Why Blacks Don't Have Game and How We Get to Play

By Lyle A. Marshall

This handbook for young African Americans is intended to give them a feeling of self-worth by chronicling many of the contributions of African Americans to American history and to the American way of life in an easy-to-read format. The history of blacks in America has been badly distorted by the motion picture industry and textbooks. Newspapers generally print most of the bad news about blacks and often under-report positive news. This negative information adds to the anger that many young blacks harbor due to their economic plight, and feeds the feeling of hopelessness that they perceive as their future. This book lets them know that they deserve more, based upon their forefathersÕ contributions to America in war and peace and their inherent ability. It then attempts to guide them into a better economic way of life through understandable steps that are attainable. It stresses education as a basic tool for advancement as well as a reparations goal. It then goes through economic steps that can start to decrease the un-American economic gap that should not exist. Its main theme is that they are the progeny of forefathers who have accomplished a great deal, and they owe it to their forefathers to live up to that heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781412206129

Lyle A. Marshall

World War II 92nd Infantry (Black Buffalo) Division veteran Lyle A. Marshall is a retired accountant, Internal Revenue Agent? and Executive, tax attorney and businessman. He was the senior partner in the law firms of Marshall and MacDevitt, and Marshall, Lifschitz, Israel and Gitomer in Manhasset and Rockefeller Center, New York. He also was an Adjunct Asst. Professor of taxation at Pace College and Wagner College in New York. Most of his adult life was spent espousing minority economic development activities, including monitoring the Ford Foundation’s Program Related Investment committee and co-chairing New York’s Interracial Council for Business Opportunity. He was a co-founder of Ebony Oil Corp. in New York, a pioneer black owned fuel oil company, and of Drummond Distributing Co. in Compton, CA., the first black owned Seagram liquor distributor. He served as the unpaid president of the board of the Watts/Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club, during which time $7.3 Million was raised to build a new clubhouse for the children of Watts and Compton, CA. It is for young adults similar to those in that club for whom he wrote this handbook. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree from the City College of New York? and a Juris Doctor Degree from New York Law School.

Book preview

Why Blacks

Don’t Have Game

and How We

Get to Play

A Handbook For

Young African Americans

$

Lyle A. Marshall

©

Copyright 2007 Lyle A. Marshall.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN:

978-1-4120-7588-6 (sc)

ISBN:

978-1-4122-0612-9 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Trafford rev. 12/17/2019

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CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER One

Dispelling the Myth of Black Unworthiness

CHAPTER Two

Beginning the Long Struggle for Equal Rights

CHAPTER Three

The First Half of the 20th Century

CHAPTER Four

Post World War II Civil Rights Movement

CHAPTER Five

A Gap Closer

CHAPTER Six

Starting to Close the Gap

CHAPTER Seven

A Major Gap Closer – Real Estate

CHAPTER Eight

The Ultimate Gap Closer – Owning a Business

T HIS HANDBOOK is

dedicated to young African-Americans, and chronicles many of the things that their forefathers contributed to America in peace and in war. It also gives them some of the financial information that they should understand in order for them to put their economic house in order, thus enabling them to live up to the rich legacy that they have inherited.

INTRODUCTION

T he United States is a capitalist nation and over thirty million blacks know it as our country. No matter how we twist these two basic facts in our minds, we are here in this economy and in this society and in this country. It is ironic that we are the only major group of people who live here that were brought here against our will. It’s tragic that we’ve been treated worse than any other group of people who live here. Even Native Americans, who have been victimized horribly, were not enslaved and treated as chattels. We either have to accept the facts of the past and make the best of the future, or get out of this country and live elsewhere. This is written in the belief that we’re going to accept where we are, if not the situation that we find ourselves in, and strive to achieve within its framework.

Let’s look at this laissez faire capitalist society as it exists in America today. It’s not a very ideal system of life. The rich live a life of luxury and keep getting richer by and large. The middle class live a life of comfort and strive to be rich. Many of the poor live a life of homelessness, crime, and poverty that is almost totally ignored by the well off. And these conditions are getting worse. All of the sociological studies show that the rich own more and more of the total wealth of the country and the poor less and less. Over 40 million people, at last count, do not have basic health insurance. Kids go to bed hungry in this, the richest country in the world, and the current leaders of the country are leading us into a more hopeless situation than now exists.

The rant and cry by our leaders, apparently agreed to by their constituents, is for less taxes on the rich and well off, and for a free market place to solve all problems. Unions, which were the hope of the working man a few decades ago, have been weakened to the point that most of them are ineffective. To be sure, a few of them brought it on themselves. Profits, the ultimate goal of businesses’ existence, run wild with no one ever thinking of restraining them. That would not only be un-American but sacrilegious the way religion is playing into every facet of life these days. Wealth is being garnered into the hands of fewer and fewer multinational corporations’ and billionaires’ hands somewhat like pre-Hitler Germany, but no one seems to mind, as long as he or she has two or three cars, a nice home, kids in college, and all the other trappings of wealth. It would seem that a modified version of today’s runaway capitalism could be the answer to some of the problems of the United States, but until we recognize that there’s a problem this won’t happen.

Where does this condition of our country leave American blacks? One must either accept what exists, try to change it, or leave the country. Being a disadvantaged minority, it would be impossible to change it, and there has been no great black exodus from this country in the past, despite extreme deprivations. The simple truth is that no other system is any better than we have here, and living in any other country is foreign to us even if it is in Africa.

Given all of the above, let’s accept the fact that we have to learn to make it in this capitalist society as an integral and integrated part of it.

In past decades there was a great deal of talk about the white power structure and black power. The only real color of power in this country is green, the shade on currency. Money is what keeps the wheels of politics turning and makes politicians listen to their constituents. There are all types of thousand, ten thousand and hundred thousand dollar groups that contribute to political action campaigns, and these are the people that politicians listen to and on whose behalf they act. Sure there are exceptions to the general rules, but they are few and far between. The same applies to practically every aspect of our lives. The big donors in churches or shuls are considered the important folks; big spenders in restaurants are catered to; big tippers on golf courses get the best starting times. You get the idea. The old golden rule is the norm, i.e., He who has the gold makes the rules.

The reader may have gotten the impression by now that there is going to be a preoccupation with the pursuit of money in this book. That is a correct impression, and I make no excuses for it. That preoccupation is not intended to make the reader a greedy person, or a mean person, or a bad person in any way. It is intended to make you an aggressive person trying to level the playing field in these United States by getting in the game that runs America.

As a matter of fact, this is intended to be a primer for young black folks. It is written to be thought provoking. Many of us, with excellent minds, are not given the opportunity to exercise our minds beyond what we do daily. And we do what we do daily in an excellent manner. Can that excellent ability that we do daily be channeled into doing more, like helping to run our own businesses? I think it can in many instances.

Many blacks of your parents’ generation were steered toward civil service jobs in the 20th Century because private enterprise jobs were not available to them. Those who secured those jobs, and who hold them today, are generally people with superior abilities and, in many cases, superior educations. Government jobs provide a very good living and in many cases a better than average retirement. We know that when we were hired by private enterprise we were, in many cases, the last hired and the first fired when things became tight. This hasn’t changed