“Fighting Their Own Economic Battles”: Saint Charles Lockett, Ethnic Enterprizes, and the Challenges of Black Capitalism in 1970s Milwaukee

Abstract

This article examines African American businesswoman Saint Charles Lockett, a self-proclaimed feminist and Ethnic Enterprizes, her company. Established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1970 at the height of deindustrialization and Black Power, as well as the dawn of neoliberalism, Ethnic Enterprizes hired mothers who received welfare benefits. Its goal was to be a “gateway to gainful employment.” After receiving numerous accolades, Lockett and Ethnic Enterprizes became mired in controversy because of its inability to pay its mother workforce more than the minimum wage. This led to its demise. Lockett and her firm deserve serious analysis because they provide an opportunity to examine a myriad of issues related to black working women, economic development, and the challenges of black capitalism in the urban industrial Midwest. Ethnic Enterprizes was Lockett’s response to black women’s exclusion from the industrial labor force, a route to black economic community development, and a vision for what could be possible for black working women. While examining the story of Saint Charles Lockett and Ethnic Enterprizes highlights the difficulties of excavating the voices of black working women who have been marginalized in the urban, industrial landscape, it also provides opportunities for theorizing about ways to magnify their voices in the historical record.

Keywords::

• Black capitalism
• black power
• labor
• precarity
• working-class women

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the anonymous reviewers, Dr. Tiffany Florvil, members of the North East Freedom North Studies Writing Group and participants at the 2014 Business History Conference who provided comments on previous drafts of this article.

About the Author

Crystal M. Moten is Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on African American women’s civil activism, specifically the economic dimensions of their 20th century resistance strategies. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her scholarship and teaching.

Notes

Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso, 2009). See also, Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).

Butler, Frames of War, 25–26.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ethnic Enterprizes was a part of Wisconsin’s Work Incentive Program (WIN), which came about after the 1967 reforms to the national Social Security Act. This program created a national Work Incentive Program, which required mothers who received welfare benefits to work. According to Premilla Nadasen and Marisa Chappel, who write about the history of WIN, the program “required states to refer a portion of their AFDC population with school-age children to work programs and, as an incentive to enter the labor market, allowed recipients to keep the first $30 of their wages and one-third of anything beyond that without losing benefits.” Premilla Nadesen, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and Marisa Chappell, Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, 1935–1966 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 43. Social workers referred AFDC recipients to Ethnic Enterprizes for employment.

Several scholars have characterized this debate in their work on Black Power. See: Jeffery Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992); Robert Weems and Lewis A. Randolph, Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the 20th Century (New York: NYU Press, 2009). See also: Juliet E.K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998) and Robert E. Weems, Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925–1985 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).

The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism and Corporate Responsibility on Postwar America, edited by Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2012).

Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 230.

Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2009, 1985).

Crystal Moten, “‘Kept Right on Fightin … ’: African American Working Women’s Economic Activism in Civil Rights Era Milwaukee,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 2, no. 1 (2016).

“This Prize Came Hard: Saint Fought Sexism, Racism,” Milwaukee Star Times, April 5, 1973.

Paul Geib refers to this period as the “late, great Migration.” Paul Geib, “From Mississippi to Milwaukee: A Case Study of Southern Black Migration to Milwaukee, 1940–1970,” The Journal of Negro History 83, no. 4 (Autumn, 1998): 231.

Leo Swift as quoted in “From Mississippi to Milwaukee,” ibid., 233.

Data for each decade between 1950 and 1970 is as follows: 1950: 79.4%; 1960: 70.2%; 1970: 74.1%. ibid., 242.

Data for Black women employed in the service occupations for each decade between 1950 and 1970 is as follows: 1950: 51.8%; 1960: 48.3%; 1970: 38%. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, Number of Inhabitants, General and Detailed Characteristics of the Population Part 49, 51 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1952, 1963, 1973).

Data for Black women employed in manufacturing occupations for each decade between 1950 and 1970 is as follows: 1950: 30%; 1960: 23.7%; 1970: 23%. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, Number of Inhabitants, General and Detailed Characteristics of the Population Part 49, 51 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1952, 1963, 1973).

Data for Black women employed in clerical positions in each decade between 1950 and 1970 is as follows: 1950: 5.1%; 1960: 7.4%; 1970: 22%. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, Number of Inhabitants, General and Detailed Characteristics of the Population Part 49, 51 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1952, 1963, 1973).

Women’s Bureau, “Women Private Household Workers Fact Sheet” (United States Department of Labor, May 1970).

African American female clerical workers earned slightly less. In Milwaukee, the median earnings in 1969 for this group were $3,502. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, Volume 1: Part 51 Wisconsin, Table 93, Occupations and Earnings of the Negro Population for Areas and Places: 1970, 51–319.

Joe Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Urban Industrial Proletariat (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 196–225.

Patrick Jones, Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 42.

Ibid.

For more on the decline of the industrial Midwest, see the following rustbelt literature: Steven High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969–1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003). Also see, Thomas Sugrue for a treatment on the affect of deindustrialization on urban poverty: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

“This Prize Came Hard.”

Marc Levine, “The Economic State of Milwaukee’s Inner City: 1970–2000,” University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Center for Economic Development, 2002.

Ibid., 15.

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development (CED) published a report that examined the “Economic State of Milwaukee’s Inner City from 1970–2000.” This report put both inner city unemployment and poverty rates in stark relief. The CED report asserts that the unemployment rate does not paint a complete picture of inner city residents’ employment situation. A better way to understand the absence of work in the inner city, according to the report, is to analyze “labor force exclusion.” Those excluded from participating in the labor force included everyone 16 or older who were either unemployed or not in the labor force. Those not in the labor force could include people in school, in prison, or who had stopped looking for work—populations that unemployment data would not capture. When these more inclusive statistics are considered, an unfortunate reality is illuminated: inner city labor force exclusion exceeded the entire city as a whole. Levine, “The Economic State of Milwaukee’s Inner City:1970–2000,” 15.

Ibid., 17. The fact that more inner city residents were excluded from the labor force is not surprising because it is typical that poor and low-income people tend to reside in the inner city.

Ibid., 18.

Trotter, Black Milwaukee, 175–88.

Jane Collins and Victoria Mayer, Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low Wage Labor Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Levine, “The Economic State of Milwaukee’s Inner City:1970–2000,” 25.

Ibid., 26.

Ibid., 27.

“This Prize Came Hard.”

“Woman Power Can Move Anything: All Girl Plant Only Hires Welfare Moms,” Ebony (December 1970).

“This Prize Came Hard.”

Enobong Branch, Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 71–96.

Crystal Moten, “‘Kept Right on Fightin.’”

“This Prize Came Hard.”

Ibid.

Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 227.

Jones, Selma of the North, 143–68.

President Richard Nixon, as quoted in Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 228.

Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, 230.

Ibid.

Andrew Witt, The Black Panthers in the Midwest: The Community Programs and Services of the Black Panther Party in Milwaukee, 1966–1977 (New York: Routledge, 2013).

“Dr. King Said to Support Milwaukee Demonstration,” The Chicago Defender, September 23, 1967. Jones, Selma of the North, 169–209.

Edward Blackwell, “Slow Start Overcome, ‘Breadbasket’ Rolling,” The Milwaukee Journal, February 7, 1971; “Job Group Will Aim at Food Firms Here,” The Milwaukee Journal, August 30, 1967.

“This Prize Came Hard.”

Dorothy Austin, “Jobs to Fit My People,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, December 29, 1972; “Woman Power Can Move Anything,” 89–96.

“Woman Power Can Move Anything,” 91.

Ibid., 94.

Ibid. While the photo spread does illustrate the inside of the factory, it should be noted that these images were far from candid.

Dorothy Austin, “Jobs to Fit My People,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, December 29, 1972; Edward H. Blackwell, “Ripped by Groppi, Firm Lays Off 102,” The Milwaukee Journal August 7, 1974; “Woman Power Can Move Anything,” 89–96.

Jean Otto, “She Considers Working a Prize,” The Milwaukee Journal, July 30, 1970.

Ibid.; and “Woman Power Can Move Anything,” 89–96. See, Janelle S. Taylor, Linda L. Layne, and Danielle Wozniak, Consuming Motherhood (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).

“This Prize Came Hard.”

Ibid.

Ibid.

“Woman Power Can Move Anything”; Jean Otto, “She Considers Working a Prize,” The Milwaukee Journal, July 30, 1970; “This Prize Came Hard.”

“Saint Charles Lockett Production Executive,” New Pittsburgh Courier, January 19, 1980.

“Dinner for Business Clients,” The Milwaukee Journal, November 30, 1976.

Evelyn Newman, “For You Black Woman’s Exec Director Visits City,” Atlanta Daily World, July 8, 1979; “Saint Charles Lockett Production Executive”; “Black Woman Series Begins Third Year of Telecasts,” Chicago Metro News, January 26, 1980.

Newman, “For You Black Woman’s Exec Director Visits City.”

“Saint Charles Lockett Production Executive.”

By the mid-1960s, the focus of the black freedom struggle began to shift. While African Americans have always considered the struggle for economic justice a crucial part of civil rights, direct action campaigns that centered on voting rights and desegregation have eclipsed many local struggles for economic justice. With the advent of the Poor People’s Campaign and the Welfare Rights Movement, economic injustice began to come back to the forefront in public demonstrations. Juliet Walker asserts that the economic focus of the black freedom struggle changed in the 1960s (The History of Black Business, 272). Historians who have written extensively on the Welfare Rights Movement have illustrated the ways in which black women both precipitated and participated in this change of focus. My own dissertation examines the Milwaukee context. For histories of the Welfare Rights Movement, which examines the connections between campaigns for civil rights and economic justice see: Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States; Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America; Lisa Levenstein, A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia; Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty; and Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality.

For a treatment on civil rights and masculinist strategies, see Steve Estes, I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Patrick Jones also discusses the ways in which male leadership and masculine rhetoric obscured women participants and organizers in the Milwaukee movement in Selma of the North, 223–27.

“Genocide Protested,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, August 7, 1971.

“Milwaukee County Welfare Rights Organization Local Area Groups,” Box 1, Folder 9, Dismas Becker Becker Milwaukee MSS 9, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Division. “First Annual Milwaukee County Welfare Rights Dance” Program Booklet, Fundraising and Clothing Drives, 1971–1972,” Dismas Becker Papers, Milwaukee Mss 9, Box 1, Folder 7.

Milwaukee County Welfare Rights Organization, Welfare Mothers Speak Out: We Ain’t Gonna Shuffle Anymore (New York: W.W. Norton and Company), 29.

Saint Fought Sexism, Racism.”

Edward H. Blackwell, “Ripped by Groppi, Firm Lays Off 102,” The Milwaukee Journal, August 7, 1974; “Woman Power Can Move Anything,” 89–96.

Milwaukee County Welfare Rights Organization, Welfare Mothers Speak Out; and Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Blackwell, “Ripped by Groppi, Firm Lays Off 102”; “Incredible Remark,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, August 12, 1974.

“Incredible Remark,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, August 12, 1974.

Blackwell, “Ripped by Groppi, Firm Lays Off 102.”

“County Supervisor Campaign Brochure,” Dismas Becker Papers, Milwaukee Mss 9, Box 1, Folder 7, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Division.

Blackwell, “Ripped by Groppi, Firm Lays Off 102.”

Ibid.

Ibid.

“2 Officials Hit Back at Groppi,” The Milwaukee Journal, August 13, 1974.

Milwaukee Star-Times, August 8, 1974.

Milwaukee Star-Times, August 15, 1974.

Ibid.

Jones, Selma of the North, 223.

“Motivation Question: Groppi Scored After Attack on Local Black Business,” Milwaukee Star-Times, August 8, 1974.

Deborah Crosby, “Message to the People,” Milwaukee Star Times, August 15, 1974.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

“CBTU Says Its Vote Was Misunderstood,” Milwaukee Star Times, August 22, 1974.

Peter Brennan, Secretary of Labor vs. Ethnic Enterprises, Inc. Eastern District of Wisconsin. December 16, 1974; “Ethnic Enterprizes Chief Says She’ll Fight Wage Suit,” The Milwaukee Journal, August, 18, 1974.

Brennan vs. Ethnic Enterprizes, December 16, 1974.

Evelyn Newmann, “For You Black Woman’s “Exec Director Visits City” Atlanta Daily World, July 8, 1979.

See Sharon Harley, Black Women and Work Collective, Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Cheryl Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow.