The primary goal of some groups was to provide funds for members to buy or build homes and to cope with emergencies, while others were specifically directed toward providing funds for business development. This concern for economic progress stemmed from a tradition already in place before Emancipation. During the slavery period, free blacks had been encouraged by the leading people of their communities to go into business. Martin Delaney, a leader in the 1850s, informed his fellow blacks, "If a knowledge of all the various business enterprises, trades, professions, and sciences is necessary for the elevation of the white, a knowledge of them is also necessary for the elevation of the colored man; and he cannot be elevated without them."

After slavery, this call to cooperative action was taken up by the prominent educator Booker T. Washington. Throughout the early years of this century, Washington urged blacks to create a special niche for themselves in the American economy. As director of the Tuskegee Institute, the outstanding educational center in Alabama, he became the ...

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