Brandon K. Winford
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178257
- eISBN:
- 9780813178264
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178257.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
This work combines black business and civil rights history to explain how economic concerns shaped the goals and objectives of the black freedom struggle. Brandon K. Winford examines the “black ...
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This work combines black business and civil rights history to explain how economic concerns shaped the goals and objectives of the black freedom struggle. Brandon K. Winford examines the “black business activism” of banker and civil rights lawyer John Hervey Wheeler (1908–1978). Born on the campus of Kittrell College in Vance County, North Carolina, he came of age in Jim Crow Atlanta, Georgia, where his father became an executive with the world-renowned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (NC Mutual). As president of Mechanics and Farmers Bank (M&F Bank), located on Durham’s “Black Wall Street,” Wheeler became the Tar Heel State’s most influential black power broker and among the top civil rights figures in the South.
Winford places Wheeler at the center of his narrative to understand how black business leaders tackled civil rights while continuously pointing to the economy’s larger significance for the success and advancement of the postwar New South. In this way, Wheeler articulated a bold vision of regional prosperity, grounded in full citizenship and economic power for black people. He reminded the white South that its future was inextricably linked to the plight of black southerners. He spent his entire career trying to fulfill these ideals through his institutional and organizational affiliations, as part and parcel of his civil rights agenda.
Winford draws on previously unexamined primary and secondary sources, including newspapers, business records, FBI reports, personal papers, financial statements, presidential files, legal documents, oral histories, and organizational and institutional records.Less
This work combines black business and civil rights history to explain how economic concerns shaped the goals and objectives of the black freedom struggle. Brandon K. Winford examines the “black business activism” of banker and civil rights lawyer John Hervey Wheeler (1908–1978). Born on the campus of Kittrell College in Vance County, North Carolina, he came of age in Jim Crow Atlanta, Georgia, where his father became an executive with the world-renowned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (NC Mutual). As president of Mechanics and Farmers Bank (M&F Bank), located on Durham’s “Black Wall Street,” Wheeler became the Tar Heel State’s most influential black power broker and among the top civil rights figures in the South.
Winford places Wheeler at the center of his narrative to understand how black business leaders tackled civil rights while continuously pointing to the economy’s larger significance for the success and advancement of the postwar New South. In this way, Wheeler articulated a bold vision of regional prosperity, grounded in full citizenship and economic power for black people. He reminded the white South that its future was inextricably linked to the plight of black southerners. He spent his entire career trying to fulfill these ideals through his institutional and organizational affiliations, as part and parcel of his civil rights agenda.
Winford draws on previously unexamined primary and secondary sources, including newspapers, business records, FBI reports, personal papers, financial statements, presidential files, legal documents, oral histories, and organizational and institutional records.
Brandon K. Winford
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178257
- eISBN:
- 9780813178264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178257.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
Chapter 1 examines the Wheeler family in the decades after emancipation and highlights their educational accomplishments, which put them on a path toward middle-class respectability in the early part ...
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Chapter 1 examines the Wheeler family in the decades after emancipation and highlights their educational accomplishments, which put them on a path toward middle-class respectability in the early part of the twentieth century. It underscores how their middle-class status and economic independence provided the Wheeler children with more of a level playing field when compared to the black masses, or as much as possible given the limitations of the Jim Crow South. Moreover, it argues that the ideological underpinnings of the industrial “New South” at the end of the nineteenth century offered black business leaders a similar vision of racial uplift through economic independence as a way to reclaim full citizenship. This first chapter sets the stage for understanding the close proximity Wheeler had to black business from an early age—the result of his father becoming an executive with NC Mutual—and why he chose a career in banking.Less
Chapter 1 examines the Wheeler family in the decades after emancipation and highlights their educational accomplishments, which put them on a path toward middle-class respectability in the early part of the twentieth century. It underscores how their middle-class status and economic independence provided the Wheeler children with more of a level playing field when compared to the black masses, or as much as possible given the limitations of the Jim Crow South. Moreover, it argues that the ideological underpinnings of the industrial “New South” at the end of the nineteenth century offered black business leaders a similar vision of racial uplift through economic independence as a way to reclaim full citizenship. This first chapter sets the stage for understanding the close proximity Wheeler had to black business from an early age—the result of his father becoming an executive with NC Mutual—and why he chose a career in banking.
Brandon K. Winford
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178257
- eISBN:
- 9780813178264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178257.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
The introduction begins with John Hervey Wheeler’s articulation of New South prosperity in the pages of the Tarheel Banker just as World War II came to an end. His appeal to southern white bankers ...
More
The introduction begins with John Hervey Wheeler’s articulation of New South prosperity in the pages of the Tarheel Banker just as World War II came to an end. His appeal to southern white bankers outlines how and why he believed it was his responsibility as a black banker to see that the South would advance economically during the postwar period. The introduction contextualizes Wheeler’s entrée into black business and explains his journey to becoming one of the most prominent black business leaders in the United States between the 1950s and 1970s. The introduction fittingly highlights Wheeler’s motto, “The battle for freedom begins every morning,” which underscores how he used his social, political, legal, and economic expertise to fight for racial and economic justice for black people during the mid-twentieth-century South.Less
The introduction begins with John Hervey Wheeler’s articulation of New South prosperity in the pages of the Tarheel Banker just as World War II came to an end. His appeal to southern white bankers outlines how and why he believed it was his responsibility as a black banker to see that the South would advance economically during the postwar period. The introduction contextualizes Wheeler’s entrée into black business and explains his journey to becoming one of the most prominent black business leaders in the United States between the 1950s and 1970s. The introduction fittingly highlights Wheeler’s motto, “The battle for freedom begins every morning,” which underscores how he used his social, political, legal, and economic expertise to fight for racial and economic justice for black people during the mid-twentieth-century South.
