"The Training Blitzkrieg Against Unpreparedness": Violet T. Lewis and the Founding of Detroit's Lewis Business College

My paper will examine Violet T. Lewis and her role in expanding business opportunities for black women by founding Detroit’s first business school for African Americans. Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans left the U.S. South for places north and west as part of the Great Migration. Many of these migrants went to Detroit, Michigan and were drawn by high wages offered in the automobile industry. However, black women were excluded from jobs in automobile factories for decades. Because black women had fewer employment opportunities than black men, they often chose entrepreneurship to gain the economic independence and autonomy not possible through jobs like domestic service work. At a time when Detroit business colleges did not admit black students, Violet Lewis founded the Lewis College of Business in 1939—the only Historically Black College in the state of Michigan. This business school originally enrolled only women who wanted to gain more skills to work professional jobs or start their own business. Early courses included typewriting, accounting, business correspondence, economics, and business psychology. My paper will explore the changing economic position of women in the United States’ WWII era, and how black women attempted to carve out a space for themselves in Detroit’s defense economy.