Business
The Dynamic History of African American $1 Trillion purchasing power
By Kenneth D. Miller
In 2012, Nielsen conducted a study that concluded that African American purchasing power would reach US$1 Trillion by 2015.
While African Americans only make up approximately 13 percent of the American population and own merely 5 percent of all U.S firms today, according to a Small Business Administration report, our pioneers set a remarkable trend that if continued would have solidified African Americans in the financial marketplace for generations to come.
Among the most significant individuals to influence the economic purchasing power of African Americans was the founding publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel, Leon H. Washington Jr. who initiated a campaign encouraging Blacks to “Don’t Spend Where You Can’t Work!”
In 1933, Washington left his advertising position at the California Eagle, then the oldest, largest Black newspaper in Los Angeles, and started his first newspaper, which he originally called The Eastside Shopper. A year later, Washington renamed the paper. The Sentinel, which soon became a rival to the Eagle. He married Sentinel photographer, Ruth Brumell, and subsequently appointed Mrs. Washington as an assistant publisher in 1948 because of failing health.
In the first two decades of its existence, Washington’s Sentinel championed economic equality and entrepreneurship for its mostly African American readers in the Los Angeles community.
Washington continued as acting publisher for the paper through the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972, it reached a peak circulation of 39, 277 and had a staff of 50. Two years later, on June 17, 1974, Washington passed away at the age of 67. Now his widow, Ruth assumed complete control as both editor and publisher. She served in that capacity until her death in 1990. After Mrs. Washington passed, Attorney Kenneth Thomas became publisher. Upon his death his widow Jennifer Thomas continued as publisher and today the Sentinel is continuing in the same tradition as its founder under the leadership of Danny Bakewell Sr. and his Family.
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, was the largest black-owned insurance company in the western United States during its peak.
The company was founded by William Nickerson, Jr. with the assistance of Norman Oliver Houston and George Allen Beavers, Jr. in the mid- 1920s. When Nickerson, an insurance salesman and publisher from Texas, arrived in Los Angeles, he was alarmed to discover that most of the 16,000 in African Americans living in the city were unable to obtain life insurance. Unable to afford an attorney, Nickerson studied law to determine the state’s requirements to form a corporation to accommodate this need, He and his partners secured 500 pre-paid life insurance applications as well as the US$15,000 deposit required by California. Houston raised the US$15,000 and Beavers found 500 African Americans that would pay premiums for a company that was yet to be established.
On July 23, 1925, they opened as the Golden State Guarantee Fund Insurance Company in a one-room office at 1435 Central Avenue. In 1948, Golden State Mutual opened a new office at West 1999 Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles.
As a major institution within the African Americans community, representatives of Golden State Mutual were active in the civil rights movement.
