Search Immortality Topics:



How a publishing company started by a former slave has lasted for 120 years – Yahoo Finance

Posted: February 21, 2020 at 2:50 pm

While Twitter and Facebook occupy time that many consumers could spend reading books, R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation CEO LaDonna Boyd does not view social media as a threat to her business. Shes the fifth generation CEO of a publishing company started over 120 years ago by her great-great-grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Richard Henry Boyd, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Twitter is definitely not my competitor at all. I think that theres so many different ways to share a story. Theres a medium that suits everyone whether you want 140 characters on Twitter, or if you wanna write the next long novel, Boyd told Yahoo Finance.

R.H. Boyd Publishing prints, publishes, and distributes Christian materials to over 10,000 churches, organizations, and individuals across the country. The company has over 40 full-time employees and numerous offsite editors, proofreaders, and writers. Boyd credits the companys longevity to its ability to master its expertise and meet the faith-based needs of its consumers.

For us weve had to ebb and flow if you will, with the industry and the market but were doing well, she said. Were very strong and I think its because we have a passion and were experts in our field so that helps us kind of stand apart from many others. But were all feeling it of course. You just have to be able to transition and to shift and pivot. So having digital resources and just engaging with your consumers in a different way.

Rev. Dr. Richard Henry Boyd Credit: R.H. Boyd Publishing Co.

Born a slave, Boyds great-great-grandfather couldnt read and write until he was 22 years old. He was born in 1843 in Mississippi so just imagine that existence. That harsh upbringing and just that tumultuous time in our history, Boyd said. After he was eventually freed, he became a pastor.

Boyd said that, in overcoming the injustices of being a slave, her great-great-grandfather empowered the next generation of African Americans to own their own narrative through Christian education. He wanted to kind of go against the system if you will and give his people an opportunity to have their own voices and tell their own stories and have their own narrative and something so special and intimate as their faith walk, she said.

The accomplishment of the Rev. Dr. R.H. Boyd reverberates today nearly 100 years after his death. When he founded the National Baptist Publishing Board, now R.H. Boyd Publishing, in 1896, he started out by working with a small group of churches using money he and his wife had saved.

When he died in 1922, he had become a noted entrepreneur. He co-founded One Cent Savings Bank, now Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Co., in 1904. It was the first minority owned bank in Tennessee. Ten cents was the minimum deposit required to open an account back then. Boyd was president of the bank from 1904 to 1922. Boyd also founded the Nashville Globe Publishing Company in 1905 and the Negro Doll Company in 1911.

Credit: R.H. Boyd Publishing Co.

Story continues

See the original post here:
How a publishing company started by a former slave has lasted for 120 years - Yahoo Finance

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith