In collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Office of Public Records and Archives is sharing the following resources to help you learn more about this year's Black history theme: Black Resistance. To learn more about theme and ASALH read the theme executive summary here.
Black Business as Resistance
Black success was an act of rebellion. The following resources highlight the role of Black businesses in the development of Black history and culture and their role in resistance. This is only a selection of the many cultural institutions and individuals who have made contributions. We encourage you to seek out more.
Books:
- Butler, John Sibley. Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans: A Reconsideration of Race and Economics. New York: SUNY Press, 1991
- This revision of a classic work traces the unique development of business enterprises and other community organizations among black Americans from before the Civil War to the present.
- Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. New York: Liveright, 2020.
- From civil rights to Ferguson, Franchise reveals the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America. Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who―in the troubled years after King's assassination―believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.
- Hill, Laura Warren; Rabig, Julia. The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2012.
- The Business of Black Power emphasizes the centrality of economic goals to the larger black freedom movement and explores the myriad forms of business development in the Black power era. This volume charts a new course for Black power studies and business history, exploring both the business ventures that Black power fostered and the impact of Black power on the nation's business world. Black activists pressed business leaders, corporations, and various levels of government into supporting a range of economic development ventures, from Black entrepreneurship, to grassroots experiments in economic self-determination, to indigenous attempts to rebuild inner-city markets in the wake of disinvestment. They pioneered new economic and development strategies, often in concert with corporate executives and public officials. Yet these same actors also engaged in fierce debates over the role of business in strengthening the movement, and some African Americans outright rejected capitalism or collaboration with business.
- Jenkins, Carol; Hines, Elizabeth Gardner. Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire. London: One World Publication, 2005.
- The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million and a business empire spanning communications, real estate, and insurance. Gaston was, by any measure, a heroic figure whose wealth and influence bore comparison to J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Here, for the first time, is the story of the life of this extraordinary pioneer, told by his niece and grandniece, the award-winning television journalist Carol Jenkins and her daughter Elizabeth Gardner Hines.
- Walker, Juliet E.K. History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009
- Despite almost four centuries of black independent self-help enterprises, the agency of African Americans in attempting to forge their own economic liberation through business activities and entrepreneurship has remained noticeably absent from the historical record. Juliet Walker's award-winning book is the only source that provides a detailed study of the continuity, diversity, and multiplicity of independent self-help economic activities among African Americans. This new, updated edition covers African American business history through the end of the Civil War and features the first comprehensive account of black business during this era.
- Weare, Walter B. Black Business in the New South: A Social History of the NC Mutual Life Insurance Company. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
- At the turn of the century, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company became the "world's largest Negro business." Located in Durham, North Carolina, which was known as the "Black Wall Street of America," this business came to symbolize the ideas of racial progress, self-help, and solidarity in America. Walter B. Weare's social and intellectual history, originally published in 1973 (University of Illinois Press) and updated here to include a new introduction, still stands as the definitive history of black business in the New South. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including personal papers of the company's leaders and oral history interviews—Weare traces the company's story from its ideological roots in the eighteenth century to its economic success in the twentieth century.
- White, Shane. Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015
- In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. And Hamilton was African American. Although his origins were lowly, possibly slave, he was reportedly the richest black man in the United States, possessing a fortune of two million, or in excess of two hundred and fifty million in today’s currency. In Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire, a groundbreaking account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time.
Articles:
- WTTW PBS Chicago, From Riots to Renaissance: Black Business
- The seeds of Bronzeville's thriving economy were sown in the population boom of the 1910s and '20s. As the number of blacks in the city soared during the Great Migration, demand for goods and services rose and businessmen and entrepreneurs rushed to satisfy the needs of black consumers. Drug stores, barber shops, fish markets, beauty parlors, florists, everything a resident could want or need was found close to home in the busy shopping districts of the black community.
- Juliet E. K. Walker, Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship in the United States before the Civil War. The Business History Review Vol. 60, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 343-382
- In reconstructing the early business history of black America, Professor Walker emphasizes the diversity and complexity of antebellum black entrepreneurship, both slave and free. With few exceptions, prevailing historical assessments have confined their analyses of pre-Civil War black business participation to marginal enterprises, concentrated primarily in craft and service industries. In America's preindustrial mercantile business community, however, blacks established a wide variety of enterprises, some of them remarkably successful. The business activities of antebellum blacks not only offer insights into the multiplicity of responses to the constraints of racism and slavery, but also highlight relatively unexplored areas in the historical development of the free enterprise system in the United States.
- John Sibley Butler, Myrdal Revisited: The Negro in Business Daedalus Vol. 124, No. 1, An American Dilemma Revisited (Winter, 1995), pp. 199-221
- In the years since Gunner Myrdal published An American Dilemma, there have been many changes in the area of race relations. This article revisits that work in light of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
- James W. Hagy, Black Business Women in Antebellum Charleston The Journal of Negro History Vol. 72, No. 1/2 (Winter - Spring, 1987), pp. 42-44 (3 pages)
- One of the fields of study which has received inadequate attention is women in business. Works such as those of Julia Cherry Spruill, Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies (1938), Elisabeth Anthony Dexter, Women in Business and the Professions in America Before 1776 (1924), and her Career Women in America, 1776 – 1840 (1950) are largely superficial. These mainly employ newspapers as their sources. This article focuses on the development of Black women businesses in Charleston.
- Michael Andrew Fitzpatrick, "A Great Agitation for Business": Black Economic Development in Shaw. Washington History Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 1990/1991), pp. 48-73
- A look at the development of Black business in the Shaw neighborhood in DC.
- Adam Fletcher Sasse, History of Businesses Owned by African Americans in Omaha
- Black empowerment has long been associated with economics, ownership and fiscal ability. As a white person, I do not and cannot understand this fully, and what follows is a well-meaning, if misguided, attempt to share my half-understanding with others. I have not found another history of this type, and I am committed to sharing the under-reported history of North Omaha, of which Black-owned businesses are an essential part. If I’ve messed up here, I hope you will leave a note in the comments and share any criticisms, additions, corrections or otherwise. Also, please share this history with others. This is a history of businesses owned by African Americans in Omaha.
Videos:
A behind-the-scenes look at a new project that is part of the Waller-McDonald Collection of African American History. The Historical Society's Tom Milhollan has been working to collect history related to Black-owned businesses in Washington during the early 20th Century.
It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. But Tulsa's story is part of a larger history of Black Wall Streets that existed in many American cities.
Marcellus Sterling Collins, Sr. was born into an enterprising family on June 7, 1919. He and his brothers were raised in Dania, Florida and continued the legacy started by his parents, Richard A. and Leola Collins. In 1923, his father and mother owned and operated Collins Grocery, the first grocery store in Westside Dania. His parents were pioneering members of the Mt. Zion AME Church and his mother, and advocate for education and healthcare for blacks, helped found Provident Hospital in 1938. Collins Elementary School was named in her honor.
Despite facing discrimination and systemic barriers restricting access to entrepreneurial opportunities, Black people made significant contributions to business practices that enriched communities across the United States. The National Negro Business League
Annie Malone was the first Black female millionaire. This is her story
This is Ted Brown's Digital Film Workshop's final project about Annie Malone. Annie is the pioneer of the black hair care industry back in the early 1900s.
Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867, near Delta, Louisiana. After suffering from a scalp ailment that resulted in her own hair loss, she invented a line of African-American hair care products in 1905. She promoted her products by traveling around the country giving lecture-demonstrations and eventually established Madame C.J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and train sales beauticians.
The Negro in Industry (1952) pitches Chesterfield cigarettes while showing African Americans of achievement, from Horace Sudduth of the National Negro Business League to Congressman William Dawson of Illinois, with some homage to the common laborer worked in as they're such great smokers. The film draws on newsreel footage from All American News company.
Online Exhibitions:
A series of video workshops on Black Entrepreneurs. From the Keller Center: Black entrepreneurs have a history of overcoming great obstacles and creating something from nothing. All entrepreneurs and innovators share in the legacy of overcoming significant obstacles and of assembling finite resources. If you are an innovator or entrepreneur, these lectures and workshops are for you.
Business historian Juliet E. K. Walker refers to the era from 1900 to 1930 as the "golden age of black business" where "leading black capitalists . . . reflected their success within a black economy, which developed in response to the nation's rise of two worlds of race."4 African Americans who attended HBS during this time went on to make significant contributions in diverse fields and in their communities. Norris B. Herndon, for example, played a pivotal role in his family's insurance company, one of the largest African American owned businesses in Atlanta. H. Naylor Fitzhugh served as an influential professor at Howard University and assumed a senior executive position at the Pepsi–Cola Company. The accomplishment of other graduates such as Benjamin Tanner Johnson and Monroe Davis Dowling were deeply felt in both the private and public sectors. From 1915 to the founding of the African-American Student Union in 1968, however, fewer than 50 African American students had attended HBS.
“Jim Crow” laws—first enacted in the 1880s by angry and resentful Southern whites against freed African Americans—separated blacks from whites in all aspects of daily life. Favoring whites and repressing blacks, these became an institutionalized form of inequality. This exhibit explores artifacts of that era that reflect the resilience of Black business during that dark period in American history.
‘Community and Commerce’ website documents more than a dozen business owners’ first-person stories of success and challenges
