Henri O'Bryant Has Got a Plan
by Isidra Person-Lynn
Henri
O’Bryant has got a plan. The King of Choir Robes who once sewed robes for
Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, wants to teach the
things he learned in his decades of business to young people. “It doesn’t
matter what you sell—whether it’s airplanes or hot dogs it’s the same basic
principles.” He says the basic business principle starts with a business
plan. “So many fail because they don’t plan their strategy. They just get in
because they have some money but that isn’t the way to do it.”
He ought to know. This week he celebrated his 98th birthday and he has been in business most of his life. Now, he is developing the Henri O’Bryant Youth Business Training Academy because he wants to share what he has learned with youth from 8-18 and get them started in business.
His idea is simple: get each church to let a youth have two parking spaces that nobody is using throughout the week, set up a tent and let them sell non perishable items. "And I don’t want them to stop there, he said. "Let them go and get involved with the Kingdom Day Parade. Celes King and I started the Martin Luther King parade and everybody else is profiting off of it but us. We are out there buying hot dogs and drinks and t-shirts from people who don’t even know who Dr. King was and never once thinking to do it ourselves."
Mr. O’Bryant chided the church for not using its resources to help stem the tide of poverty. “Our churches need to support us more. It hurts me to my heart to be in the congregation and hear some of the things these ministers say about our people. One said ‘I got a ticket from a white police officer yesterday and he let me go. Today I got another ticket from a black officer and he made me pay. You can’t trust negroes!’ he said and there the congregation goes nodding in agreement. I tell you, it hurts me to my heart. We are in awful shape," softly, he says. “But, I can dig us out. I have five sons and every one built a business from the church: making tithing boxes, communion tables, teaching secretaries how to run the church. They all started in the church but the church is sometimes slow in paying so now they are out on their own with great businesses. These kids can do it too.”
Let’s tap into the deep well of history that drives Mr. O’Bryant:
Mr. O’Bryant was born in Abberville, Louisiana, the 7th son of 13—9 girls, 4 boys. His family moved to Lafayette when a young black man was about to be hanged for whistling at a white woman. The whites went to the O’Bryant home and demanded that the senior O’Bryant bring two of his sons to the hanging. “What were you gonna do?" said Mr. O'Bryant. "We had to go.”
And they went. He saw the condemned man's neck
stretch from the weight of his body almost to popping, but the rope locked
under his chin.. After hearing her sons' wide-eyed accounts of what they
had seen, his mother told his
father “You can stay here if you want to but I will not live in a place like
this", and she packed up her family and moved them to New Orleans.
The excitement of the move helped dull the fresh image of the lynching he had witnessed. His mom supported the family with her earnings as a well known seamstress who enlisted Henri’s help. Dad joined them later.
“My mother used to sew for all the white folks. She would make us scrub white flour sacks to get the printing off and she taught us how to make shirts and pants for my brothers and me. That’s how I learned to sew."
When he got older and graduated high school, his sisters, who were caring for him then, wanted to force him to work but O’Bryant wanted to go to school, so he ran away to Atlanta. He found the YMCA with.75 cents in his pocket—but it cost a dollar a night to stay.
Somehow he appealed to the heart of the clerks and they took the 75 cents. He asked where a good college was and was pointed in the direction of Morris Brown College. He told the front office he wanted to attend but he had no money. They told him, "well then you can’t attend." Undaunted, O'Bryant noticed the snow outside. He said "What about all that snow? If I move that for you, can’t my labor be used for tuition?" The lady said "I admire your industriousness," and agreed.
When he went back to the Y to tell them he was enrolled in college, they let him stay for free. Higher ups at the Y liked him so much he was later tapped to go to YMCA Administration school, which he did. He never got to use those skills at the Y because he joined the Navy where he was immediately put in a role of leadership.
During his Navy days he acquired a wife (who he married 4 times but that story will have to wait) and had the first two of his five sons. When he was discharged, he moved to Watts. “They sent me here and gave me $75 dollars. I had two sons and one wife. I didn’t know what to do and how to do it.” But he knew sewing and he opened up a sewing business in his sister’s garage.
His sister worked in the homes of rich Beverly Hills society people and when she began bringing samples of O’Bryant’s work, they would have him come to their homes and order clothing from him. It was a great time to be in the clothing manufacturing business…after the war the shelves were almost bare of clothes. One man liked his work so much he set O'Bryant up in business on Wilshire and Highland, the first African American to have a business in Hollywood. It was 1946.
He continued his studies at Trade Tech and although he was initially barred from taking tailoring classes, he wound up offering to hire 12 of the 18 students in his graduating class. They all had offers and he had none although he was the most sought after so he began to train the women who couldn’t get work anywhere else to come and work for him. At that time choir robes were mostly black or white and he designed some robes that made news all over the country. Articles were written and Ebony Magazine did a full page spread on Mr. O’Bryant’s Robes. That was the beginning of O’Bryant’s Choir Robes.
His empire was nearly ruined though when one weekend he traveled out of town on business and when he returned all of his workers had run off to work in their own businesses or in white owned businesses that lured his workers away.
As a businessman, he recovered and had made quite a name for himself. When asked what church he belonged to he said "all of ‘em. We can drive down any major street from 12th street to Manchester with churches on both sides of the street and they will be tapping me on the shoulders saying Mr. O’Bryant I need to talk to you. Any one,” he challenged. “I was the Magic Johnson of Choir Robes.”
Making such a name for himself brought him to the attention of former Mayor Sam Yorty who had a horrible record at hiring African Americans on the Fire Department. Five captains had been appointed before he got in office and they were the last, said O’Bryant. African Americans were picketing and complaining and Yorty appointed O’Bryant to be a fire commissioner. Then he really began fielding complaints on the “negro problem” one of which was the fact that all black fire captains served in one fire engine company because none of the white firemen wanted to sleep, eat or socialize with them.
But enough about the personal history. Mr O’Bryant really needs to work with a biographer for all the stories he has—from owning a shoe shine parlor, then a haberdashery, then later making drive-in uniforms for MacDonald’s, Bob’s Big Boy and Carl’s Junior.
What has he been doing now? For the past two years all he has talked about is his vision of training youth in the field of business with the Henri O’Bryant Youth Business Training Academy. "I am not a teacher, (young people hate teachers) I am a coach (they love coaches). If the Lord will give me just two more years til I am a hundred, I can work my plan," he said.
Harold Hambrick, Expo Executive director, said he is in awe of Mr. O’Bryant’s plan. “He wants to give youth an opportunity to become stars in the business world where they don’t have to worry about height, weight or the coordination of their feet. The target group is 8-18 and he wants to work with these young people on the art of owning and operating a small business. So, we set up a task force of two (me and him) to work on trying to implement this idea," he said.
"Mr. O’Bryant has a display of all the certificates and articles that were written about him at his home. He was featured in Black Enterprise and Ebony and he has spoken at Howard, Grambling, Dillard and others on business. He is very pleasant--an optimist who never has a bad day. Very, very spiritual….and he is always dressed up," said Hambrick.
Why? “People treat me better when I am dressed well," said Mr. O'Bryant. " I get on the bus with a suit on and three people move to give me their seat. If I got on with shabby clothing they probably wouldn’t do that,” he said of the valuable lesson he learned long ago.
What does he see for the future? “I can’t predict what is going to happen but I do know what we ought to be doing to change our former path of doing nothing,” said Mr. O’Bryant, a staunch Republican.
"I was born that way (Republican). Everybody was republican back in those days. If you were a Democrat it was a secret you had to whisper. But the Republican Party is more business minded than the Democrats."
"I just hope the Lord gives me 2 more years and I’ll be a 100 and I’ll say 'look what I have done.' Every university tells our kids to get a good education and go out and get yourself a job. They ought to be telling them to go out and make yourself a job and then show them how to do it."