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
The African American Entrepreneur by
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.This second edition of The African American Entrepreneur explores the lower economic status of black Americans in light of America's legacy of slavery, segregation, and rampant discrimination against black Americans. The book examines the legal, historical, sociological, economic, 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, 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.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2019
The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship by
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.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2009
The Black Worker by
Long before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made a frontal assault on the reigning segregationist order, African American workers had to struggle against both their employers and fellow white workers. Because their efforts to secure their workplace rights pitted them against the broader structures of racial oppression, their activism constituted nothing less than a form of civil rights struggle. 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. To capture the complexity of African Americans' experiences in the workplace, this reader examines workers engaged in a wide array of jobs, including sharecropping, coal mining, domestic service, longshoring, automobile manufacturing, tobacco processing, railroading, prostitution, lumbering, and municipal employment. 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. The variety of challenges made by these workers, both quiet and overt, served as clear reminders to the supporters of white supremacy that, despite their best efforts through violence, fraud, and the law, as long as they insisted on racial inequality, the "race question" would never be fully resolved. Contributors: Eric Arnesen, Beth Tompkins Bates, Cynthia M. Blair, Tera W. Hunter, William Powell Jones, Brian Kelly, Robert Korstad, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joseph A. McCartin, Steven A. Reich, Leslie A. Schwalm, Nan Elizabeth Woodruff
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2007
Books for LGBTQ+ History and Pride Month
Queer Career : Sexuality and Work in Modern America by
A masterful history of the LGBT workforce in America Workplaces have traditionally been viewed as "straight spaces" in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Queer Career rectifies this, offering an expansive historical look at sexual minorities in the modern American workforce. Arguing that queer workers were more visible than hidden and, against the backdrop of state aggression, vulnerable to employer exploitation, Margot Canaday positions employment and fear of job loss as central to gay life in postwar America. Rather than finding that many midcentury employers tried to root out gay employees, Canaday sees an early version of "don't ask / don't tell": in all kinds of work, as long as queer workers were discreet, they were valued for the lower wages they could be paid, their contingency, their perceived lack of familial ties, and the ease with which they could be pulled in and pushed out of the labor market. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, they were harbingers of post-Fordist employment regimes we now associate with precarity. While progress was not linear, by century's end some gay workers rejected their former discretion, and some employers eventually offered them protection unattained through law. Pushed by activists at the corporate grass roots, business emerged at the forefront of employment rights for sexual minorities. It did so, at least in part, in response to the way that queer workers aligned with, and even prefigured, the labor system of late capitalism. Queer Career shows how LGBT history helps us understand the recent history of capitalism and labor and rewrites our understanding of the queer past.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2023
Changing Corporate America from Inside Out : Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights by
A long-overdue study of the workplace movement, Raeburn's analysis focuses on the mobilization of lesbian, gay, and bisexual employee networks over the past fifteen years to win domestic partner benefits in Fortune 1000 companies. Drawing on surveys of nearly one hundred corporations with and without gay networks, intensive interviews with human resources executives and gay employee activists, as well as a number of case studies, Raeburn reveals the impact of the larger social and political environment on corporations' openness to gay-inclusive policies, the effects of industry and corporate characteristics on companies' willingness to adopt such policies, and what strategies have been most effective in transforming corporate policies and practices to support equitable benefits for all workers.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2004
Buying Gay : How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement by
David K. Johnson tells the story of the physique magazine produced by and for gay men to show how gay commerce was not a byproduct of the gay-rights movement but an important catalyst for it. He offers a vivid look into the lives of physique entrepreneurs and their customers, presenting a wealth of illustrations.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2019
Out at Work : Building a Gay-Labor Alliance by
Today in thirty-nine states, employers may legally fire workers simply because they are known or thought to be gay. Clearly, the struggle against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation has a long way to go. In Out at Work, a distinguished group of prominent gay rights activists, union leaders and members, policymakers, and academics--including U.S. Representative Barney Frank, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney, and rights advocate Urvashi Vaid--offers a spirited assessment of the challenges faced by lesbians, gays, and other sexual minorities on the job. Although mainstream gay rights organizations have tended to imagine their community as primarily middle class, an overwhelming number of lesbians and gays are working class, and many are already union members. Indeed, most of the progress made toward improved workplace conditions for gays and lesbians has been accomplished by rank-and-file union activists. Out at Work identifies the important parallels between the labor and gay rights movements and their shared work of foregrounding human rights, fighting homophobia, and embracing the full range of sexual expression. Through case studies of organizing efforts and more broadly political approaches, the authors call for both movements to reexamine their priorities and practices. There is much to be gained from a partnership between these movements, they conclude: for the gay rights movement, having the bargaining power of the trade unions behind them; for organized labor, a broader base of support. Contributors: Cathy J. Cohen, Yale U; Teresa Conrow; Lisa Duggan, NYU; William Fletcher Jr., AFL-CIO; Representative Barney Frank; Tami Gold, Hunter Colle≥ Yvette Herrera, Communication Workers of America; Desma Holcomb, UNITE; Amber Hollibaugh; Gloria Johnson, Coalition of Labor Union Women; Tamara Jones; Heidi Kooy, Exotic Dancers Union; Andrew Ross, NYU; Van Alan Sheets, Pride at Work; Nikhil Pal Singh, U of Washington; John J. Sweeney, AFL-CIO; Jeff Truesdell, Orlando Weekly; Urvashi Vaid, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; Riki Anne Wilchins, GenderPAC; and Kent Wong, UCLA.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2001
Business, Not Politics : The Making of the Gay Market by
In a hard-hitting book that refutes conventional wisdom, Katherine Sender explores the connection between the business of marketing to gay consumers and the politics of gay rights and identity. She disputes some marketers'claims that marketing appeals to gay and lesbian consumers are a matter of "business, not politics" and that the business of gay marketing can be considered independently of the politics of gay rights, identity, and visibility. She contends that the gay community is not a preexisting entity that marketers simply tap into; rather it is a construction, an imagined community formed not only through political activism but also through a commercially supported media. She argues that marketing has not only been formative in the constitution of a GLBT community and identity but also has had significant impact on the visibility of gays and lesbians.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2005
Plane Queer : Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants by
In this vibrant new history, Phil Tiemeyer details the history of men working as flight attendants. Beginning with the founding of the profession in the late 1920s and continuing into the post-September 11 era, Plane Queer examines the history of men who joined workplaces customarily identified as female-oriented. It examines the various hardships these men faced at work, paying particular attention to the conflation of gender-based, sexuality-based, and AIDS-based discrimination. Tiemeyer also examines how this heavily gay-identified group of workers created an important place for gay men to come out, garner acceptance from their fellow workers, fight homophobia and AIDS phobia, and advocate for LGBT civil rights. All the while, male flight attendants facilitated key breakthroughs in gender-based civil rights law, including an important expansion of the ways that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would protect workers from sex discrimination. Throughout their history, men working as flight attendants helped evolve an industry often identified with American adventuring, technological innovation, and economic power into a queer space.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
Lean Impact : How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good by
Despite enormous investments of time and money, are we making a dent on the social and environmental challenges of our time? What if we could exponentially increase our impact? Around the world, a new generation is looking beyond greater profits, for meaningful purpose. But, unlike business, few social interventions have achieved significant impact at scale. Inspired by the modern innovation practices, popularized by bestseller The Lean Startup, that have fueled technology breakthroughs touching every aspect of our lives, Lean Impact turns our attention to a new goal - radically greater social good. Social change is far more complicated than building a new app. It requires more listening, more care, and more stakeholders. To make a lasting difference, solutions must be embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the need. Lean Impact offers bold ideas to reach audacious goals through customer insight, rapid experimentation and iteration, and a relentless pursuit of impact. Ann Mei Chang brings a unique perspective from across sectors, from her years as a tech executive in Silicon Valley to her most recent experience as the Chief Innovation Officer at USAID. She vividly illustrates the book with real stories from interviews with over 200 organizations across the US and around the world. Whether you are a nonprofit, social enterprise, triple bottom line company, foundation, government agency, philanthropist, impact investor, or simply donate your time and money, Lean Impact is an essential guide to maximizing social impact and scale.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
Surpassing Certainty : What My Twenties Taught Me by
"A defining chronicle of strength and spirit" (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world--without a road map to guide her. This memoir "should be required reading for your 20s" (Cosmopolitan). A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body after her teenage transition, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their relationship serve as a backdrop for Janet's progression through all the universal growing pains--falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Fueled by her dreams and an inimitable drive, Janet makes her way through New York City intent on building a career in the highly competitive world of magazine publishing--within the unique context of being trans, a woman, and a person of color. Hers is a timely glimpse about the barriers many face--and a much-needed guide on how to make a way out of no way. Long before she became one of the world's most respected media figures and lauded leaders for equality and justice, Janet learned how to advocate for herself before becoming an advocate for others. In this "honest and timely appraisal of what it means to be true to yourself" (Booklist), Surpassing Certainty offers an "exquisitely packaged gift of her experiences...that signals something greater" (Bitch Magazine).
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
The Queering of Corporate America by
What do Apple, Coca Cola, Google, Wal-Mart and Dow Chemical have in common? Aside from being a few of the nation's largest employers, they are among the nearly 400 companies to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the seminal Obergefell v Hodges case explaining that discrimination against LGBT people was harmful to business. Legal scholar Carlos Ball tells the story of how LGBT rights activism aimed at corporations during the twentieth century helped turn them from enterprises either indifferent to or openly hostile toward LGBT equality and into reliable and powerful allies of their movement. From the street protests, "zap actions," and boycott of the Coors Brewing Company in the 1970s, the AIDS activism directed at pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s, and the push for nondiscrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits in the 1990s, LGBT activism changed corporate America's understanding and treatment of LGBT people. By the time LGBT rights issues exploded onto the national scene in the 2000s, corporations were frequently and vigorously promoting LGBT equality both within their own institutions and in the public sphere. At a time when the LGBT movement is facing considerable political backlash, The Queering of Corporate America complicates the narrative of corporate conservatism, and provides insights into the future of the legal, political, and cultural implications of this unexpected relationship.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2019
Out in the Union by
Out in the Union tells the continuous story of queer American workers from the mid-1960s through 2013. Miriam Frank shrewdly chronicles the evolution of labor politics with queer activism and identity formation, showing how unions began affirming the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in the 1970s and 1980s. She documents coming out on the job and in the union as well as issues of discrimination and harassment, and the creation of alliances between unions and LGBT communities. Featuring in-depth interviews with LGBT and labor activists, Frank provides an inclusive history of the convergence of labor and LGBT interests. She carefully details how queer caucuses in local unions introduced domestic partner benefits and union-based AIDS education for health care workers-innovations that have been influential across the U.S. workforce. Out in the Union also examines organizing drives at queer workplaces, campaigns for marriage equality, and other gay civil rights issues to show the enduring power of LGBT workers.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014
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