26 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
THE COLOR OF MONEY
An activist tried to build a capital of Black capitalism. What could go wrong?
BYKELEFASANNEH
I
n the fall of 1968, Jet, the Black
weekly magazine, devoted a special
issue to the upcoming election. On
the cover was a cheerful headline:
“HOW BLACK VOTE CAN ELECT NEXT
PRESIDENT.” Inside, the editors were
less upbeat, reproaching the candi-
dates for not doing more to “woo ac-
tively” the Black vote. In an effort to
do some last-minute wooing, both of
the major candidates had taken out
two-page advertisements in the issue.
Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat,
was popular with Black voters, and
sought to remind readers of some-
thing he felt they should already know.
“Vote for Hubert Humphrey and
you’ll help elect the right man Pres-
ident,” his advertisement said. “Don’t
vote and you’ll help elect the wrong
one.” The “wrong one”—Richard
Nixon, the Republican contender—
had a more specific pitch. His ad
showed a Black man in a letterman
sweater, beneath the exhortation “This
time, vote like Homer Pitts’ whole
world depended on it.” Pitts, it seemed,
was a fictional college student facing
an uncertain future. And there was a
Presidential candidate who wanted
to help him:
A vote for Richard Nixon for President is
a vote for a man who wants Homer to have
the chance to own his own business. Richard
Nixon believes strongly in black capitalism. Be-
cause black capitalism is black power in the best
sense of the word.... It’s the key to the black
man’s fight for equality—for a piece of the action.
This was the heart of Nixon’s out-
reach to Black voters in 1968: “Black
capitalism,” an ideal of independence
that promised to unite militants and
moderates, Black nationalists and white
centrists. This sales pitch does not seem
to have been a big success. Although
Nixon won, narrowly, polls and voting
data suggest that Black voters went
predominantly for Humphrey. And yet
the notion of “Black capitalism” gained
influence, prompting an ongoing de-
bate about what it meant, and whether
it represented progress. The Black Pan-
ther Party often denounced capital-
ism, and Bobby Seale, who helped
found the group, wrote in 1970 that
Black capitalism was part of the prob-
lem. “We do not fight exploitative cap-
italism with black capitalism,” he de-
clared. “We fight capitalism with basic
socialism.” But the next year another
founding Panther, Huey P. Newton,
wrote that Black capitalism could con-
tribute to liberation, and that reject-
AL
AM
Y
Had plans for Soul City worked out, its founder might have joined Martin and Malcolm in the pantheon of Black uplift.
