Constant "C. C." Dejoie Sr. (1881-1970) was a businessman and entrepreneur in

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

who co-founded ''

The Louisiana Weekly ''The Louisiana Weekly'' is a weekly newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana. It emphasizes topics of interest to the African-American community, especially in the New Orleans area and south Louisiana. It has an estimated weekly circulati ...

'' newspaper. He was

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

Biography

Dejoie was born on November 11, 1881, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to his parents

Aristede Dejoie Aristede Dejoie (died 1917) was a businessman and state legislator in Louisiana. He served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1872 to 1874 and 1877 to 1879. He also served as a tax assessor. He and T. B. Stamps asserted ...

and Ellen Dejoie (''née'' Chambers), a family of Creole heritage. Dejoie was educated in the

New Orleans Public Schools The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) governs the public school system that serves New Orleans, Louisiana. It includes the entirety of Orleans Parish, coterminous with New Orleans. The OPSB directly administers 6 schools and has granted charter ...

and subsequently attended

Southern University Southern University and A&M College (Southern University, Southern, SUBR or SU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) in Louisiana, a ...

, graduating in 1898. He worked in various capacities in the New Orleans area, later joining the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company which his father had founded. Dejoie served as business manager of the then-small enterprise. In 1921, Dejoie became president of Unity Life, initiating a period of rapid expansion of its business. He expanded this insurance company by building branch offices throughout

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

and establishing a subsidiary company in the then rapidly growing metropolis of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. The company suffered significantly during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, and Dejoie carried the company through the economic downturn by focusing on whole life policies. Unity Life was philanthropic, having made donations to

Flint-Goodridge Hospital Flint-Goodridge Hospital was a hospital that was for many years located at 2425 Louisiana Avenue, next to LaSalle Street, in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana, US. For almost a century (1896–1983) it served predominantly African-American patients ...

and to the

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

. In August 1939, Dejoie was accused of conspiracy to murder his nephew Prudhomme John Earl Dejoie, in an incident that became known as the "Dejoie Affair". C.C. Dejoie was subsequently cleared of the allegation, while a friend and Unity Life employee Henry Wilcox was convicted. Late in the Great Depression, Dejoie sold his interests in Unity Life. With former New Orleans public school teache
O.C.W. Taylor
Dejoie founded ''The Louisiana Weekly'' newspaper in 1925. The intent of the newspaper was to provide an outlet and a voice for the African-American community, a serious need in the Jim Crow South of the time. Dejoie and Taylor provided $2000 for initial financing, and they established its offices at the corner of Gravier St. and Saratoga St. (now Loyola Ave.) at the black-owne
Pythian Temple Building
Its first publication was on September 19, 1925, published under the name ''The New Orleans Herald''. However, it was renamed ''The Louisiana Weekly'' less than one month later. Taylor left ''The Louisiana Weekly'' after one year, leaving management of the enterprise entirely to Dejoie. In the early years of the publication, Dejoie made use of his business associates to sell the newspaper and to gather information for publication. Dejoie died in 1970.

Personal life

Dejoie married Vivian Baxter in 1914 with whom he subsequently had three children, Constant Charles Jr., Vivian (Mrs. John V. Roussell) and Henry Baxter. Dejoie's descendants, including Renette Dejoie-Hall, continued to serve in editorial capacities of ''The Louisiana Weekly'' at least until 2014.

External links

*
photograph of Constant C. Dejoie
can be viewed on-line.
''The Louisiana Weekly''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dejoie, Constant C. Sr. African-American business executives American business executives African-American cultural history 1881 births 1970 deaths Businesspeople from New Orleans 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century African-American people