omplete change of life and enforced this demand with public scrutiny. . .isolated members from the `world and forced them to proclaim the public stigma of their affiliation. Ethically disciplined deviance resulted. This model of the Mission Movement is comparative to Protestantism where members of the religion were forced into solidarity by religious affiliation, isolated from the dominant society, and rationalized profit with a positive relationship to God. The result of the spread of Protestantism was also disciplined deviance. The Father Divine Peace Mission Movement was responsible for enabling many African-American entrepreneurs in spite of the depression.11 As one sociologist noted, however, `an ideology together with an organization can do things which individual entrepreneurship among Negroes cannot achieve.12 This is perhaps due to the contradiction in the stress of individuality in American entrepreneurship and its relationship to the communal foundations in religion. In Protestantism it is brotherly love, and in The Peace Mission Movement it is cooperation. Both stress a certain sense of interdependency and communal solidarity that is based on common faith.Necessary to understanding the plight of the African-American entrepreneur is the relationship of the entrepreneur to the society. Until as recent as thirty years ago the African-American was excluded, in a legal and non-legal manor, from; jobs, labor unions, country clubs, and access to capital and credit institutions.13 Therefore, the American landscape was not conducive to fostering successful African-American entrepreneurs until the mid to late nineteen sixties. In effect, widespread African-American entrepreneurship is a new phenomenon. Due to the environment of discrimination, Things did not begin to change on a noticeable scale until the late 1970s and early 1980s. . .the seeds of the current diversification and growing capacity of black businesses can b...
