Father divine and the development of African American small business

Banks (1996) notes, beginning in the early 1960s, fundamental changes in the lot of African Americans in terms of their ability to enter into, and move within, the socioeconomic system of the United States. As a group, they slowly began to take advantage of the system's opportunities, access its educational and employment offerings, and traverse more fully the mainstream of contemporary life. Accompanying this change was an increase in literary works dealing with African American history, many journal articles devoted to developments within major African American institutions, and a number of published reports as to what the public and independent sectors were doing to improve the quality of life for this group.

At the same time, less attention was devoted to chronicling the observations of African American intellectuals regarding the meaning and significance of these changes for the Black community. Banks (1996) provides a structured compilation of the thoughts of leading thinkers who reflected on and criticized the unfolding scene. Focusing on social scientists whose works have been mostly ignored while revisiting the efforts of those who had received only limited coverage, and employing a unique collective and analytical methodology, Banks provides a rounding component to the prevailing African American literature. By providing a treatment of the changing role, standing, and aspirations of African Americans, a fuller understanding of African American society could be achieved.

However, Banks provides only limited treatment of the Black business sector. One means of filling this void might be to systematically examine the industrial side of African American history through a sequential assessment of the contributions of its small business advocates. An organized collection of such pieces, where the bequests of these contributors are integrated into the field of management thought, would enhance our understanding of contemporary African American society. Beginning with an exposition of the work of small business advocates is a logical starting point, since small business in general, and self-employment in particular, has been an important growth path for many African Americans. Balkin (1989) and others discuss the potential beneficial economic outcomes of self-employment in this sector. Schwartzman (1997) identifies important spillover benefits such as the enhancement of self-esteem, feelings of independence, and meaningful upward mobility. To this must be added decreases in the number of people on welfare, reductions in the cost of social services, increases in the tax base, and lowering of crime rates, as potentially significant consequences of successful small business initiatives.

While a logical beginning point might be to examine the work of better known contributors, such as Booker T. Washington and his "National Business League," or Elijah Muhammed and his "Economic Blueprint for the Black Man," this article showcases a lesser known contributor-Father Divine. While he is best recognized and treated in the literature as a civil rights activist, less is known of his contributions to the practice of small business. Thus, this piece addresses the life of Father Divine and his "Divine Peace Mission," which had as its core objective the creation of widespread Black owned small businesses.

Antecedents: The Conditions for African American Enterprise after the Civil War

Due in part to a backlash against Emancipation and Reconstruction in the United States, there was a deterioration of the position of African Americans in the business arena following the Civil War. Whites and Blacks competed in a marketplace in which white labor and capitalists -joined by white landholders - moved aggressively against African Americans. Coupled with this development was a resurgence of racism, the formation of secret organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, a proliferation of restrictive agreements, and the almost complete disenfranchisement of African Americans effected by state constitutional conventions. The reversal of social and economic gains was rapid and effective, especially on the emergence of an African American industrial base.

As a means of combating these negative consequences, and to put African American economic development back on track, two movements were started in the early 1900s. The first of these was the National Negro Business League organized by Booker T. Washington. Its purpose was to bring African Americans engaged in similar businesses together to exchange information and experiences, to provide mutual support, and establish local and national associations that would formulate strategy on industry-specific issues. The idea was to overcome existing weaknesses and potential threats through the pooling of strengths and opportunities. As a further objective, the League sought to increase the number of African American businesses by encouraging small business start-ups. In time, these sole proprietorships or simple partnerships would provide much needed local services, such as funeral parlors, barber shops, beauty salons, cafes, and convenience stores (Balkin, 1989).

The second major effort, started by W.E.B. DuBois, also had a dual thrust. The promotion of higher education for African Americans was a major priority. College was stressed as a necessity for successful entry into business. In addition, entrepreneurship was encouraged as an important element in the development of an African American industrial sector. DuBois felt what was required was a spirit that would activate a group of energy-driven overachievers who were both creative and innovative; people who were industrious, goal directed, and willing to take calculated risks (Lewis, 1993).

Both efforts experienced difficulties that curtailed their success. Because of an absence of mutual trust within the African American community and the inability to invoke informal social sanctions on League members, Washington's ideas faltered. Also, small business, with its emphasis on having people working for themselves rather than others, was a slow-growth methodology. As for DuBois' ideas, they were geared more toward the economic development of African Americans as a group (which was not the primary need of the time.) rather than meeting people's immediate needs (which had to be fulfilled before the higher level needs could become relevant). Also, a split occurred among African Americans on how best to promote the growth of business. Washington's thinking, supported by prominent white businessmen such as George Eastman and Andrew Carnegie, prevailed. Ultimately, it was the Great Depression that slowed both initiatives. It was within this setting that Father Divine appears.

From George Baker to Father Divine

The Early Years

George Baker was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1878. He was the youngest of the many children of Joseph and Mary Baker, a God-fearing couple and active members of the Baptist church. Baker was a dreamer who, from the time of his youth, was socially active, in his own way. At the age of 17, he was arrested and jailed for riding in the "whites only" section of a trolley car. After several months of incarceration, he was released. He married a local woman, and the newlyweds walked about 250 miles before they came to the small town in Alabama where they decided to settle down and set up housekeeping.

After five years of married life, Baker left his wife and four children. He wandered for a number of years performing odd jobs and working as a gardener. In 1906, he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he secured a job teaching Sunday school classes at a Baptist Church. At a small mission in Baltimore, he met Father Jehovia, who preached about a God of goodness and love rather than of fire and brimstone. Baker was impressed, and after studying the teachings of Jehovia for a number of years, he adopted the doctrine, changed his name to The Messenger, and made several preaching trips throughout the South. He acquired 12 recruits, six men and six women, one named Sister Penny, who later became Mother Divine. In 1915, they moved to Brooklyn, New York where Baker established a communal religious enclave.

Baker and his disciples attended and participated in the activities of another former student of Jehovia, the Reverend Saint Bishop the Vine, who had moved to Harlem years earlier where he built up a large following. When the Reverend encountered some legal problems and was forced to withdraw from the scene, Baker moved to fill the void. He changed his name to Major Morgan J. Devine (he would later adopt the godlier spelling of Divine). In 1917, he relocated to Long Island where he had acquired property in the names of Major Divine and Penninnah Divine (the former Sister Penny who later became recognized and accepted as Baker's wife). He continued to preach in Harlem and other nearby places, becoming more widely known and adding to the numbers of his followers. His inner circle started to call him "Reverend," which he liked, and he soon dropped the title of Major in favor of Reverend. Later he changed this to "Father."

The early years of Divine's life are shrouded in some mystery, which Divine did nothing to clear up. When discussing his youth, Divine was often nebulous and contradictory. In fact, whenever the opportunity presented itself, he did what he could to add to the confusion about his beginnings. If questioned as to why he was so vague and why his stories did not match, he generally replied that mundane dates and places were irrelevant to his spiritual mission. This was apparently the way Divine wanted it, for the mystique reinforced the belief of his followers that he was the Messiah.

Further details about the early years of Divine are to be found in a number of works, such as those by Hosher (1936) and Parker (1937). It should be noted that while these works take differing approaches in their treatment of Divine's life and contain individual biases, collectively, they provide a relatively complete and informative biography.

The Peace Mission Movement

Father Divine's early efforts at fostering equality and giving hope to African Americans met with opposition from both conservative white authorities and traditional black ministers. This opposition took the form of harassment, imprisonment, and even detention in an insane asylum. Thus, when he arrived in New York in 1915, Divine assumed the role of a proper clergyman who had no intention of disrupting the tranquility of the community. He remembered well what had happened to him when defying the South's `Jim Crow' laws. This new, respectable image enabled him to accumulate considerable wealth, including property holdings in an all-white suburb on Long Island.

In the early 1930s, working class African Americans desperate for economic relief and employment actively sought out Divine's help. His initial response was to become a philanthropist for the unemployed. He opened his Long Island home, offering meals to all. Often he would find jobs for a number of his needy guests. Crowds came regularly, particularly from Harlem and Newark, New Jersey, to meet with the new provider, whom they viewed as heaven-sent. Responding to the rapidly increasing number of followers, Divine relocated his base of operations to Harlem and organized his disciples into groups collectively known as the Peace Mission. These groups formed, in effect, a network of religious cooperatives that were highly responsive to Divine's wishes.

The members of the movement represented a cross section of the entire population, including almost every social, economic, and racial group in the country. For example, among Divine's disciples were affluent, well-educated African Americans who were interested in civil rights. Others included professionals whose credentials attested to years of responsible religious work but who had become disenchanted with long-standing established churches. There were also people of considerable social standing who felt that they were not appreciated by society. By far, however, the majority of the members were lower-class residents of the ghettos of New York and New Jersey, approximately 90% of them African Americans and 10% white. Regardless of their backgrounds, almost all of Divine's followers seemed to have an inherent desperation-driven need for emotional and material fulfillment.

It is impossible to ascertain official mission membership because there were no formal counts and many disciples were only partial converts. Membership estimates varied from a low of 50,000 to a high of twenty-two million. The organization had about 150 centers in the United States, which provided support for the movement and spread the teachings of Divine. Of these, about a quarter were located in New York State, the majority in the New York City area. Approximately a third of the branches were west of the Mississippi River, mostly in California. Only about five percent of the branches were below the Mason-Dixon Line.

An additional 20 to 30 centers operated outside of the United States, mainly in Canada, Western Europe, and Australia. While they deviated somewhat from the objectives of the movement - for example, they placed less emphasis on eliminating codes and regulations supporting separation of the races - these foreign-based centers nevertheless enhanced Father Divine's prestige. Their membership was drawn mostly from the urban working class; a significant percentage being white men and women interested more in spiritual than in secular matters.

The Mission had a formal organizational structure and operated on a sound business basis. Offices for the administrators and their assistants were located in a headquarters building in Harlem. The organization had a low operating budget, as many accepted only room and board for their services. Revenues from donations and, later, income from sponsored small businesses, provided more than sufficient capital. In addition to a staff of professional managers, supervisors, bookkeepers, and clerical workers, Divine had a personal staff of 12 secretaries, most of whom had some college education and some who were of middle-class background. The ablest of these served as his personal administrative assistants. The organizational arrangement of the Divine Mission was two-tiered. On the upper level of the hierarchy were Divine and a select group of confidants. On the lower level were the counselors who implemented Divine's policies. Supporting the structure were the "children," who accounted for about 75% of the membership, and the "angels," who provided the needed everyday job expertise and the journeymen complement. Angels ranked above children and were themselves stratified with the skilled, such as cashiers, journalists, and lawyers, enjoying a higher status than the semiskilled and un-skilled.

Additional details regarding the life of Divine can be found in works such as Weisbrot (1983), and Morris and Critlenden (1953). These publications also provide background on the first and second Mother Divines. The first, as previously mentioned, was a disciple named Penninnah who was an assistant to Father Divine as well as a loyal admirer. They were associates for a number of years and, by 1919, they were generally recognized as husband and wife. Penninnah died in 1937, but her death was kept secret for some time because Divine often equated death with an occurrence resulting from a sinful state of mind. In 1946, Divine married a Canadian woman by the name of Edna Rose Ritchings, more commonly known as Sweet Angel, who was new to the Mission. The marriage raised some difficult questions among the faithful. Edna was only 21 years old and she was white. For many years Divine had strongly discouraged his disciples from marrying outside the race. However, over the years that followed, the second Mother Divine became widely accepted and acknowledged as a coequal partner in the running of the Peace Mission. She carried on the workings of the Mission long after the death of Father Divine.

From Clergyman to Businessman

The Emphasis on Self-Employment

The growth of membership in the Peace Mission movement, coupled with the deepening of the Great Depression, forced Father Divine to expand his program of finding employment for his followers. Informal efforts to place his disciples in domestic employment were no longer adequate. As a practical remedy, Divine turned his attention to self-employment. He urged his members to form groups, which he called Divine Mission Movement Cooperatives, for the purpose of setting up small businesses which would function under a set of operating guidelines promulgated by Divine.

Local followers, working through the cooperatives, pooled their funds and labor and a number of successful small businesses emerged. Within a three-year period, members of the church were operating many of the Harlem area's grocery stores, barbershops, dry cleaning establishments, and specialty shops that sold fish, fruits, and vegetables. Throughout the Northeast, Divine's followers owned hundreds of businesses, including meat markets, tailor shops, construction and painting firms, hotels, boarding houses, furriers, and photographic studios. They even owned a number of trucking firms that transported coal from the mines in Pennsylvania to consumers in such large cities as New York, Newark, and Baltimore. Laundries and restaurants, however, were the most numerous. In Harlem alone, about two dozen each of these two establishments were started and successfully operated by Divine disciples.

All of the income from these businesses that was not needed to cover operating expenses went back to the Mission to fund more start-ups. The objective was not profits, but rather the creation of jobs, service to the Mission, and the dissemination of Divine's teachings. Members could live in the Mission buildings rent-free and share the costs of meals. This allowed the businesses to offer their goods and services below the prevailing market price, thus permitting them to thrive and expand. Success was achieved primarily by gaining competitive advantage through low prices.

Divine took an active interest in many of these businesses. His involvement ranged from offering advice to providing direction. He helped in recruiting employees and selecting managers. He provided much needed financing so that purchases could be made in cash, thus giving the businesses an economic advantage. He believed in the free enterprise system as a mechanism for creating jobs at fair wages, but he also felt that occasional government intervention in the marketplace was required. For example, he supported the idea that when owners of plants with machinery, tools, and equipment did not, or would not, operate them at full capacity, these assets should be made available to workers' cooperatives and operated on a non-profit basis under the supervision of the government.

Divine's ability to organize and create a widespread network of small businesses during the height of a severe depression attests to his secular talents. The key to this success is in large measure attributable to Divine's ability to induce his followers to cooperate and work with one another. This enabled them to easily band together in small groups to form business ventures that were based on the principles of honesty and justice. Members of the Mission were held together by a shared belief in Divine and driven by their desire to advance the cause of their leader, rather than to make money, Divine believed that hard work and prosperity were manifestations of faith. Salvation was something pragmatic that was to be attained in this life, rather than an abstraction that occurred in the hereafter. More detail on Divine's activities in the business arena can be found in Harris (1936) and Parker (1937). Light (1972) explains how Divine and his business initiatives fit into the overall pattern of ethnic enterprise in America.

Divine's Small Business Strategy

Divine's preference for small business and his tactics for fostering entrepreneurship were based on a number of precepts (Light, 1972; Balkin, 1989; Pratt, 1992). He believed that some people were better suited, and, indeed, preferred to be employees rather than employers. Working for someone else - a large well-established firm if possible - provided these individuals with the security of a regular income, limited responsibility, less anxiety, and no risk of losing their savings if business was bad. However, during the 1930s, many people did not have much choice. It was either self-employment or no employment at all. For most, the latter was not an acceptable alternative. There were also people who viewed self-employment as the most desirable form of employment because of its potential for both meeting immediate subsistence needs and leading to the attainment of a higher standard of living. Together, these two groups provided a formidable pool of labor that required only capitalization and leadership for a small business initiative.

Believing that he had an obligation for the economic as well as the spiritual well being of the members of his Mission, Divine embarked on a project of small business start-ups. He was aware that a successful small business program, in addition to providing immediate work for his followers, had many potential long-term benefits. For example, growing small businesses could generate a significant number of new jobs. Additionally, when properly managed, many start-ups could financially outperform some large businesses, thus providing a revenue stream that could be utilized for additional economic development. Also, he believed that much of the creativity and innovation required by large businesses originated in small businesses. Bolstering and protecting the industrial base by developing a strong small business segment, Divine reasoned, would prove to be beneficial over time. Thus, when prosperity and economic growth returned, African Americans, being positioned in its business core, would grow with it.

Divine focused his efforts on three areas of business: services, retail, and wholesale. Service businesses were a logical choice since they normally required only a relatively small capital investment to get started. Retail was also a reasonable selection, as it did not necessitate extensive training or experience. Wholesale was a good choice, too, as it rests in large measure on flexibility, a trait that normally can be rapidly acquired on the job. Manufacturing was not pursued, however, since the large investment in plant and equipment often required was beyond Divine's financial means. Furthermore, during the Great Depression, because of the prevailing overcapacity, manufacturing facilities actually had negative market worth. Agriculture, especially small family farms, was also seriously depressed. Corporate farms and larger agribusiness firms were doing comparatively well, but were far beyond the limits of what Divine could feasibly do, particularly in urban settings.

Another important factor, which Divine recognized and utilized, was the tendency for his labor pool to reflect many of the attributes necessary for small business success. For example, the people he would involve were not averse to hard work and had a strong desire to succeed. These traits were fostered both by the need to survive and by a devotion to Divine. Also, the targeted businesses were those whose products and services were in great demand - subsistence goods and services. The necessary managerial competence was provided by members of the Mission who were charged with the responsibility and led by Divine. In particular, prior to start-up, Divine's designated handlers provided guidance on selecting a location and on what facilities were needed. The handlers were also responsible for ensuring financing was available when it was required. As the business developed, they assisted with such things as managing growth, controlling costs, and operational decision-making. Since all those involved held in common the preaching of Divine as the basis for their system of beliefs, values and morals, there were not too many interpersonal problems. Those that did arise were resolved with the help of the counselors provided by the Mission. The role of pure luck, which can be a double-edged sword, was kept to a minimum by proper planning and implementation.

The concepts of small business espoused by Divine and others at the time were not reduced to formal principles, for they grew out of social conditions brought on by oppression, destitution, and desperation, rather than a purposeful search for knowledge. Nevertheless, they provided basic management footings that are as generally applicable today as they were almost 60 years ago. Many business historians have little or no knowledge of Father Divine. Some who are familiar tend to dismiss him as a passing social phenomenon of no particular significance. However, his influence on small business thought has endured and is worthy of note.

Divine's Managerial Credentials

Divine, having acquired considerable on-the-job training over the years as he worked to develop his ministry, was not a novice in the practice of management. When he first relocated to New York City during World War I, along with the large influx of southern migrants lured to the area by job opportunities created by the war industry, he found the community inundated with dance halls, nightclubs, and casinos established to entice those living in the area. Coexisting with these establishments was a host of street-corner preachers and self-proclaimed prophets offering quick and easy repentance and salvation. To protect his flock from these influences, he housed them in apartments that he operated as collectives. He assigned some of his congregation to the performance of household tasks and, assuming the role of an employment agent, he placed others in carefully screened blue-collar jobs and domestic positions. Under his direction his followers pooled their earnings to pay the household expenses that Divine worked to keep to a minimum. For example, the group always bought food from local markets featuring bargain prices and offering quantity discounts. Meals were planned to be substantial and balanced rather than tasty and appetizing. Maintenance and repairs were handled by designated do-it-yourselfers. Clothing was provided in the form of second hand garments, altered and repaired by members assigned to tailoring.

Eventually, Divine's Long Island waterfront town charged him in court with creating and maintaining a public nuisance. The litigation dragged on and intensified with each passing month. As the conflict grew, it attracted media attention, eventually being picked up by prominent New York City newspapers, which syndicated the stories across the country. Divine was quick to recognize that the case represented a business opportunity in the form of free publicity for his group and what he was trying to achieve.

To capitalize on this situation, he worked to further intensify the issue and keep it alive. He did so by expanding the activities (Holy Communion Banquets) that he was conducting at his house and to which his neighbors were objecting. He dealt separately with the courts and community action committees so as to keep them separated and confused. He carefully worked the media so as to spin the happenings in such a way as to cast his name in the most favorable light and to increase public recognition of his movement. Divine did not perceive the legal action as a threat to be resolved quickly, but rather as an opportunity to be prolonged and exploited. When Harlem's African American clergy, led by the Bishop of the Refuge Church of Christ and the Apostolic Faith, joined the battle against him, labeling him the forerunner of the Anti-Christ, Divine used the new offensive to generate even more publicity. He quickly took on these critics by initiating an ongoing dialogue with the press in which he charged that the old-line religions were simply jealous of the Peace Mission's success in providing for people's needs - both spiritual and material - a success which these other religions were seemingly incapable of replicating.

Divine was jailed in 1932 by a justice who branded him a menace to society. He put his incarceration to good use by identifying, analyzing, and planning for the challenges he believed his ministry should confront in the future. He shifted his focus to political and social issues, convinced that the thrust of his group should be directed toward more worldly objectives. Such objectives were to be implemented through the concepts of capitalism, employing peaceful change, and moving within the system of American democracy. He began to understand the importance of keeping his organization appropriately matched to its environment and attuned to the interests of its stakeholders. Similarly, he started to develop an appreciation for the environmental context within which the Mission operated - in particular the political and legal elements. He developed further insight into the purpose of religion, concluding that it must focus not only on the salvation of his followers after they died, but also on helping them in this world as well.

It was through these and similar events that Divine identified and learned the principles of management that were the foundation of his approach to small business startups (Watts, 1992).

Divine's Later Years

With the end of the Great Depression and the onset of World War II, Divine turned his attention to putting his Mission on a firmer institutional base, making it a more formal organization structured as an elaborate bureaucracy. The organization's reliance on vitality and ingenuity was replaced by an increased use of detailed plans, formal procedures, and standard operating practices. A court judgement against Divine - the result of a lawsuit brought by a former follower to recover money allegedly given to Divine - pushed him to leave New York and move to Philadelphia.

Increased social awareness and a broadening of communal expectations resulted in a need for the Mission to widen its operating focus. This change was achieved by enlarging and modifying the Mission's political rhetoric from the values of democracy to the urgency of guarding the nation against the subversive influences of communism and unions. Divine moved from a posture of challenger to the prevailing establishment to one of alignment with popular mainstream patriotic sentiment.

During this same period, the Mission's small businesses declined sharply. It was not that they had become unprofitable, but rather that the economic advantage of cooperation was no longer perceived as necessary in light of the economic prosperity of the times. With this downturn, Divine's scope of activities and influence were diminished. However, his stature as an elder statesman to people who wanted to create their own quasi-religious followings grew. No longer seen as either a threat to traditional religious values or as a competitor, he was now accepted as an equal by many of the leading clergy from the more conventional church groups. These clergy often visited with him to exchange thoughts, ask his advice, and even pay tribute to his past work as an evangelist and social reformer. Aspiring religious leaders, seeing that Divine was not the dominating, charismatic figure of the past, sought him out to bestow his blessing on their new ventures.

As the years passed, Divine, who suffered from diabetes, became reluctant to leave the Philadelphia area. He devoted his energies to enhancing the physical splendor of his headquarters - a 32-room mansion located on a 73-acre garden estate called "Woodmont," which had been donated to him by one of his older disciples. Divine referred to the property as "the mount of the house of the Lord" and, as his health deteriorated more rapidly, he often secluded himself within its confines. By 1960 he ceased speaking in public but continued to communicate with his followers through his writings, which were frequently reprinted in a local newspaper. He died in 1965, after spending the last year of his life supporting President Lyndon Johnson's efforts to pass a voting rights bill. He was convinced that a better life for his followers was about to become a reality (Weisbrot, 1983).

During these later years, the second Mother Divine assumed an active role in the ministry. Endowed by her husband with goodly measures of mystique and authority, she, in effect, ruled in his stead (Divine, 1982). However, with his death, the Mission, for all practical purposes, came to an end, although some pieces remained in existence through the 1980s and into the early 1990s. However, the Mission did not die unmourned. It was eulogized by many civil rights leaders as having benefited the African American community, particularly through its unique cooperative endeavors, which were so instrumental in the development of small business.

Entrepreneurship and the Role of Small Business

Shapiro (1979) offers a social science-based logic for the formation of small business: personal circumstances that disrupt one's life, a belief that it is possible to start a small business, and an assumption that the needed resources can be found. This reasoning differs from pure economic models (Kirzner, 1973, for example) that suggest that people deliberately start a business in response to opportunities based on differential money earnings. Scase and Goffee (1980) looked at this issue and found that small business formation was perhaps more a function of personal discontent and a random occurrence rather than a rational decision to seek out pure economic gain. In the case of Father Divine and his followers, the social science model seems to be most pertinent though other explanatory factors were undoubtedly involved.

Moreover, Divine fits the Shumpeterian model of entrepreneur as "ideal-type" (Schumpeter, 1961). In this model, the entrepreneur is an agent of change and, without question, change in the economic plight of African Americans is what Father Divine sought. Schumpeter describes entrepreneurial motivation in very colorful terms:

The dream and will to found a private kingdom or dynasty; the will to conquer; the impulse to fight, to prove oneself superior to others, to succeed for the sake, not the fruits, of success; the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity.

Such a description fits Divine's character well. It wasn't technological innovation or revolutionary changes in the delivery of goods and services that was the basis for Divine's entrepreneurial achievements. His creative contribution was an ability to obtain economic productivity from individuals and an environment that previously had yielded little or nothing. His charismatic personality was shaped in the mold of Schumpeter's classic entrepreneur.

That Divine's economic arena was that of small business reinforces the value of his efforts. Kirchhoff (1994) strongly argues that entrepreneurship is a small business phenomenon, which is the engine of job creation. His analysis contends that the growing body of empirical research on job creation dynamics shows the superiority of small firms over large corporations in the job creation process. Job creation, in the context of small, community-based enterprises, was what Divine's efforts were all about.

Conclusion

Over the years, a number of works have been published that treat the life of Father Divine (Braden, 1949; Burnham, 1979); and Burnett & Newman, 1978). While they generally report the same basic story, most works differ on the specifics, as well as in the way Divine's philosophy is interpreted. For example, Weisbrot talks about Divine being born in Savannah, Georgia, while Watts identifies Divine's place of birth as Rockville, Maryland. Similarly, Weisbrot portrays Divine as a social leader, as well as a preacher, who purposely pursued secular programs for pragmatic reasons. Alternatively, Watts finds that Divine was a reluctant social leader whose secular undertakings were simply a mechanism for his followers to use to achieve a better religious attitude.

This ambiguity, however, seems to be exactly what Divine and his followers wanted. They volunteered little or no information as to the background of anyone connected with the Mission, nor were the details of the Mission's origins revealed. For instance, there appears to be little reported in the literature as to exactly how Divine induced people to give up their everyday lives and follow him into a relatively puritanical way of life. Moreover, none of the pieces written about him during his lifetime were endorsed by Divine himself. He declared that it was both inappropriate and impossible to write about him because he was God and, as such, he could be neither defined nor explained by mortals.

Some things, however, are clear: Divine's entrepreneurial talents; his understanding of small business and commitment to it; and his appreciation of its important role in economic development. He recognized that because of the prevailing racism of the time, most markets were closed to African Americans, as were many of the conventional sources of capital, problems that were further aggravated by the Great Depression. However, through the creative use of his organization and its funding, he found a way around these obstacles. Also, he went further by providing operating guidelines, informative standard practice instructions, and effective motivational methods. With his guidance and direction, both the principles and practices of small business were moved ahead.

Like some of the African American leaders who preceded him - Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois - Divine recognized that the free enterprise system offered better alternatives for solving social problems than direct government assistance programs. Accompanying this awareness was a managerial theory as to how best to work within the existing structures of the markets for labor, commodities, and money. Considering the fact that the playing field was far from level, the results Divine achieved were rather remarkable and his intelligence contributed to the body of knowledge in the field of small business history and management.

The practice of management has evolved and will continue to unfold within the context of a number of cultures, as people seek to satisfy their economic and social needs through collective efforts. It would seem prudent to expand the knowledge base by inquiries such as this that are designed to show the part played by diverse contributors. Such efforts, in addition to explaining more fully how management thought has developed, should provide a better appreciation of the accompanying social aspects. It is this important element which gives contributions such as those made by Father Divine their real meaning.