She wrote about her experience in the Civil War and her memoirs were published in 1902 as Reminisces of My Life in Camp with the 33rd US Colored Troops.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Even before Emancipation there were Blacks with substantial business holdings: Paul Cuffe, a former slave, owned a small fleet of whaling ships among other ventures; and William Leidesdorff was a maritime tradesman, who established a number of business enterprises in San Francisco, including its first hotel, and was America’s first Black millionaire. And there were Blacks, including slaves, who conducted small business enterprises such as laundry services, catering companies, market stalls and more, and that continued after the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Civil War veterans were especially prosperous, using their military pay to purchase lots of land for farming or to start small businesses.
Granville T. Woods Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio, on April 23, 1856, to free African Americans. Woods only received schooling until the age of 10. He further educated himself by working in railroad machine shops and steel mills in his early teens as well as by reading about electricity. Since Blacks were not allowed to go to libraries, Woods often had his friends check out library books for him. In this manner, he was able
12
to read up enough on electricity to put to work his knowledge of electrical engineering. In the early 1880s, Woods set up his own company to develop, manufacture and sell electrical apparatus, and in 1889, he filed his first patent for an improved steam boiler furnace. Other inventions followed, including “telegraphony,” a process that allowed operators to send and receive messages more quickly and which was later acquired by Alexander Graham Bell’s company. Bell’s purchase of the telegraphony was Woods’ pathway to becoming a full-time inventor. Known as “Black Edison,” he registered nearly 60 patents in his lifetime, including a telephone transmitter, a trolley wheel and the multiplex telegraph (over which he defeated a lawsuit by Thomas Edison).
Maggie Lena Walker Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934) was a former kitchen slave who cooked in the Civil War household of Union sympathizer Elizabeth Van Lew, and she grew up helping her mother run a small laundry service. Her early work experiences led to her being elected, at age 17, to an office in the Independent Order of St. Luke, a Black burial society in Richmond, Va. In 1903, Walker pooled her community’s resources and founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank (now Consolidated and Trust Company)—the nation’s oldest continuously existing African-
Granville T. Woods
Character Education/Black History Month
Maggie Lena Walker American bank—and became known as the first female bank president in the United States.
POLITICS In the early period of Reconstruction, and following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson, adopted policies that excluded Blacks from southern politics and allowed state legislatures to pass restrictive “black codes” that kept freed men and women in second-class citizenship. Fierce resistance to his policies led to a Republican victory in the U.S. congressional elections of 1866 and to a new
February 2, 2013
Afro-American Newspapers