Search Results

Determining the contours of Anthony Overton’s early life, especially between his sixteenth and thirty-first birthdays, has been complicated by a long-standing dissemination of misinformation. This chapter discusses how much of the literature (including encyclopedia entries, book chapters, newspaper articles, and obituaries) portrays him as someone who experienced success in a wide variety of areas. However, a fact check of Overton’s early life reveals that he experienced considerable failure and disappointment. The evidence suggests that Overton, later in life, created many of the long-standing myths regarding his formative years. Also, it is clear that the young Overton ultimately benefited from his exposure to two mentors: his father Anthony Overton Sr. and Booker T. Washington.

This chapter examines how Anthony Overton dramatically diversified his financial interests during the 1920s. In 1922, Anthony Overton assumed the presidency of Chicago’s Douglass National Bank (the second black-owned bank to receive a national charter). Two years later, Overton started the Chicago-based Victory Life Insurance Company. In 1927, Victory Life became the only black-owned insurance company granted the right to conduct business in New York State. Following this business coup, Overton, in some circles, became regarded as “the merchant prince of his race.” To further enhance his growing status as a business magnate during the 1920s, Overton built two major commercial structures in the heart of black Chicago’s commercial district (the Overton Building and the Chicago Bee Building).

The early1940s witnessed a rehabilitation of Anthony Overton’s public image. Thus, at the time of his death in 1946, much of the negativity associated with the early 1930s had dissipated. Anthony Overton’s son, Everett, presided over the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company from 1946 until his own death in 1960. Everett’s son, Anthony Overton III, ran the company from 1960 until 1983 (when Overton Hygienic closed). Shortly after the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company disappeared from the landscape of US business, a consortium of Chicagoans began a campaign to honor the legacy of the company’s founder, Anthony Overton. Their efforts ultimately resulted in the physical restoration of the Overton Building and the Chicago Bee Building, as well as their designation as municipal landmarks.

In late 1929, Anthony Overton was perceived to be the nation’s most successful black businessman. Yet, by the mid-1930s, the public’s perception of Overton had shifted dramatically. The Great Depression’s negative impact on African American real estate values negatively impacted the profitability of both the Douglass National Bank and the Victory Life Insurance Company. Also, disclosure of Overton’s long-standing, unauthorized funneling of Victory Life funds into Douglass National resulted in his ouster as president of Victory Life. Moreover, despite creative efforts to keep it afloat, the Douglass National Bank ultimately became a casualty of the Depression. In the end, Anthony Overton retained control of the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company and the Chicago Bee newspaper but had lost the honorific moniker “the Merchant Prince of his Race.”

This introduction discusses the methodology employed to construct this biography of Anthony Overton and provides an overview of how the book is chronologically and thematically organized. It also examines Anthony Overton’s enigmatic personality. Notwithstanding his tendency to periodically exaggerate his early life accomplishments, Overton was not a braggart. In fact, he was widely perceived to be a low-key and unassuming individual. Moreover, unlike many successful business people owning fine cars and homes; Overton, during the peak of his commercial success, did not own an automobile and lived in his married children’s spare bedrooms. Finally, although he was a conservative disciple of Booker T. Washington, Overton possessed (for the times) a fairly progressive attitude regarding women’s “proper” role.

This chapter discusses how Anthony Overton’s relocation to Chicago in 1911 proved to be one of the wisest moves of his life. Within a short period of time, the once frustrated entrepreneur established an important business niche in one of America’s leading cities. Yet Anthony Overton’s first years in Chicago were not without challenges. Within a year after his arrival, the sudden death of his wife, Clara, forced Overton to reorient both his personal and business affairs. He subsequently began to more fully incorporate his daughters and other attractive young females as the “public face” of his personal care products company. This maneuver helped increase the Overton-Hygienic Manufacturing Company’s prominence in an industry then dominated by his primary competitors, Annie Turnbo-Malone and Madam C. J. Walker.

In 1916, Anthony Overton established the Half-Century Magazine as a venue to more effectively market Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company products. To deflect charges of shameless self-promotion, Overton put forward a female employee as the owner, editor, and public face of this women-oriented periodical. Overton’s skullduggery included submitting anonymous editorials and publishing articles under a pseudonym (McAdoo Baker) to convey his beliefs regarding business enterprise, racial identity, and personal conduct. Above and beyond Overton’s deception, the Half-Century created a commercial environment where black female readers were not exposed to racially insulting personal care products ads. This advertising policy, along with Half-Century’s sponsorship of a contest extolling the beauty of African American women, enhanced Overton-Hygienic’s position in the marketplace.

This chapter examines the “contested terrain” associated with the founding of Chicago’s Douglass National Bank in 1921. Anthony Overton, one of history’s most prominent African American entrepreneurs, is widely regarded as the founder of the second national bank organized by African Americans. Yet, the evidence indicates that this distinction should go to Pearl W. Chavers, a relatively obscure early twentieth-century black business person. The story of Anthony Overton’s ascent and P.W. Chavers’ descent in the Douglass National Bank’s administrative hierarchy reveals the power of money and influence. It also illuminates the nuances of both group and individual entrepreneur-based strategies for African American economic development.

This chapter examines black business activities in Chicago in the 1920s. Robert S. Abbott, Jesse Binga, and Anthony Overton dominated the business activities of the Black Metropolis with their control over finance and information like no others in their community and very much like the business titans found throughout other major Chicago economic enclaves. Business was national king at this time and their collective presence provided a significant part of the foundation of making the Black Metropolis a reality. The economic influence of the 1920s built to such a crescendo that other interests and activities were virtually submerged to it as an epicenter. In fact, one internal memorandum of the NAACP concluded the following: “There are so many diversified interests in Chicago that the N.A.A.C.P. really suffers greatly from indifference on the part of the people.” These diversified interests were related to economics and the emergence of a consumers'society—working for extra money from which to increase spending and buying; spending for recreation and leisure rather than just for necessity; buying property, automobiles, and the new technological devices such as the refrigerator and record player; and investing in oil exploration, stocks, bonds, and real estate.

This chapter examines the ways in which the portrait was utilized as a tool for social change as it presented the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and consciousness of Chicago’s black entrepreneurs and became a distinctive form of cultural capital. Positioning themselves as models for emulation, Robert S. Abbott, Jesse Binga, and Anthony Overton generated public campaigns that visualized the dignity, style, and progressiveness essential to the conceptualization of the New Negro. They worked to establish an ethic of representation that countered the unconscionable effacement of civil rights. By patronizing African American artists and publishing their portraits in Chicago’s burgeoning black press, they lent their likenesses toward the formation of a modern collective black identity.

This chapter surveys the evolution of African American-owned businesses in Chicago from the mid-to-late nineteenth century until the early twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, the most successful black entrepreneurs, such as tailor John Jones and caterer Charles H. Smiley, primarily served white clients. By the early twentieth century, as Chicago’s African American population grew, a new breed of black entrepreneur emerged. Even before the World War One “Great Migration,” persons such as newspaper editor Robert Abbott, real estate professional and banker Jesse Binga and personal care products manufacturer Anthony Overton saw the enormous profit potential associated with catering to the needs of the city’s burgeoning “Black Belt.”

From its inception the African American press was a major voice in the African American struggle against violence and discrimination. The unquestioned dean of the black press was Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender. This chapter examines two aspects of Abbott’s life. First, it analyzes how Abbott developed and implemented his vision for building a successful business in an environment hostile to black entrepreneurial success. In doing so he helped lay the foundation of the Chicago network of mutually supporting black business people and demonstrated through his actions their role in the community. Second it illustrates how, through the Defender, Abbott and his paper served as an inspirational and intellectual leader in African American’s struggle for rights in Chicago and throughout the United States.