these behaviors and actions may be illegal and unethical, business leaders can still create and maintain discriminatory and violent cultures while operating completely within the parameters of what is acceptable. This is the origin of the systemic racism, or racism that is ingrained in the culture, that people of color experience in corporate culture today.
There are historical moments of positivity that we can look to for inspiration for compassion and inclusion and the bottom-line benefits that follow. Many center on Black entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship
One way people of color have maneuvered out of uncompassionate, biased workplaces to create inclusive and equal corporate experiences is through entrepreneurship. Even during some of the most brutal years in the history of Blacks in business there were success stories. Many people are familiar with the story of Madame C. J. Walker, recorded as the first woman self-made millionaire, but there are other examples of Black titans of industry operating to contribute to the community, while also opening up new markets and generating revenues for their firms.
In 1898, North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company began with a response to a pressing market need. As mentioned, when people of color acted in their capacity as consumers (not just employees) they were historically met with exclusion and many times didn't receive the same level of service Whites received. When Blacks needed to bury their dead or provide for survivors, they counted on private organizations, societies, and churches.16
Providing life insurance for the Black community was a case of compassion combined with service to an underserved market. Compassion plus capitalizing on high levels of quality service to underserved communities was a clear way to dominate the market that mainstream organizations left wide open. This is a good lesson for today. When corporations see veiled discriminatory practices, refusal to serve, or giving poor, lackluster service to a community or demographic, savvy leaders must analyze it as a potential market opportunity instead of falling in line with what's acceptable by the majority.
This is what North Carolina Mutual did. One of its founders, John Merrick, leveraged what we in the 21st century describe as “soft skills” such as compassion and relationship building to create several successful businesses and workplaces.17
John Merrick began his career as a barber and brick mason. Parlaying his technical skills and his ability to befriend his clientele, Merrick moved from a partnership in a barbershop to ownership of several barbershops to founding one of the largest Black businesses of its time. But ultimately Merrick's fortune was not made with bricks or haircuts but with insurance. Professor Douglas Bristol of the University of Southern Mississippi explains:
John Merrick's mutual life insurance company started out of his compassion, because there were people who had some misfortune happen. Members of the Black community would come in and ask for donations. And so he thought of a more dignified way to do that. At first, he started a mutual aid society, where people pay dues to get benefits. And then when there was a movement to regulate these mutual aid companies he started the North Carolina Mutual Life company, and took a big risk with his money. At that point, he had to just front the money so there had to be a minimum bond posted at the state insurance commissioner. At that point, they weren't making money. But he did it anyway.18
By 1920 Merrick's firm grew to be the largest Black-owned company in the world. It had more than 1,000 employees, was earning nearly $2 million, and held about $30 million in assets, which translates to about $350 million in modern dollars.19 The company was located in the Parrish Street area of Durham, North Carolina. Durham was one of several thriving communities of color in the United States—which were also sometimes known as Black Wall Streets—where Black owners, employees, and consumers enjoyed fair and equitable services, wages, treatment, and prices.
Compassionate leaders of the time were also able to ensure their suppliers practiced diversity (back before the phrase supply chain diversity was even in the lexicon). One example was A. G. Gaston, who had enterprises ranging from Birmingham's first Black-owned financial institution, an insurance firm, as well as the A. G. Gaston Motel.20
Gaston's brand of compassion included a fearlessness and focus on making sure there was equality within the full business structure, including vendors, not just consumers, employees, and owners. Suzanne Smith, associate professor of history and art history at George Mason University, offers some thoughts on the significance of Gaston:
A. G. Gaston: he's really a corporate kind of guy, and the way in which he navigates his power as a businessman and the rising civil rights movement is utterly fascinating to me. He's able to both appease the White business community in Birmingham while also letting Martin Luther King Jr. stay at his motel; he just really is sophisticated in how he uses his power. And he uses this economic power to kind of fight in the movement in all of these fascinating ways. He got criticized by White people who thought he was being too supportive of the Black movement and then Black Power people thought he wasn't doing enough.
He was so ahead of his time, and he had such a vision. He was able early on, I think, to figure out how to use that economic power. He put pressure on car dealerships in Alabama. He's buying all his hearses from these car dealerships, but then they're not hiring Black people to work in it to sell cars. So he goes to the White car dealership and he says, “I'm not going to keep buying my hearses from you unless you hire Black people as salespeople,” and he pushes integration into this car dealership because they needed his money. He bought a lot of cars every year. He bought a lot of hearses and he knew he could do that.21
Despite multiple tiers of complexities in being Black-owned businesses, compassionate service to and knowledge of their markets led to successful and profitable enterprises. This focus on genuinely serving consumers, employees, and suppliers is now in vogue. Business leaders need to be on notice. We're moving away from—as Michelle Obama told the 2020 Democratic National Convention—a “greed is good and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top nothing else matters,” mentality into a culture of prioritizing the good of the whole business, including those inside the business. We're moving, slowly yet vehemently, toward a business culture in which prioritizing people inside the company and ensuring inclusivity across all levels of the business is winning.
Black workers remain skeptical when businesses don't readily adopt this culture. We have proof positive that skepticism is well-founded when looking at the numbers of Blacks and other people of color making up leadership positions at firms.
Scholar Doug Bristol of the University of Southern Mississippi explains how competition between Black entrepreneurs was carried out in a healthy way:
In the 19th century Black barbers had what were called first-class shops. John Merrick [Durham] and Alonzo Herndon had a shop on Peachtree Street where they employed 20 barbers. I mean, there were only two other barbers operating on that scale. They beat their competition just by offering services and a number of employees that nobody could meet because these were palatial accommodations. They had bathhouses, you'd get a massage, people shaving your face while you're sitting in the chair; they competed with services.22
People of Color in Leadership Today
The 2018 Board Diversity Census of Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards, issued by Harvard Law School in February 2019, noted a critical
