May 19, 1904

J. H. McConico—an African-American educator, newspaper editor and publisher, businessman, national grand auditor for the Mosaic Templars of America, and a civil rights pioneer—married Mattie Keith. McConico’s business and civil rights leadership included membership in the National Negro Business League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association. McConico’s business career and philosophy were inextricably connected with Booker T. Washington’s National Negro Business League (NNBL). Like Washington, McConico made speeches and wrote essays exalting the league’s principles of racial uplift through a successful, but separate, black economy.