Richard Henry Boyd
Encyclopedia
Richard Henry Boyd commonly known as the Rev. Dr. R. H. Boyd, was an African-American minister and businessman who was the founder and head of the National Baptist Publishing Board and a founder of the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
in Noxubee County, Mississippi
, on March 15, 1843. He was one of ten children of his mother, Indiana Dixon. He was originally named Dick Gray, having been given the surname of his slave master. As a child, he moved twice with his master's household, to Lowndes County, Mississippi
in 1848, and to Claiborne Parish, Louisiana
in 1853.
In 1859 he was sold to Benoni W. Gray, who took him to a cotton plantation near Brenham
in Washington County, Texas. During the American Civil War
, he served Gray as a bodyservant in the Confederate Army. After Gray and his two eldest sons were killed and a third son was badly wounded in fighting near Chattanooga, Tennessee
, Boyd returned to Texas
with the surviving son. In Texas, he took over management of the Gray plantation, successfully producing and selling cotton
. Following emancipation
, he also worked as a cowboy
and in a sawmill
. In 1867, he changed his name to Richard Henry Boyd; Richard ("Dick") had been his grandfather's first name, but there is no record of the reasons for his choice of his new middle name
and surname
.
After emancipation, Boyd, who did not learn the alphabet
until age 22, began a process of self-education. He used Webster
's Blue-Backed Speller and McGuffey's First Reader
as texts and hired a white
girl to teach him. In about 1869 or 1870 he enrolled in Bishop College
in Marshall, Texas
, an American Baptist Home Mission Society school for the education of freed slaves. He attended Bishop for two years, but did not graduate. Later in life he received honorary doctoral degree
s from Guadalupe College
and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical State College
.
In 1868, Boyd married Laura Thomas, who died less than a year later. In 1871 he married Harriett Albertine Moore.
in Hopewell Baptist Church in Navasota, Texas
. Shortly thereafter, he felt called to the ministry and was ordained
as a minister in 1871. Subsequently he served as a pastor to several Texas churches, including the Nineveh Baptist Church in Grimes City, the Union Baptist Church in Palestine
, and the Mount Zion Baptist Church in San Antonio
, and helped to organize other churches in Palestine (including South Union Missionary Baptist Church
), Waverly, Old Danville, Navasota, and Crockett
. In 1870 he helped organize the first black Baptist
association in Texas, the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, and served as its missionary and educational secretary from 1870 to 1874. In 1876 he represented black Texas Baptists at the Centennial Exposition
in Philadelphia.
While in Texas, Boyd became concerned that the Sunday school
materials and other publications of the Southern Baptist Convention
and American Baptist Publication Society
, which were produced by white people
, did not meet the needs of African American Baptists. He became interested in publishing black-authored materials for use in churches and Sunday schools. Because this view was not shared by all members of the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, in 1893 Boyd left that association to form the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Texas. In 1894 and 1895 he produced his first pamphlets for use in black Baptist Sunday schools. At the 1895 annual meeting of National Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri
, he pressed for the creation of a publishing board for the black Baptists and received the support of Elias C. Morris, president of the National Baptist Convention. In 1896 he resigned from his church positions in Texas and moved to Nashville to establish the National Baptist Publishing Board, arriving there on November 7, 1896.
in Texas that he owned as collateral
, and received assistance with printing from the white Southern Baptist Convention, which had its main publishing operations in Nashville.
The National Baptist Publishing Board fulfilled Boyd's goal of providing black Baptists with religious materials written by other black Baptists, primarily periodicals and Sunday School materials, but also including some books. At the beginning, the Publishing Board took over responsibility for publishing the National Baptist Magazine and it launched the new Teacher's Monthly in 1897. The Publishing Board started making a profit
as early as the first quarter of 1897, when it distributed more than 180,000 copies of published materials, and it grew increasingly profitable over time.
In 1898, in collaboration with nine other men, Boyd incorporated
the National Baptist Publishing Board under a Tennessee
state charter. Under the charter, the Publishing Board was owned by Boyd and governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees.
The National Baptist Publishing Board became the principal source of religious publications for black Baptists worldwide. By 1906, it was the largest African American publishing company in the United States. The business employed as many as 110 workers. In its first 18 years, it issued more than 128 million periodicals. It is credited with being the first publisher of the old songs of Negro slaves, and it produced more than 25 songbooks and hymnal
s by 1921, including Golden Gems: A Song Book for the Church Choir, the Pew, and Sunday School (1901) and The National Baptist Hymnal (1903). The board's publications are considered to have played a key role in establishing an African American Baptist religious and racial identity in the United States.
work of the National Baptist Convention, but this was disputed.
Following confrontations at the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Chicago
in 1915, Boyd and his supporters formed the National Baptist Convention of America, which became known informally as "National Baptist Convention, Unincorporated," and was sometimes derisively called the "Boyd National Convention." The leaders remaining in the original convention incorporated
in 1916, adopting the name National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. sued
unsuccessfully to obtain ownership of the Publishing Board and subsequently created its own Sunday School publishing board.
s, fan
s, pulpit
s, and pipe organ
s.
Another of his business activities was design and sale of African American doll
s. His National Negro Doll Company is believed to have pioneered the marketing of black dolls for black children for the purpose of black pride
. Boyd started selling black dolls imported from Europe in 1908, after experiencing difficulty finding suitable dolls for he children in his family. In 1911 his National Negro Doll Company began to manufacture dolls. He was quoted as contrasting his dolls with Negro dolls then produced by white-owned businesses, saying: "These dolls are not made of that disgraceful and humiliating type that we have grown accustomed to seeing Negro dolls made of. They represent the intelligent and refined Negro of the day, rather than the type of toy that is usually given to children and, as a rule, used as a scarecrow
." The doll company was not profitable, and the company ceased operations around 1915.
In Nashville, he was one of the founders and first president of the One-Cent Savings and Trust Company Bank, a bank
expressly intended to serve the financial needs of African American depositors who believed that white-owned banks looked down on their small deposits. Although the minimum deposit was actually 10 cent
s, the name "One-Cent" was chosen to emphasize that every customer was important, no matter how little money they had. The bank, which opened its doors in 1904 and reported assets of $80,000 as of 1912, was still in business as of 2009 as the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company.
. As early as the 1890s he voiced his concern that whites planned to reverse the civil rights gains that African Americans had made in the years after the Civil War, and in subsequent years he worked against the Jim Crow laws
enacted to enforce segregation
.
enacted a 1905 law to segregate
Nashville's streetcar system, local black leaders were determined to protest the law through a boycott
of the public transportation system. When the law first went into effect in July, the boycott was effective, as few blacks were riding streetcars. Boyd, then head of the local chapter of the National Negro Business League
, joined with other prominent citizens to promote and formalize the boycott. Because many blacks needed the streetcar system to travel to and from work, it proved difficult to maintain participation in the boycott. To help their fellow black citizens avoid using Nashville's public streetcars, Boyd joined with lawyer James C. Napier and funeral home director Preston Taylor to establish a rival black-owned public transit system, the Union Transportation Company. The new company began service on September 29, 1905, operating five steam bus
es. These vehicles lacked the power needed to climb some of the city's hills, so the company acquired a fleet of 14 electric buses. To avoid buying electricity
from a white-owned utility, the transportation company powered the buses with a generator in the basement of the Publishing Board building. The company had limited financial resources, was not able to effectively meet the transportation needs of Nashville's geographically dispersed black population, and was handicapped by a tax
on electric streetcars that the city of Nashville enacted in 1906 specifically to combat the black-owned business. The Union Transportation Company went out of business within a year, by which time the boycott had been largely abandoned. Although the boycott was ultimately unsuccessful, its long duration was one source of inspiration for bus boycotts in the 1950s.
and was attended by several thousand people. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Nashville.
R. H. and Harriett Boyd were the parents of nine children, of whom six survived to adulthood. A son, Henry Allen Boyd, was a leader in the Nashville African-American community and a cofounder of the Nashville Globe newspaper, and succeeded his father as head of the National Baptist Publishing Board.
The National Baptist Publishing Board was renamed the R. H. Boyd Publishing Corporation in his honor in 2000. The corporation and the R. H. Boyd Family Endowment Fund offer fellowships in his name for African-Americans engaged in graduate study
.
In April 2009 he was posthumously inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame
in Nashville in honor of his contributions to preserving the music of former slaves and their descendants.
National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
The National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. is an African-American Baptist body organized in 1915 as the result of a struggle to keep the National Baptist Publishing Board of Nashville independent. Those supporting the independence of the publishing board, headed by Rev. R. H...
Early life
Boyd was born into slavery at the B. A. Gray plantationPlantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
in Noxubee County, Mississippi
Noxubee County, Mississippi
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 12,548 people, 4,470 households, and 3,222 families residing in the county. The population density was 18 people per square mile . There were 5,228 housing units at an average density of 8 per square mile...
, on March 15, 1843. He was one of ten children of his mother, Indiana Dixon. He was originally named Dick Gray, having been given the surname of his slave master. As a child, he moved twice with his master's household, to Lowndes County, Mississippi
Lowndes County, Mississippi
As of the census of 2000, there were 61,586 people, 22,849 households, and 16,405 families residing in the county. The population density was 123 people per square mile . There were 25,104 housing units at an average density of 50 per square mile...
in 1848, and to Claiborne Parish, Louisiana
Claiborne Parish, Louisiana
Claiborne Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish seat is Homer and as of 2000, the population is 16,851.-History:The parish is named for the first Louisiana governor, William C. C. Claiborne....
in 1853.
In 1859 he was sold to Benoni W. Gray, who took him to a cotton plantation near Brenham
Brenham, Texas
Brenham is a city in east-central Texas in Washington County, Texas, United States, with a population of 16,147 according to the 2009 census. It is the county seat of Washington County...
in Washington County, Texas. During the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, he served Gray as a bodyservant in the Confederate Army. After Gray and his two eldest sons were killed and a third son was badly wounded in fighting near Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga Campaign
The Chattanooga Campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in October and November 1863, during the American Civil War. Following the defeat of Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland at the Battle of Chickamauga in September, the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen...
, Boyd returned to Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
with the surviving son. In Texas, he took over management of the Gray plantation, successfully producing and selling cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
. Following emancipation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
, he also worked as a cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
and in a sawmill
Sawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
. In 1867, he changed his name to Richard Henry Boyd; Richard ("Dick") had been his grandfather's first name, but there is no record of the reasons for his choice of his new middle name
Middle name
People's names in several cultures include one or more additional names placed between the first given name and the surname. In Canada and the United States all such names are specifically referred to as middle name; in most European countries they would simply be regarded as second, third, etc....
and surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
.
After emancipation, Boyd, who did not learn the alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
until age 22, began a process of self-education. He used Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
's Blue-Backed Speller and McGuffey's First Reader
McGuffey Readers
McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and in homeschooling....
as texts and hired a white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
girl to teach him. In about 1869 or 1870 he enrolled in Bishop College
Bishop College
Bishop College was a historically black college, founded in Marshall, Texas, and later moved to Dallas, Texas, that operated from 1881 to 1988.-History:...
in Marshall, Texas
Marshall, Texas
Marshall is a city in Harrison County in the northeastern corner of Texas. Marshall is a major cultural and educational center in East Texas and the tri-state area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Marshall was about 23,523...
, an American Baptist Home Mission Society school for the education of freed slaves. He attended Bishop for two years, but did not graduate. Later in life he received honorary doctoral degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
s from Guadalupe College
Guadalupe College
Guadalupe College in Seguin, Texas, was an educational institution for African Americans. It was established in 1884 and opened officially in 1887 . The school's main building was destroyed by a fire in 1936. A fundraising drive was called-off in 1937 and the school largely ceased operations....
and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical State College
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, also known as Alabama A&M University or AAMU, is a public, historically black university, Land-grant university located in Normal, Madison County, Alabama....
.
In 1868, Boyd married Laura Thomas, who died less than a year later. In 1871 he married Harriett Albertine Moore.
Religious career
In 1869 Boyd was baptizedBaptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
in Hopewell Baptist Church in Navasota, Texas
Navasota, Texas
Navasota is a city in Grimes County, Texas, United States. The population was 6,789 at the 2000 census. In 2005, the Texas Legislature named the city "The Blues Capital of Texas," in honor of the late Mance Lipscomb, a Navasota native and blues musician....
. Shortly thereafter, he felt called to the ministry and was ordained
Ordination
In general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...
as a minister in 1871. Subsequently he served as a pastor to several Texas churches, including the Nineveh Baptist Church in Grimes City, the Union Baptist Church in Palestine
Palestine, Texas
Palestine is a city in Anderson County, Texas, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 17,598, and 18,458 in the 2009 estimate. It is the county seat of Anderson County and is situated in East Texas...
, and the Mount Zion Baptist Church in San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
, and helped to organize other churches in Palestine (including South Union Missionary Baptist Church
South Union Missionary Baptist Church
South Union Missionary Baptist Church is an historic black church in Palestine, Texas, the oldest black church in the southern part of Palestine....
), Waverly, Old Danville, Navasota, and Crockett
Crockett, Texas
Crockett is a city in Houston County, Texas, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 7,141. It is the county seat of Houston County.- History :...
. In 1870 he helped organize the first black Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
association in Texas, the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, and served as its missionary and educational secretary from 1870 to 1874. In 1876 he represented black Texas Baptists at the Centennial Exposition
Centennial Exposition
The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It was officially...
in Philadelphia.
While in Texas, Boyd became concerned that the Sunday school
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
materials and other publications of the Southern Baptist Convention
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
and American Baptist Publication Society
American Baptist Publication Society
The American Baptist Publication Society is a historic building at 1420–1422 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.It was built in 1896 on the site of the former headquarters of the American Baptist Publication Society, which had been destroyed by fire on February 2, 1896...
, which were produced by white people
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
, did not meet the needs of African American Baptists. He became interested in publishing black-authored materials for use in churches and Sunday schools. Because this view was not shared by all members of the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, in 1893 Boyd left that association to form the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Texas. In 1894 and 1895 he produced his first pamphlets for use in black Baptist Sunday schools. At the 1895 annual meeting of National Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, he pressed for the creation of a publishing board for the black Baptists and received the support of Elias C. Morris, president of the National Baptist Convention. In 1896 he resigned from his church positions in Texas and moved to Nashville to establish the National Baptist Publishing Board, arriving there on November 7, 1896.
National Baptist Publishing Board
Boyd did not have National Baptist Convention financial support to start the Publishing Board, so he financed its establishment himself, using real estateReal estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
in Texas that he owned as collateral
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
, and received assistance with printing from the white Southern Baptist Convention, which had its main publishing operations in Nashville.
The National Baptist Publishing Board fulfilled Boyd's goal of providing black Baptists with religious materials written by other black Baptists, primarily periodicals and Sunday School materials, but also including some books. At the beginning, the Publishing Board took over responsibility for publishing the National Baptist Magazine and it launched the new Teacher's Monthly in 1897. The Publishing Board started making a profit
Profit (accounting)
In accounting, profit can be considered to be the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses.-Definition:There are...
as early as the first quarter of 1897, when it distributed more than 180,000 copies of published materials, and it grew increasingly profitable over time.
In 1898, in collaboration with nine other men, Boyd incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
the National Baptist Publishing Board under a Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
state charter. Under the charter, the Publishing Board was owned by Boyd and governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees.
The National Baptist Publishing Board became the principal source of religious publications for black Baptists worldwide. By 1906, it was the largest African American publishing company in the United States. The business employed as many as 110 workers. In its first 18 years, it issued more than 128 million periodicals. It is credited with being the first publisher of the old songs of Negro slaves, and it produced more than 25 songbooks and hymnal
Hymnal
Hymnal or hymnary or hymnbook is a collection of hymns, i.e. religious songs, usually in the form of a book. The earliest hand-written hymnals are known since Middle Ages in the context of European Christianity...
s by 1921, including Golden Gems: A Song Book for the Church Choir, the Pew, and Sunday School (1901) and The National Baptist Hymnal (1903). The board's publications are considered to have played a key role in establishing an African American Baptist religious and racial identity in the United States.
Splitting of the National Baptist Convention
In 1915 the success of the Publishing Board under Boyd's leadership led to a split within the National Baptist Convention. Pastors and other leaders within the convention were suspicious of the Publishing Board and sought greater control, while Boyd asserted that the Publishing Board was independent. Boyd, who served as the National Baptist Convention secretary of missions from 1896 to 1914 while also leading the Publishing Board, claimed that the Publishing Board regularly contributed some of its profits to the missionaryMissionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
work of the National Baptist Convention, but this was disputed.
Following confrontations at the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1915, Boyd and his supporters formed the National Baptist Convention of America, which became known informally as "National Baptist Convention, Unincorporated," and was sometimes derisively called the "Boyd National Convention." The leaders remaining in the original convention incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
in 1916, adopting the name National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. is the largest predominantly African-American Christian denomination in the United States and is the world's second largest Baptist denomination...
The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. sued
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
unsuccessfully to obtain ownership of the Publishing Board and subsequently created its own Sunday School publishing board.
Other business activities
Boyd's business interests extended beyond the Publishing Board. The National Baptist Church Supply Company, which he established in 1902, sold a diverse range of supplies for churches, including pewPew
A pew is a long bench seat or enclosed box used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, or sometimes in a courtroom.-Overview:Churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews before the Protestant Reformation...
s, fan
Fan (implement)
A hand-held fan is an implement used to induce an airflow for the purpose of cooling or refreshing oneself. Any broad, flat surface waved back-and-forth will create a small airflow and therefore can be considered a rudimentary fan...
s, pulpit
Pulpit
Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left is called the pulpit...
s, and pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
s.
Another of his business activities was design and sale of African American doll
Doll
A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...
s. His National Negro Doll Company is believed to have pioneered the marketing of black dolls for black children for the purpose of black pride
Black pride
Black pride is a slogan indicating pride in being black. Related movements include black nationalism and Afrocentrism.The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the...
. Boyd started selling black dolls imported from Europe in 1908, after experiencing difficulty finding suitable dolls for he children in his family. In 1911 his National Negro Doll Company began to manufacture dolls. He was quoted as contrasting his dolls with Negro dolls then produced by white-owned businesses, saying: "These dolls are not made of that disgraceful and humiliating type that we have grown accustomed to seeing Negro dolls made of. They represent the intelligent and refined Negro of the day, rather than the type of toy that is usually given to children and, as a rule, used as a scarecrow
Scarecrow
A scarecrow is, essentially, a decoy, though traditionally, a human figure dressed in old clothes and placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.-History:In Kojiki, the oldest surviving book in Japan...
." The doll company was not profitable, and the company ceased operations around 1915.
In Nashville, he was one of the founders and first president of the One-Cent Savings and Trust Company Bank, a bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
expressly intended to serve the financial needs of African American depositors who believed that white-owned banks looked down on their small deposits. Although the minimum deposit was actually 10 cent
Cent (currency)
In many national currencies, the cent is a monetary unit that equals 1⁄100 of the basic monetary unit. Etymologically, the word cent derives from the Latin word "centum" meaning hundred. Cent also refers to a coin which is worth one cent....
s, the name "One-Cent" was chosen to emphasize that every customer was important, no matter how little money they had. The bank, which opened its doors in 1904 and reported assets of $80,000 as of 1912, was still in business as of 2009 as the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company.
Civil rights activities
Boyd was a public advocate for African American civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
. As early as the 1890s he voiced his concern that whites planned to reverse the civil rights gains that African Americans had made in the years after the Civil War, and in subsequent years he worked against the Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
enacted to enforce segregation
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
.
Nashville streetcar boycott
After the Tennessee General AssemblyTennessee General Assembly
The Tennessee General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee.-Constitutional structure:According to the Tennessee State Constitution of 1870, the General Assembly is a bicameral legislature and consists of a Senate of thirty-three members and a House of Representatives of...
enacted a 1905 law to segregate
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
Nashville's streetcar system, local black leaders were determined to protest the law through a boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
of the public transportation system. When the law first went into effect in July, the boycott was effective, as few blacks were riding streetcars. Boyd, then head of the local chapter of the National Negro Business League
National Negro Business League
The National Negro Business League was an American organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900 by Booker T. Washington, with the support of Andrew Carnegie...
, joined with other prominent citizens to promote and formalize the boycott. Because many blacks needed the streetcar system to travel to and from work, it proved difficult to maintain participation in the boycott. To help their fellow black citizens avoid using Nashville's public streetcars, Boyd joined with lawyer James C. Napier and funeral home director Preston Taylor to establish a rival black-owned public transit system, the Union Transportation Company. The new company began service on September 29, 1905, operating five steam bus
Steam car
A steam car is a light car powered by a steam engine.Steam locomotives, steam engines capable of propelling themselves along either road or rails, developed around one hundred years earlier than internal combustion engine cars although their weight restricted them to agricultural and heavy haulage...
es. These vehicles lacked the power needed to climb some of the city's hills, so the company acquired a fleet of 14 electric buses. To avoid buying electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
from a white-owned utility, the transportation company powered the buses with a generator in the basement of the Publishing Board building. The company had limited financial resources, was not able to effectively meet the transportation needs of Nashville's geographically dispersed black population, and was handicapped by a tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
on electric streetcars that the city of Nashville enacted in 1906 specifically to combat the black-owned business. The Union Transportation Company went out of business within a year, by which time the boycott had been largely abandoned. Although the boycott was ultimately unsuccessful, its long duration was one source of inspiration for bus boycotts in the 1950s.
Writings
Boyd wrote fourteen books and numerous pamphlets. His books included:- Baptist Catechism and Doctrine (1899)
- National Baptist Pastor's Guide (1900)
- National Jubilee Melody Songbook (no date)
- Plantation Melody Songs
- The Separate or "Jim Crow" Car Laws (1909)
- Theological Kernals
- An Outline of Negro Baptist History
- The Story of the Publishing Board
Death and legacy
Boyd died in Nashville of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 22, 1922. His funeral was held in Ryman AuditoriumRyman Auditorium
The Ryman Auditorium is a 2,362-seat live performance venue, located at 115 5th Avenue North, in Nashville, Tennessee and is best known as the historic home of the Grand Ole Opry....
and was attended by several thousand people. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Nashville.
R. H. and Harriett Boyd were the parents of nine children, of whom six survived to adulthood. A son, Henry Allen Boyd, was a leader in the Nashville African-American community and a cofounder of the Nashville Globe newspaper, and succeeded his father as head of the National Baptist Publishing Board.
The National Baptist Publishing Board was renamed the R. H. Boyd Publishing Corporation in his honor in 2000. The corporation and the R. H. Boyd Family Endowment Fund offer fellowships in his name for African-Americans engaged in graduate study
Postgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
.
In April 2009 he was posthumously inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame
Music City Walk of Fame
The Music City Walk of Fame in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, is a walk of fame that honors significant contributors to Nashville's musical heritage and significant achievements in the music industry....
in Nashville in honor of his contributions to preserving the music of former slaves and their descendants.
External links
Further reading
- Bobby L. Lovett, 1996. A Black Man’s Dream: The First Hundred Years, The Story of R. H. Boyd. Mega Publishing Company. ISBN 156742032X, ISBN 9781567420326
- How It Came to Be: The Boyd Family’ Contribution to African American Religious Publishing from the 19th to the 21st Century (2007)
- Paul Harvey, "'The Holy Spirit Come to Us . . .': Richard H. Boyd and Black Religious Activism in Nashville," in Tennessee History: the Land, the People, and the Culture, ed. Carroll Van West (1998), 270-286.