black capitalism, where myriad national stakeholders—activists, politicians, entrepreneurs, corporate chiefs, and, not least, the federal government—closely watched and studied the various models emerging from that city.
FIGHT would not be the only organization to enter Rochester’s contest to define Black capitalism. The Urban League, previously excluded from the city, quickly set up shop and got to work. Rochester Jobs Incorporated was also born in the aftermath of the rebellion to provide training and skills to unemployed workers, while the Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation competed to shape the parameters of Black capitalism. Black economic development emerged incrementally, but rapidly, in Rochester. While their ideologies and paths varied, each of these organizational efforts sought to break down racial discrimination in hiring, train Black workers for positions from which they had been excluded historically, and aggressively place them in factories and other industries. As might be expected, FIGHT would diverge from the pack by 1967, seeking additional opportunities to develop Black-owned, community-held businesses wherein profits and wealth would be returned to the larger Black community in the form of worker benefits, housing, childcare, and educational opportunities. This struggle to define Black capitalism in Rochester represented, in miniature, that larger quest for Black economic development, making Rochester both a national model and a symbol in the fight for the soul of Black capitalism.
The quest for Black ownership and control of the means of production may have assumed novel forms in the era of Black Power, but the fight for Black capitalism was not new in Rochester or elsewhere. As Malcolm X endeavored to build his Muslim Mosque Inc., he toured the nation’s industrial cities in 1964, making the case for Black economic development:
The economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it’s time now for our people to become conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we’re developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don’t have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.2
Of course, Malcolm’s ideas were not original. Debates over the success and failure of Black business in the United States frequently surface as a means to measure Black progress and advancement. The historical connections between Black economic development and the project of racial uplift offer one measure of that progress; thus, developments in Rochester must be contextualized in the larger history.
Scholars have approached this history from three distinct positions. One argument posits that African Americans have a long tradition of business acumen that is based in their African past. This position is perhaps best articulated by Juliet E. K. Walker, who traces more than four hundred years of Black business activity in the United States, highlighting individual businessmen and businesswomen who have had exceptional success.3 Walker refutes arguments that Black business has not prospered at the same rate as white business because African Americans failed to develop a capitalist ethos during the period of their enslavement.4 Accepting capitalism as a legitimate goal, she argues that if Black capitalism has failed, it is due in large part to racism and uneven government support rather than Black failure.
A second set of scholars and activists, not entirely distinct from the first, celebrates Black business and its history as a fundamental means to Black advancement. This school credits businessmen-activists such as Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, the Nation of Islam, buy-Black campaigns, and the creation of all-Black business institutions with promoting racial uplift. Rather than approaching Black business as a means to achieve integration, many of these scholars and activists laud the creation of a separate Black economy and all-Black institutions as a foundation for Black advancement and the development of race pride.5
Still a third set of scholar-activists is critical of the Black capitalist project. This critique typically takes two forms. The first represents a general distaste both for capitalism and for those who seek economic advancement as a means to emulate bourgeois white society.6 These naysayers point to the reliance of many Black businesses and institutions, and Black capitalism more broadly, on white philanthropists for their success—a success that they argue is fleeting and permanently dependent upon the continuation of the white capitalist system. The second critique posits that Black capitalism purports to serve the race but instead benefits the Black elite at the expense of the Black masses.7 These debates among scholars and activists reflect the historical relationship between Black business and racial uplift and advancement, a burden that white capitalism has not shouldered.8
Walker’s 1998 seminal text, The History of Black Business in America, has spurred new interest in the field, most notably Robert Weems’s Business in Black and White. Weems examines African Americans’ insistent engagement of the federal government in the arena of Black business. But if, as Weems has posited, “inherent tensions, related to the African-American consumer market and what can and should be done for African-American entrepreneurs by the federal government, represent one of the major themes of twentieth-century African-American business history,” then so too does the relationship between corporate America and Black communities.9 Black Power activism in the late twentieth century decisively altered the theory and practice of corporate responsibility, the premise that companies were accountable to the communities in which they operated and should proactively address inequality. Relegated to footnotes and brief sidebars, the story of corporate responsibility in the age of Black Power has yet to be told.10 In addition to agitating nationally for Black economic development, aspiring Black entrepreneurs and community leaders seized this particular moment to expand their political and social reach. In so doing, they secured a position of power that commanded the attention of major corporations, marking the long 1960s as distinct from earlier periods of Black economic development. It was in this context that industry leaders and African Americans in Rochester—both integrationists and Black Power advocates—struggled to redefine corporate responsibility and economic citizenship, oftentimes rejecting notions of governmental responsibility, a feature that delighted state and federal officials alike.
Do for Self in Rochester
Working at the crossroads of the FIGHT-Kodak conflict, which stretched over the winter of 1965–1966, the religious community intervened. The local council of churches, which had raised the funds to bring the Industrial Areas Foundation to Rochester, hoped to restore civility between FIGHT and the business community by forming Rochester Jobs Incorporated (RJI). RJI emerged as a collaborative endeavor intended to remedy the perceived mismatch between corporate needs (skilled workers) and Black needs (stable, well-paying jobs). RJI simultaneously sought to provide training and recruiting and to curtail the racist hiring practices traditionally employed by Rochester’s corporations. More significantly, RJI’s proponents hoped the new organization would quell the discord in the city and repair its image nationally.11
Initially presided over by the Reverend Gene E. Bartlett, president of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, RJI became an all-encompassing community project, bolstered by the divinity school’s legitimacy locally and nationally.12 Under Bartlett’s commanding presence, RJI brought together forty local employers into a coalition RJI hoped would serve more than fifteen hundred hard-core unemployed in its first eighteen months of existence. Each of these employers would hire a percentage of the targeted fifteen hundred employees based on its relative size, and each would require its managers to attend retraining programs to prepare them to work with this population. Implementing quota employment, as demanded by FIGHT, and requiring “sensitivity training,” RJI leaders felt, would satisfy the Black Power organization. RJI simultaneously ameliorated Kodak’s irritation at being singled out by FIGHT. That Kodak chose to participate voluntarily in RJI alongside other Rochester corporations allowed Kodak to demonstrate, once again, its leadership and benevolent paternalism.
As happened so frequently in the twentieth century, RJI’s creation thrust Rochester further into the national imagination. Michigan governor George Romney traveled to Rochester in September 1967 just months after Black Detroit erupted in another of the era’s “race riots.” Romney spent a day surveying RJI projects, visiting the city’s settlement houses, and touring FIGHT’s headquarters. Unable to ignore the connection between urban rebellions and poor economic conditions, Romney and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller collaborated on this trip to use community programs for self-promotion. Nonetheless, they found in Rochester private efforts to mediate urban poverty. Romney pronounced that in New York he learned that “things can be done at the local and private level.”13 Governor Romney all but expressed relief that the city government’s responsibility to blunt Black agitation was alleviated by a clerical and industrial call to cooperate with community organizations.14
But Rochester claimed more than the attention of self-interested officials hailing from cities in rebellion. A year into its existence, RJI also became a model for the National Alliance of Businessmen (NAB), the creation of which “was the ultimate voluntary response to the ultimate act of pressure—rioting.”15 The NAB, a voluntary association of businessmen who professed a willingness to assist Black entrepreneurs, desired to restore tranquility and improve profitability in the nation’s urban centers simultaneously. Rochester, having experienced one of the first uprisings of the era, was ahead of the curve in forming an industry-driven, voluntary job recruitment and training program, and therefore it became a model. In 1969, Richard Nixon reported that the NAB “concentrated the attention of the business community on the high unemployment rates in … inner cities, and … mounted an impressive attack on the predicament of the hardcore unemployed.” Their success was substantive: “Some 15,000 participating companies [placed] 102,000 formerly hardcore unemployed persons on the job. The NAB has pledged that by June 1970, it will have found jobs for 218,000 persons, and the hope is that over 600,000 will be generated by June 1971.”16 The NAB would later return the favor to Rochester, providing additional staff to hire and train more hard-core unemployed to become entrepreneurs and capitalists.17
RJI represented progress. It also highlighted the potential of uprisings to trigger corporate-driven rather than government-driven economic development in the nation’s urban centers. As such, FIGHT worked alongside clergy, business, even Kodak, to create opportunities for African Americans within RJI and to keep the spotlight on Rochester, but the process was not without continued controversy. RJI did not offer community control or self-determination. Rather, it kept African Americans and other hard-core unemployed in a system of begging and groveling for jobs from white corporations.
Bolstered by the attention to Black employment, however, FIGHT pressed for more. Members revisited their prior engagement with Malcolm X. As he once counseled, they wanted to create their own enterprises, which they believed would result in economic self-determination, increased Black control over Black economies, and real power to negotiate in the business world. The struggle for Black capitalism in the new era had begun.
After years of lengthy discussions among themselves and with collaborators such as Malcolm X, many FIGHT members began to follow the work of organizations around the nation, including that of the Reverend Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia, whose Zion Corporation introduced innovative job training programs and community development projects.18 The Zion case was instructive for a number of reasons.19 First and foremost, Sullivan drew on past experiences of successfully combining buy-Black campaigns with boycotts of businesses that would not hire Blacks. More importantly, he made inroads to white investors, namely, First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust, and to local corporations Coca-Cola and Boeing. Philadelphia, which also experienced an early uprising just one month after the Rochester rebellion, built upon national programs from welfare reform to Johnson’s War on Poverty by forming local coalitions and programs that met the needs of Philadelphians.20 While the Black community in Rochester had never been large enough to institute buy-Black campaigns effectively, FIGHT understood it could certainly target white investors.
Along these lines, FIGHT eagerly proposed a company it would call Fightronics, akin to a successful plan implemented in the Watts section of Los Angeles.21 Watts Manufacturing, a “ghetto operation” training the hard-core unemployed, attracted FIGHT’s attention because it “plan[ned] to offer an employee stock option plan allowing them to buy up to 51 per cent of the company.”22 Immediate divesture was a crucial component of FIGHT’s vision for Black capitalism; it meant the Black community controlled the company, rather than the white parent corporation—a demand made by many in the Black Power movement.
While Fightronics did not come to fruition, the organization’s pursuit of collective Black capitalism would ultimately guide their plans. In this way, FIGHT’s struggle against white corporate power was not driven by an aversion to the capitalist system.23 On the contrary, its approach to development mirrored the economic plans of the Nation of Islam, which urged Blacks to “pool their resources and techniques in merchandising, manufacturing, building, maintenance—any field in which unity and harmony will contribute to efficiency and effectiveness.”24 While some historians have viewed the Nation of Islam’s approach to capitalism as “ideological[ly] incongruent” because it “denounce[ed] white capitalism while at the same time demanding Black Capitalism,” they fail to appreciate the nuance—the sharp contrast between individual entrepreneurship and a cooperative capitalism for the sake of community uplift and advancement.25 Taking seriously Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam’s call, FIGHT, too, wanted to “do for self.”26
On the whole, FIGHT was not among those in the Black Power movement who rejected Black capitalism outright. Repeating a longstanding critique of capitalism, there were those who rejected Black capitalism as a means for advancement and uplift. James Forman, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, “denounced those Blacks who supported Black Capitalism” and “described Black nationalist supporters of Black capitalism as ‘Black Power pimps.’ ”27 While some members of FIGHT may have shared such criticism, having come of age amid Rochester’s period of plenty, most members hoped their vision of Black economic empowerment and their pragmatic embrace of capitalist programs would offer the same economic security to the Black community that it had for Rochester’s white population.28 They readily believed that Black capitalism could avoid the ugliness and exploitation inherent in white capitalism. Indeed, Minister Franklin Florence, who was deeply influenced by his relationship with Malcolm X, argued that capitalism could have a human face, a Black face. In one of his many perorations on the subject, he declared, “We are not going to repeat, lockstep, the process that white companies went through. Whites have been so obsessed by profits they have created an insane society. We want economic development, drastic improvement in [our] living standard—but at the same time, our people intend to remain human beings.”29 In order to create a “sane” society, Florence envisioned “an industry where revenue will be turned back into the community for neighborhood improvement and services. Every Black man, woman and child, will benefit.”30 This was, in a way, Black capitalism with Rochester characteristics, an approach FIGHT defended against other models. These new Black freedom practitioners then embraced Black capitalism as a means to gain power, to define their economic rights, and to assert their economic citizenship. Rochester’s stable business environment, relative wealth, progressive reputation, and fear of future rioting made it not only possible but imperative that industry respond to these demands from the Black community.
“Do for Self ” Meets Corporate Responsibility
In order to “do for self,” FIGHT sought allies. In the process, it partnered with the emergent Xerox Corporation. For FIGHT, a joint venture with the white-owned and controlled corporation would offer financial resources, expertise, and credibility in the larger community. For Xerox—Kodak’s poorer cousin in Rochester’s corporate world—a partnership with FIGHT provided important national publicity. Whereas Kodak had paid a heavy price in the media for its failure to embrace the Black movement, Xerox could capitalize on the new momentum generated by Black Power’s interest in economic development. The mutually beneficial relationship lasted for some five years, established one of the nation’s first Black-owned community development corporations, and shaped emerging notions of corporate responsibility.
Xerox began as a family business called Haloid that sold photographic paper to professional photographers and dabbled in emerging photographic technologies.31 In the 1950s, however, Haloid’s early investment in xerographic research began to pay off. After producing the world’s first successful copier machine, the company underwent a face-lift, changing its name to Xerox and increasing its profile in Rochester’s business world by taking the company international. As profits soared, Xerox’s annual giving, and thus its influence, began to rival Eastman Kodak’s legendary patronage. It was at this crucial moment in Rochester’s business history that the city erupted.
FIGHT sought to capitalize on both the turbulent moment and the friendly rivalry developing between Kodak and Xerox. Disillusioned with Kodak, FIGHT turned instead to Xerox to launch FIGHTON.32 Nationally, FIGHTON would mark both an economic and a political breakthrough: it was one of the nation’s first Black-run community development corporations (CDC). Its mission was not only to provide employment opportunities to the hard-core unemployed in Rochester, but also to create ownership opportunities for the Black community. FIGHT argued, “We must construct Black-controlled capital-generating institutions.” Being “producers, not just consumers” was crucial to its effort.33 Indeed, for this reason FIGHTON would become a model for Black Power–inspired CDCs across the United States.34
As community-based, nonprofit organizations seeking to assert local control over local politics and economies, CDCs were among the most notable and visible institutional expressions of the Black Freedom Struggle between 1965 and 1975. Minister Florence claimed for FIGHT a place in the history books, articulating a well-understood truth in Rochester: all power—political, social, and civil—derived from economic power. Florence said, “This is a first for the nation.… FIGHT has introduced to Rochester and the nation Black Capitalism, which means an influence that Blacks have never had before.” He continued: “The profits from FIGHTON will be turned back into FIGHT and the Black community for housing programs, education, rehabilitation, jobs, day care and all those things the Black community needs.”35 It was this sense of community welfare that gained the attention of Xerox CEO Joe Wilson, who would later determine that his company could benefit from a partnership with FIGHT, perhaps economically, but most assuredly politically.
Wilson’s developing interest in FIGHT and in the Black community more generally was an outgrowth of his relationship to the city of Rochester, where he was born and bred. Wilson transcended the traditional corporate executive role in that he invested not just in profits but in the community. His grandfather and namesake, J. C. Wilson, started the Haloid Company with three partners in 1906 and went on to serve as mayor of Rochester in the 1920s, an example of the close relationship between economic power and political power in that city.36 J. R. Wilson, Joe Wilson’s father, took the reins and grew Haloid while raising a family. After graduating from Rochester’s West High School, Joe Wilson stayed close by, attending the University of Rochester. In fact, the longest he ever endeavored to be away from Rochester was the two years he attended Harvard Business School, where he graduated with high distinction.37 Given his family’s history, Wilson was well connected in Rochester. He was smart and driven, but above all else, he constantly sought ways to improve his community. Biographer Charles D. Ellis writes that in addition to his business acumen, “Wilson’s creative commitment to social leadership included innovations in labor relations, commitments to advancing education; distinctive aesthetic style in product design, graphics, and advertising; pioneering public-affairs programming on television; and effective early initiatives in race relations.”38 These traits and Wilson’s firm grounding in Rochester’s soil combined to make him one of the greatest philanthropists in Rochester’s history. In addition to giving money, which he did generously, he also gave of his time. The University of Rochester, acting under Wilson’s guidance as chair of the board of trustees, for example, expanded to include new colleges in business, engineering, and education. Wilson outlined what he believed to be the role of industrial leaders: “Businessmen today … must think of functions beyond profit … must expand their vision beyond the limits of making maximum profits.… Each one must help solve, if he can, the social problems that wash the edges of his island.”39
Yet prior to the 1964 rebellion, Wilson seemed oblivious to Black Rochester or its problems. His engagement with and employment of the city’s Black community began only after the political mobilization fostered by the uprising. Lifelong Xerox employee Horace Becker noted, “At the time of the riots, Xerox actually—not knowingly, but in actual fact, certainly not intentionally, had about, approximately two employees who were Black.”40 FIGHT’s efforts to make Rochester take equal employment seriously led Joe Wilson to drive to FIGHT headquarters late one night to ask, “What do Blacks in Rochester really need?” The answer of course was immediate: “Jobs.”41
Shortly thereafter, FIGHT and Xerox set out to determine what kind of economic development would best serve their respective needs. The first effort resulted in a program called “Step Up.” The plan offered participants—the hard-core unemployed—paid training, tutoring in reading and mathematics, eighteen weeks of instruction in hand tools, and a guaranteed entry-level industry position upon successful completion of the training. FIGHT’s jobs committee provided clear guidelines for what constituted “hard-core unemployment.” Those considered high-risk hard-core had been arrested with confinement three or more times, had been confined as juveniles, and had performed poorly in school, culminating in their dropping out prior to the tenth grade. Those at medium risk had been arrested but without confinement, had dropped out of school after the tenth grade, and had a limited employment history or demonstrated no ability to sustain employment. The jobs committee determined that those deemed low risk had had no police contact, possessed an average academic record, had completed eleventh grade or higher, and had indicated success in previous jobs.42 Though Xerox insisted that it was “not really a new idea, rather, it [was] an extension of our beliefs at Xerox that social responsibility in the communities in which we reside is a central concern,”43 it was FIGHT that articulated what that social responsibility ought to be, insisting that Xerox guarantee Step Up trainees a job after completing the training course. Local and federal training programs offered no such guarantee.
Step Up was only a first step, though. The new project between FIGHT and Xerox—which came to be called FIGHTON—emerged in 1968, allowing FIGHT to showcase the kind of economic self-determination it envisioned (see figure 6.1). Demonstrating that which Joseph Schumpeter termed “creative capitalism,” FIGHT developed a business plan and then investigated Rochester’s industrial climate for an appropriate product.44 With Xerox, FIGHT identified products that local businesses needed and that would require relatively little technical training to produce. They settled on industrial vacuum cleaners, low-voltage electrical transformers, and metal stampings, all of which would ultimately mean cheaper products for existing Rochester industries. FIGHTON, it was hoped, could fill a much-needed niche locally. In that same year, FIGHT secured a $400,000 federal grant from the Department of Labor to supplement training costs. In the true spirit of community development, FIGHTON would be located in a building in the heart of the affected Third Ward, a relic from the days when European migrants to Rochester could find ready work in the city’s booming clothing industry. After a great deal of renovation and updating, training began.45 Once up and running, FIGHT maintained “responsibility for the overall ownership and management with the development of a future plan for the eventual minority ownership by the company employees,” providing recruitment and management of the employees and doing the “necessary job grooming and industrial orientation.”46 In exchange, Xerox agreed to guarantee FIGHTON one million dollars of business in the first two years of operation and to provide training and technical know-how. It was important to both Xerox and FIGHT that this was not a subsidy but rather a business arrangement.
FIGURE 6.1. Bernard Gifford looks over machinery at FIGHTON. Photograph, Rochester, ca. 1970. Xerox Corporation, Xerox Historical Archives, Webster, NY. Credit: Xerox Corporation, Xerox Historical Archives. Used with permission.
The union of FIGHT and Xerox was the product of great effort and planning that produced tangible results for both organizations and for Black capitalism more broadly. Martin Skala, a business and financial correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, would later report with great accuracy that FIGHTON, the ultimate project between the two entities, “was the climax of almost four years of collaboration between the Black self-help organization and Xerox on job training programs for the disadvantaged.”47 Of this union, FIGHT’s Minister Florence pointed out, “It took us a year and a half before we were laughing at the same jokes. You can not wave a magic wand and say ‘Black Capitalism’ and expect it to be as easy as that.”48
Given the deep commitment on both sides, FIGHTON offered more than training and jobs. It would also return an estimated two million dollars in income per year to the community.49 As FIGHTON grew and turned a profit, the proceeds were slated for low-income housing, daycare centers, and additional job training. In answer to capitalism’s critics, FIGHT announced that FIGHTON would be “the beginning of Black Capitalism for the Black man in America. Blacks ha[d] always been the victims of white capitalism—exploited, none of the big revenue turn[ed] back into the underprivileged community for improvement programs.”50 For Florence and others in FIGHT, Black capitalism in this iteration could work because Blacks, not white executives, would both control and own the industry from its inception.
“Despite everyone’s high spirits,” local NPR affiliate WXXI remembered in a 2003 broadcast, “the first couple of years were rough at FIGHTON. The company did not turn a profit. There was a turnover problem; many workers would come in, get training, and leave for better-paying jobs.”51 Though an obstacle for FIGHTON, this “problem” was not without its virtues; the training, whether used at FIGHTON or elsewhere, provided many African Americans with skills to make a decent living. The company also served as an inspiration to many in the Black community. Millicent Hartzog, a FIGHTON employee who continued to work for the company, remembered, “There were no other thriving [Black] businesses in Rochester. We had a lot of small business, mom and pop stores and small businesses, but they didn’t last very long and our business seemed to last; we were profitable, we had a service or product that people needed.”52 Darryl Porter recalled, “When we heard that we were going to have our own company and they were going to be able to hire us, and we didn’t have to worry about being discriminated when we got to the door, I mean, it was, it was overwhelming joy.”53 While FIGHTON had its share of struggles, it inspired the Black community (see figure 6.2).
FIGURE 6.2. FIGHTON trainee at a machine. Photograph, Rochester, ca. 1970. Xerox Corporation, Xerox Historical Archives, Webster, NY. Credit: Xerox Corporation, Xerox Historical Archives. Used with permission.
FIGHT’s version of Black capitalism went a step further than job creation, Black ownership, and community pride. The community organization approached Black capitalism as a covenant, a reciprocal relationship between FIGHTON and the community, binding one to the other for their mutual benefit. As the FIGHT organization approached its fifth annual convention, Florence sought to capitalize on the benefits of turning out large numbers of FIGHT supporters. The greater the show of support at the convention, the greater the media coverage would be. And as in the past, media coverage often spelled increased power for the FIGHT organization. Minister Florence laid down the gauntlet to FIGHTON employees. In order to be able to showcase its strength before the nation, Florence counseled that “staff should be pushed hard for the Convention.” He continued: “Every employee at FIGHTON must produce at least one relative.… Every employee of FIGHTON must have friends signed up on credentials for the Convention. The success of our people making a good showing will depend on [this].”54 Black capitalism, FIGHT style, did not allow an employee to do his/her job and then return home. Each employee was expected to reach back into the community and bring another along; it was indeed a cooperative venture.
While FIGHT’s motivation for such a project is evident, it is less obvious why Xerox would invest such time and money. A combination of factors is likely responsible. First, many in FIGHT and in Rochester credit Joe Wilson’s interest and integrity. Both Florence and Becker, who worked countless hours together, noted his determination to see FIGHTON through. It seems, however, that Wilson was not being entirely magnanimous. The unusual partnership Wilson forged with FIGHTON brought substantial national acclaim to Xerox for its role in reforming corporate social responsibility (CSR). The term, which came into popular parlance in the 1970s, took on new meaning in the context of Black Power.55 Though originally a way to avoid governmental regulation, voluntary CSR came to be seen as a way to improve industry’s bottom line. Companies that had once enjoyed reputations for generous giving were called to task for ignoring Black communities. As a result, Black neighborhoods and organizations became a popular target for corporate giving. This shift in CSR made great fodder for news outlets trying to interpret Black Power to the masses. Various media regularly featured stories on FIGHTON, and Xerox provided much to report. In a New York Times piece, a Xerox executive offered in the racially coded language so popular in the Jim Crow North, “Before we were made aware of the deprivation of the Negroes, we asked Negroes to take the same test as whites … but that was not a fair measure of their ability because of the lack of opportunities, family background, [and] cultural deprivation.”56 The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle took up the mantle, reporting, “The program of help for the disadvantaged is part of ‘[Xerox’s] broader commitment’ to seek actively solutions to social programs. ‘We cannot grant equality or dignity,’ the [Xerox] officials said, ‘but we can provide opportunity for equality and be understanding of the different means through which men seek dignity.’ ”57 This was indeed the language of Black Power.
Smooth Honky Talk
Not to be outdone by Xerox and FIGHT, Kodak searched for ways to capitalize on local calls for Black economic development. If the FIGHT-Xerox program was a new venture in communal Black capitalism, then Kodak provided, in many ways, its antithesis. Kodak’s version encouraged private enterprise and entrepreneurship; it rewarded African Americans who adopted a capitalist ethos rather than a cooperative spirit. The company’s various attempts to foster Black capitalism then prompted a showdown to determine who would articulate its meaning and what that meaning might be. Kodak attempted to co-opt FIGHT on multiple occasions. When that proved unsuccessful, the company excluded the Black Power organization from its plans, opting instead to work with the Urban League.
In the midst of the 1966–1967 FIGHT-Kodak controversy, both entities had been persuaded to participate in Rochester Jobs Incorporated (RJI), which kept alive some hopes that Kodak and FIGHT might successfully work together. When Kodak set out to conquer Black capitalism, it hoped to bring FIGHT into its fold. After bowing to FIGHT’s demands for increased jobs and training, Kodak met with the organization to discuss the potential for a joint business venture, possibly Fightronics, FIGHT’s ill-fated proposal. When Kodak quickly rejected the plan because it called for immediate Black ownership, discussions ceased. Yet when officials announced “the Kodak plan” to the national chamber of commerce, they disingenuously touted their several meetings with “Negro leaders” as evidence of Black collaboration.58 In rejecting FIGHT’s input and creating a blueprint without its counsel, Kodak officials consciously sought to define Black capitalism in a way that precluded Black Power.
Nonetheless, Kodak continued with a plan to develop four potential Black businesses; the most developed of these—described sarcastically by Xerox’s Horace Becker—drew the ire of FIGHT leaders:
It was a complete factory to make wooden pallets—“high technology.” They had where you buy the wood, how you cut it, how many nails you drive in each piece, how long it will take to build the pallet and the number of people who need pallets, a list of all the customers, and its high technology. You see, you have to hit the nail on the end with the big head on it, and when you’re going through the nails, you find some have the head on the wrong side and so you have to turn those over—but this was a complete book.… Franklin [Florence], the first time he sees it, it’s all complete. Well, he went through the roof. And the next couple of meetings I had with him, all he did was carry on about those bastards.59
Florence’s anger would have been recognizable throughout Black Power circles nationally; he understood that programs developed without community input failed precisely because “they do not mobilize the pride and yearning for self-determination which is the only thing that will really energize the ghettoes.”60 Black capitalism—FIGHT style—required Black investment at the ground level. That Kodak wished to provide—in typical paternal fashion—an unskilled, nontechnical industry to the Black community without input from that community was beyond the pale. Florence condemned it in the gendered language so typical of the era: “You are emasculating the Black community.”61 While “the Kodak plan” made waves in Congress, it went nowhere in Rochester. Without FIGHT’s support and interest, Kodak’s so-called community development corporation went by the wayside.
Not to be deterred, Kodak did not completely abandon Black capitalism. In the fall of 1967, Kodak executives approached the local chamber of commerce to form the Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation (RBOC) “to help inner city residents start, manage and own their own businesses.”62 Like RJI before it, RBOC was designed as a community project. It would eventually include twenty-two trustees hailing from myriad industries headquartered in Rochester: Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, to name but a few. The elite group also included managing partners of major investment and accounting firms: Price Waterhouse, Arthur Andersen, and Pete Merritt. But in forming RBOC, “a decision was made to exclude representatives of the FIGHT organization on the ground that the new corporation should be ‘business based.’ ”63 While it aided select members of the Black community, RBOC was not conceptualized to provide the kind of community uplift or self-determination that FIGHT envisioned. A case study of RBOC later reported that its members felt “the project would not have got going so fast had it been forced to negotiate complex problems of community representation and ownership.”64 Understandably, FIGHT’s response to RBOC was mixed. Though it would not directly attack RBOC as a tool of the establishment, FIGHT rejected this limited, corporate version of Black capitalism.65
RBOC was not without purpose, however. The program’s first goal was to prevent future uprisings by offering a handful of African Americans a visible and economic stake in the community, while preserving Kodak’s dominance in Rochester. In maintaining the status quo, RBOC would serve as an appropriate model for Richard Nixon’s Office of Minority Business Enterprise down the line. To accomplish the first goal, RBOC took would-be entrepreneurs with technical skills and provided them with business training. Clarence Ingram, RBOC’s general manager for nearly twenty years, explained one set of limitations a new businessman might face: “They can fix your car. Sure they’ll tune it up real good, give you a nice job, but he’d never owned that place before. He didn’t realize that there’s overhead.”66 RBOC, then, provided new (or expanding) Black businesses—typically involving no more than a dozen employees—grants and loans as well as instruction in bidding for jobs, creating budgets, maintaining payroll, purchasing, and marketing. As interest in RBOC grew, its instructors included volunteers from local universities and businesses, many who believed in “riot prevention.” Ingram theorized that a number of RBOC beneficiaries would be unable to repay their loans: “But at that time, I guess, the community, the larger community—now, I’m thinking, they looked at which is cheaper—let them tear up the city or we let them waste this little money. That’s a small price to pay.”67
Through RBOC, Kodak attempted to launch a second venture, its own Black company, in conjunction with the Urban League. Camura, as it was to be called, was presented to the Urban League as a ready-made Black business to repair Kodak cameras. While Kodak would oversee the processing, diagnoses, and return of the equipment, Camura employees would make the repairs. As with Kodak’s wooden pallet proposal to FIGHT, Camura was delivered to the Urban League as a fait accompli. Unlike FIGHT however, the Urban League was prepared to enter into a predetermined business venture with Kodak. Its associate director announced, “The league has been looking for ways to help inner city people develop businesses and this looks like a good possibility.”68 Having been pegged by many in the Black community as a conservative middle-class organization, the Urban League was interested in divorcing itself from that stigma. Camura seemed an ideal and simple solution. The Urban League signed onto Kodak’s program as one of many it hoped would repair its reputation in the Black community. With funding from the national On-the-Job Training program, the League set out to mirror FIGHT’s efforts to train and employ the hard-core unemployed. Though not a mom-and-pop shop, Camura underwhelmed observers by employing just ten people in its first year of operation. Aware of the small impact the company was making, the Urban League defended “its economic and social significance,” which “far outweigh[ed] the actual employment.”69
The Urban League attempted optimism, citing Kodak’s promise that eventual ownership of the company would be turned over to “the president and/or workers so that they will own it outright,” but these promises failed to materialize.70 By 1970, the Urban League stopped approving On-the-Job Training contracts for Camura and withdrew its support for the company, given a host of problems. A string of Camura trainees quit the program amid charges of exploitation. When the Urban League confronted Camura’s manager, he “stated that his preference was for white employees because they understood that ‘a business had to grow.’ He further stated that … Black employees had given him the most trouble as far as absenteeism and production and persistently asking for raises.” Despite Camura’s social mission, the manager felt he could not take chances with “mediocre employees” lest his business fail. When reminded that he was reimbursed for training and providing jobs to this population, he replied, “It wasn’t worth it.”71 To its credit, the Urban League withdrew support from Camura permanently. As Minister Florence anticipated, Black capitalism controlled by white capital could never benefit the Black community.
Camura, however, was just one business developed with funding from RBOC, and Kodak just one contributor. Despite its reliance on Kodak money, there were several people deeply and personally invested in RBOC’s success. Ingram recalled how difficult it was to convince people of RBOC’s sincerity and purpose. “The men in the streets—now I’m talkin’ ’bout the brothers,” he began, “they would say ‘Ah, that’s not going to do anything, that’s another game they’re gonna run on you.’ So to prove that they were wrong, everybody that came into the [RBOC] office and wanted some help, they got it. But it was only—we called ’em apartheid businesses: grocery stores, dry cleaners, gas stations, garages,—you know, that kind of thing.”72 In time, RBOC came to support larger businesses: a heating and cooling company, a local radio station, and a florist, all of which, much to Ingram’s joy, continued to exist into the new century.
For Kodak’s purposes, RBOC and business ventures such as Camura affirmed the company as a trendsetter in the business world. Whether these programs were successfully implemented and served the populations they intended was secondary to the business of business. Kodak continued to funnel money to RBOC without concern for whether the programs could or would be successful. It simply mattered that Kodak would have ultimate say and top billing in RBOC’s publicity and programming.73 Kodak could claim that its project prevented further rioting and aided in job creation, all while maintaining its hegemony in the community. Black capitalism Kodak style, its executives claimed, was successful.
As the 1960s came to an end and Rochester faced the new decade, both the Urban League and FIGHT struggled to advance their ideological and economic agendas while simultaneously negotiating daily organizational operations. They had provided the nation with influential models of, and a voice for, Black capitalism. FIGHTON symbolized a local approach to communal Black economic development, rejecting versions of Black capitalism championed by Kodak and the Nixon administration. The ongoing struggle between community, capital, and the state to define the purpose and path of Black capitalism, however, proved consequential to both Black self-determination and community development. Writing in 1971, Geoffrey Faux noted, “Since 1967, very little money has been made available for new urban programs, particularly for those in conflict with deliberate policy decisions made by both the Johnson and Nixon administrations to discourage neighborhood-controlled urban projects.”74 This contest to define Black capitalism continued to be fought at the federal level for years with the introduction of the Community Self-Determination Act of 1968 and its revision, the Community Corporation Act of 1970.75 In an effort to reign in criticisms like Faux’s and reestablish the perception that Washington supported Black business, these two pieces of legislation wound their way through the system. Though ultimately unsuccessful, they demonstrated the ongoing contest for the soul of Black capitalism.
Minister Florence characteristically refused to remain silent about something so near and dear to the Black community. He did not favor the federal Community Self-Determination Act of 1968, precisely because he valued community determination, which could not be legislated by the government. For Florence, it was a right to be asserted, demanded even, by the community itself. Invited to speak at a symposium on community self-determination on “A New Role for Private Enterprise,” Minister Florence used the platform to rail against the “smooth honky talk” and co-optation implicit in the legislation.76 He declared the act a “ ‘hypocritical piece of legislation,’ and suggested that it be ‘torn up, because you can’t start wrong and end right.’ He held that the legislation would set up ‘Mickey Mouse’ types of organizations, instead of giving control to the local leaders responsive to ghetto needs.” Scratching notes on a pad from his hotel room, Florence prepared to prevent the legislation from going forward; he imparted what he had learned in Rochester: “The problem of the ghetto is powerlessness; if the people there don’t have the power to negotiate for themselves, there will be no economic development.”77 Back in Rochester, Florence triumphantly reported to his steering committee, “National organizations are floundering, as opposed to [the] community organization which is growing stronger and has more influence today on State and National Politics than all the National Organizations with all their white money put together.”78 Both bills, the Self-Determination Act and the Community Corporation Act, were defeated.
In Rochester, however, the multiple versions of Black capitalism coexisted for some time. RBOC funded minority entrepreneurship for more than twenty years, while ownership of FIGHTON was eventually sold to an African American, Matthew Augustine. Under his directorship, FIGHTON continues to exist under the name Eltrex, providing stock options, training, and employment to Rochester’s hard-core unemployed. In 2009, Robert Weems asked, “What can (and should) be done to substantively improve the plight of Black business in America?”79 The answer may well lie in Rochester’s history.