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Selling Liberia: Moss H. Kendrix, the Liberian Centennial Commission, and the Post-World War II Trade in Black Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Brenna W. Greer
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Abstract

This article examines the activities of Moss H. Kendrix, a budding black entrepreneur and Public Relations Officer for the Centennial Commission of the Republic of Liberia, during the years immediately following World War II. To secure US investment in Liberia’s postwar development, Kendrix re-presented African Americans and Americo-Liberians as new markets valuable to US economic growth and national security. This article argues that his tactics advanced the global significance of black peoples as modern consumers and his worth as a black markets specialist, while simultaneously legitimating notions of progress that frustrated black claims for unconditional self-determination or first-class citizenship. Kendrix’s public relations work on behalf of Liberia highlights intersections between postwar black entrepreneurialism and politics and US foreign relations, as well as the globalization of US business and consumerism.

Type
Manuscript
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 303 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2013. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

I wish to thank those who encouraged this work in its infancy, incuding Nan Enstad, Stephen Kantrowitz, Susan Johnson, Christina Greene, Cherene Sherrod-Johnson, and Cindy Cheng. The University of Notre Dame Erskine Peters Fellowship and the University of Wisconsin provided appreciated financial support. I am grateful for the suggestions and questions of participants in the 2012 German Historical Institute workshop “Globalization of African American Business and Consumer Culture,” at which I presented an earlier version of this paper. This work could not have been completed without the constant assistance of Audrey Davis at the Alexandria Black History Museum, and Joellen ElBashir at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, and I wish to especially acknowledge Moss H. Kendrix, Jr., who generously shared himself and his father with me. Finally, I appreciate Enterprise & Society and its reviewers for essential guidance, as well as Matthew Blanton, my constant reader.

References

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