Bridget B

T the recent (and wildly successful) NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Cheryl Bowles introduced her family and business history, The Ladder We Ascend (it had been formally launched late last year). Unsurprisingly, Bowles and her companies feature in a new book by Trevor Millett, with the clever title Having a Head for Business: Afro-Trinidadian Businesses in the Black. Millett, a Trinidadian based in New York, published the pioneering The Chinese in Trinidad in 1993.

Millett credits the late Selwyn Ryan with making the first serious enquiries about Afro-Trinidadian business success, or the perceived lack thereof, posing the question 'where are our [Afro-Trini] entrepreneurs?', and publishing (with Lou-Anne Barclay) Sharks and Sardines: Blacks in Business in Trinidad and Tobago in 1992. Appropriately, he dedicates his book to him.

The book consists of two parts. In the first one (pp 33-101), Millett seeks to refute the 'myths and stereotypes' that Africans, and people of African descent in the diaspora, have 'no head for business' and are incapable of successful entrepreneurial activities and money management. He discusses the many 'socially engineered obstacles' to black entrepreneurial success during enslavement, in the post-emancipation era and well into the 20th century, here in T&T and further afield in the Americas.

Drawing on contemporary sources and on historians' research, Millett shows how enslaved and free Africans in Trinidad nevertheless engaged in trading and business activities. Enslaved men and women used the produce from their kitchen gardens and provision grounds to earn cash at the vibrant markets found everywhere during the slavery era. After emancipation in the 1830s, hundreds of freed people were hucksters, shopkeepers, vendors and service providers. Indeed, WG Sewell, an American journalist who visited Trinidad in 1859, wrote that 'Trade seems to be the destiny of the Trinidadian Creoles' (meaning black and mixed-race people).

While Millett shows how legislation to hinder blacks from owning land or operating small businesses, plus severe restrictions on their accessing credit, were real obstacles in the post-emancipation period, he also discusses how they overcame them. Mutual aid, community spirit, lending mechanisms like the sou-sou, friendly societies and credit unions, the Penny Bank-all played their part. Black Trinidadians of the 19th and 20th centuries displayed entrepreneurial traits and business capabilities despite all the odds against them.

Millett concludes Part 1 by writing that business success, for people of African origin, can become 'a pathway to healing of economic trauma, one resulting in self- and group-empowerment. Widespread success in business can be its own form of reparations'.

Part 2 (pp 102-218) begins with Millett's exhortation, addressed directly to present-day Afro-Trinidadians, to study and respect the achievements of their ancestors and to lay the foundations for their children and future generations. They must reject the 'ne'er do well Afro pessimists' who would seek to discourage and mock them for venturing into business activities. By studying earlier black-owned 'cottage enterprises' and small or medium businesses, like the Drag Brothers and the Breakfast Shed ladies, and learning of their successes and failures, Afro-Trinidadians must seek 'Black Power' by becoming entrepreneurs and business people-and get away from the tragic trajectory of too many black youth today.

The rest of Part 2 presents accounts of successful black business people in today's T&T. Prominent among them are two recently deceased Tobagonians, IT McLeod and Robert Yorke, who built highly profitable companies in the field of real estate development, hotel ownership and structural engineering services. Both men became wealthy but were also known for philanthropy and a highly developed social conscience.

The longest essay is devoted to Machel Montano and his close-knit family, who have built a sprawling entertainment business and (more recently) Montano's Chocolate Co which produces fine chocolate from local cocoa. The Montano model features three generations involved in the family businesses. Another interesting example is well-known petroleum expert Gregory McGuire, who has recently established Feeling Nice Beverages, a family-oriented business making highquality liqueurs from local ingredients. Perhaps the oldest of these blackowned family firms is Belgroves Funeral Home, whose origins go all the way back to the mid-1800s.

Four female entrepreneurs are portrayed. The companies associated with Bowles, the subject of The Ladder We Ascend, now feature a fourth generation of her extended family working for or with them. Germaine Williams-Beckles is a much in-demand consultant for hair and scalp health, while Heather Jones, a famous fashion designer and couturier, has gone international with her business. Judith Coward established and runs Mango Media Caribbean Inc, a public relations and marketing firm with many high-profile corporate clients.

Some Afro-Trinidadians have entered the financial services field as money and investment managers, such as Keith King, Kerwyn Valley and Aldwyn Wayne. And Ralph Henry founded Kairi Consultants Ltd in 1990 (incorporated in 1992); over some 30 years it has worked all over the Caribbean and extensively in southern Africa.

Millett ends this interesting book by urging Afro-Trinidadians (and, by implication, everyone) to adopt a 'new language of success' which 'must encourage hope, faith, optimism, further industriousness and anticipated success...[ and] promotes group solidarity rather than encourages internecine conflict an decisiveness'. This language 'should speak to the strengths and capabilities of the Afro-Trinidadian community' and should advocate 'for avenues of prosperity for all', oriented towards successful business activities.

The book can be ordered from Amazon, and (in the USA) from the Barnes & Noble chain.

-Author Bridget Brereton is professor emerita of history at The UWI, St Augustine.

rereton