Featured Books for Juneteenth
The African American Entrepreneur: Challenges and Opportunities in the Trump Era
Location: Pardee Stacks HD2358.5.U6 R65 2019
This second edition provides both a history of black entrepreneurship in America throughout all periods of American history and a roadmap that explains the steps that prospective entrepreneurs must take to achieve success in business. In the process, it spotlights the many amazing breakthroughs made by black entrepreneurs even before the Civil War and Emancipation. Part One explores the history of African American entrepreneurs from slavery to the present; Part Two provides a primer and roadmap to success for aspiring entrepreneurs.
The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship
Location: Pardee Stacks HD2358.5.U6 W345 2009 This work 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 divides the original work into two volumes. The first volume covers African American business history through the end of the Civil War and features the first comprehensive account of black business during the Civil War. The second volume covers the era spanning from the end of the Civil War to the twenty-first century.
The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights Since Emancipation
Location: Pardee Stacks HD8081.A65 B57 2007
Uniting the latest scholarship on race, labor, and civil rights, The Black Worker aims to establish the richness of the African American working-class experience, and the indisputable role of black workers in shaping the politics and history of labor and race in the United States. The essays' subjects include black migration, strikebreaking, black conservatism, gender, and the multiple forms of employment discrimination in the South and North. Other contributions deal explicitly with state policy and black workers during the transition from slavery to freedom, World Wars I and II, and the 1960s.
Books for Juneteenth
The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond by
The first black woman Harvard MBA tells the remarkable story of how she achieved the American dream. Lillian Lincoln Lambert rose from humble beginnings as a poor farm girl in the segregated South to become the first black woman to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School and, later, the founder of a $20 million maintenance company with 1,200 employees. In The Road to Someplace Better, she shares an inspiring personal journey that took her from dead-end jobs in New York City and Washington, D.C., to the ivory tower and the world of entrepreneurship. In addition to her own hard work and tenacity, she shows how her love of reading-instilled in her by her mother-spurred her to reach her goals. By sharing her inspiring life story, she helps others see that they, too, have the power to dream big, act bold, and achieve their goals. Charts Lillian Lincoln Lambert's inspiring rise from a poor, rural upbringing in the segregated South to success as a barrier-breaking CEO and entrepreneur Inspiring memoir of a groundbreaking business pioneer who broke down racial, gender, and social barriers to achieve unprecedented success Lillian Lincoln Lambert received Harvard Business School's Alumni Achievement Award in 2003 and has been featured on Good Morning America and in Time, the Washington Post, and Entrepreneur The Road to Someplace Better is a book you'll want to read whether you're interested in business, history, or an unforgettable story of personal triumph against the odds.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2010
The African American Entrepreneur: Then and Now by
African American entrepreneurship has been an integral part of the American economy since the 1600s. On the eve of the Civil War, the collective wealth of free blacks was approximately $50 million. In 2006, African Americans earned a whopping $744 billion, a figure that exceeds the gross domestic product of all but 15 nations of the 192 independent countries in the world. As W. Sherman Rogers so ably demonstrates, African Americans have achieved these economic gains under difficult circumstances. Slavery, segregation, and legally limited access to property, education, and other opportunities have taken a heavy toll, even to this day. Besides providing a penetrating glimpse into the world of black entrepreneurship both past and present, this book urges African Americans to gain financial independence as entrepreneurs. Business ownership, Rogers argues, will bring security, wealth that can be passed to successive generations, and educated offspring with much greater earning power. The African American Entreprenuer: Then and Now explores the lower economic status of black Americans in light of America's legacy of slavery, segregation, and rampant discrimination. Its main purpose is to shine a light on the legal, historical, sociological and political factors that together help to explain the economic condition of black people in America from their arrival in America to the present. In the process, the book spotlights the many amazing breakthroughs made by black entrepreneurs even before the Civil War and Emancipation. Profiles of business people from the Post-civil War period through today include Booker T. Washington, pioneer banker and insurer A.G. Gaston, hair care entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker, Ebony publisher John H. Johnson, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson, publisher Earl Graves, music producer Damon Dash, rapper Sean Combs, former basketball stars Dave Bing and Magic Johnson, food entrepreneur Michelle Hoskins, broadcast personality Cathy Hughes, former Beatrice Foods head Reginald Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, and many more. As Rogers points out, reading about remarkable African American entrepreneurs can inspire readers to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. To further that goal and help readers take the plunge, he outlines many of the skills, tools and information necessary for business success-success that can help chart a new path to prosperity for all African Americans.
Location: Pardee Library Stacks HD2358.5.U6 R65 2010Publication Date: 2009
To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers by
In 1966, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an African American civil rights group with Southern roots, joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union on its 250-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, California, to protest the exploitation of agricultural workers. SNCC was not the only black organization to support the UFW: later on, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Black Panther Party backed UFW strikes and boycotts against California agribusiness throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. To March for Others explores the reasons why black activists, who were committed to their own fight for equality during this period, crossed racial, socioeconomic, geographic, and ideological divides to align themselves with a union of predominantly Mexican American farm workers in rural California. Lauren Araiza considers the history, ideology, and political engagement of these five civil rights organizations, representing a broad spectrum of African American activism, and compares their attitudes and approaches to multiracial coalitions. Through their various relationships with the UFW, Araiza examines the dynamics of race, class, labor, and politics in twentieth-century freedom movements. The lessons in this eloquent and provocative study apply to a broader understanding of political and ethnic coalition building in the contemporary United States.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Survived Slavery and Became Millionaires by
Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of industrious, tenacious, and daring men and women broke new ground to attain the highest levels of financial success. Mary Ellen Pleasant, used her Gold Rush wealth to further the cause of abolitionist John Brown. Robert Reed Church, became the largest landowner in Tennessee. Hannah Elias, the mistress of a New York City millionaire, used the land her lover gave her to build an empire in Harlem. Orphan and self-taught chemist Annie Turnbo-Malone, developed the first national brand of hair care products. Mississippi school teacher O. W. Gurley, developed a piece of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a "town" for wealthy black professionals and craftsmen that would become known as "the Black Wall Street." Although Madam C. J Walker was given the title of America's first female black millionaire, she was not. She was the first, however, to flaunt and openly claim her wealth--a dangerous and revolutionary act. Nearly all the unforgettable personalities in this amazing collection were often attacked, demonized, or swindled out of their wealth. Black Fortunes illuminates as never before the birth of the black business titan.
Location: Pardee Stacks HC102.5.A2 W55 2019Publication Date: 2019
Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America by
Today, black-owned barber shops play a central role in African American public life. The intimacy of commercial grooming encourages both confidentiality and camaraderie, which make the barber shop an important gathering place for African American men to talk freely. But for many years preceding and even after the Civil War, black barbers endured a measure of social stigma for perpetuating inequality: though the profession offered economic mobility to black entrepreneurs, black barbers were obliged by custom to serve an exclusively white clientele. Quincy T. Mills traces the lineage from these nineteenth-century barbers to the bustling enterprises of today, demonstrating that the livelihood offered by the service economy was crucial to the development of a black commercial sphere and the barber shop as a democratic social space. Cutting Along the Color Line chronicles the cultural history of black barber shops as businesses and civic institutions. Through several generations of barbers, Mills examines the transition from slavery to freedom in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth-century expansion of black consumerism, and the challenges of professionalization, licensing laws, and competition from white barbers. He finds that the profession played a significant though complicated role in twentieth-century racial politics: while the services of shaving and grooming were instrumental in the creation of socially acceptable black masculinity, barbering permitted the financial independence to maintain public spaces that fostered civil rights politics. This sweeping, engaging history of an iconic cultural establishment shows that black entrepreneurship was intimately linked to the struggle for equality.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry by
Looking through the lens of black business history, Beauty Shop Politics shows how black beauticians in the Jim Crow era parlayed their economic independence and access to a public community space into platforms for activism. Tiffany M. Gill argues that the beauty industry played a crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity and that the seemingly frivolous space of a beauty salon actually has stimulated social, political, and economic change. From the founding of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and onward, African Americans have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit by starting their own businesses, but black women's forays into the business world were overshadowed by those of black men. With a broad scope that encompasses the role of gossip in salons, ethnic beauty products, and the social meanings of African American hair textures, Gill shows how African American beauty entrepreneurs built and sustained a vibrant culture of activism in beauty salons and schools. Enhanced by lucid portrayals of black beauticians and drawing on archival research and oral histories, Beauty Shop Politics conveys the everyday operations and rich culture of black beauty salons as well as their role in building community.
Location: Mugar Stacks E185.86 .G494 2010Publication Date: 2010
The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire by
Born to enslaved parents, Anthony Overton became one of the leading African American entrepreneurs of the twentieth century. Overton's Chicago-based empire ranged from personal care products and media properties to insurance and finance. Yet, despite success and acclaim as the first business figure to win the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, Overton remains an enigma. Robert E. Weems Jr. restores Overton to his rightful place in American business history. Dispelling stubborn myths, he traces Overton's rise from mentorship by Booker T. Washington, through early failures, to a fateful move to Chicago in 1911. There, Overton started a popular magazine aimed at African American women that helped him dramatically grow his cosmetics firm. Overton went on to become the first African American to head a major business conglomerate, only to lose significant parts of his businesses--and his public persona as "the merchant prince of his race"--in the Depression, before rebounding once again in the early 1940s. Revealing and panoramic, The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago weaves the fascinating life story of an African American trailblazer through the eventful history of his times.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2020
