Black History Month
February is Black History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate the rich and varied lives that make up Black American History. For this list, we're spotlighting some of the most fascinating and inspiring stories of Black Americans in business available at Pardee. These histories honor people who demonstrated resilience in the face of injustice, broke glass ceilings and blazed new trails. Their stories are relevant any month of the year, and the lessons they teach carry lasting relevance to the present day.
Featured Reading
Built from the Fire : The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street : One Hundred Years in the Neighborhood That Refused to Be Erased
Location: Online
When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to Greenwood, Tulsa, in 1914, his family joined a growing community on the cusp of becoming a national center of black life. But, just seven years later, on May 31, 1921, the teenaged Ed hid in a bathtub as a white mob descended on his neighborhood, laying waste to thirty-five blocks and murdering as many as three hundred people. The Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the most brutal acts of racist violence in U.S. history, a ruthless attempt to smother a spark of black independence. But that was never the whole story of Greenwood. In Built from the Fire, journalist Victor Luckerson delivers an honest, moving portrait of this potent national symbol of success and solidarity--and weaves an epic tale about a neighborhood that refused, more than once, to be erased. A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR.
African American Management History : Insights on Gaining a Cooperative Advantage
Location: Online
The most successful business leaders always have their own compelling philosophies, but all too often the thoughts and ideologies of high-profile African American leaders are forgotten or passed over. The ideas and practices of these visionary leaders, sometimes heralded within their own communities, are often ignored by mainstream media and, over time, many of their contributions are forgotten. Leadership experts Leon C. Prieto and Simone T.A. Phipps re-light these extinguished torches reflecting on some of the leading black business pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th century. This study brings to light how heavily the "golden age of black business" was impacted by the "cooperative advantage" possessed by leaders such as Charles Clinton Spaulding, John Merrick, Alonzo Herndon, Annie Turnbo-Malone, Madam C.J Walker, and Maggie Walker. The history here brought to light demonstrates to students that they too can succeed at managing any enterprise, no matter the challenges they may face.
Madam C. J. Walker's Gospel of Giving: Black Women's Philanthropy during Jim Crow
Location: Online
Founder of a beauty empire, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated in the early 1900s as America's first self-made female millionaire. Known as a leading African American entrepreneur, Walker was also devoted to an activist philanthropy aimed at empowering African Americans and challenging the injustices inflicted by Jim Crow. Tyrone McKinley Freeman's biography highlights how giving shaped Walker's life before and after she became wealthy. Walker found mentorship among black churchgoers and working black women. Her adoption of faith, racial uplift, education, and self-help soon informed her dedication to assisting black women's entrepreneurship, financial independence, and activism.
Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving broadens our understanding of black women’s charitable giving and establishes Walker as a foremother of African American philanthropy.
Books for Black History Month
Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal by
Shennette Garrett-Scott explores black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2019
Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black Banker by
Binga is the definitive full-length biography of Jesse Binga, the first black banker in Chicago. Born into a large family in Detroit, Binga arrived in Chicago in 1892 in his late twenties with virtually nothing. Through his wits and resourcefulness, he rose to wealth and influence as a real estate broker, and in 1908 he founded the Binga Bank, the first black-owned bank in the city. But his achievements were followed by an equally notable downfall. Binga recounts this gripping story about race, history, politics, and finance. The Black Belt, where Binga's bank was located, was a segregated neighborhood on Chicago's South Side--a burgeoning city within a city--and its growth can be traced through the arc of Binga's career. He preached and embodied an American gospel of self-help and accrued wealth while expanding housing options and business opportunities for blacks. Devout Roman Catholics, he and his wife Eudora supported church activities and various cultural and artistic organizations; their annual Christmas party was the Black Belt's social event of the year. But Binga's success came at the price of a vicious backlash. After he moved his family into a white neighborhood in 1917, their house was bombed multiple times, his offices were attacked twice, and he became a lightning rod for the worst race riots in Chicago history, which took place in 1919. Binga persevered, but, starting with the stock market crash of October 1929, a string of reversals cost him his bank, his property, and his fortune. A quintessentially Chicago story, Binga tells the history of racial change in one of the most segregated cities in America and how an extraordinary man stood as a symbol of hope in a community isolated by racial animosity.
Location: Pardee Stacks HG2463.B53 H39 2019Publication Date: 2019
Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by
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. Born at a time when the bitter legacy of slavery and Reconstruction still poisoned the lives of black Americans, Gaston was determined to make a difference for himself and his people. His first job, after serving in the celebrated all-black regiment during World War I, bound him to the near-slavery of an Alabama coal mine—but even here Gaston saw not only hope but opportunity. He launched a business selling lunches to fellow miners, soon established a rudimentary bank—and from then on there was no stopping him. A kind of black Horatio Alger, Gaston let a single, powerful question be his guide:What do our people need now?His success flowed from an uncanny genius for knowing the answer. Combining rich family lore with a deep knowledge of American social and economic history, Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Hines unfold Gaston’s success story against the backdrop of a century of crushing racial hatred and bigotry. Gaston not only survived the hardships of being black during the Depression, he flourished, and by the 1950s he was ruling a Birmingham-based business empire. When the movement for civil rights swept through the South in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gaston provided critical financial support to many activists. At the time of his death in 1996, A. G. Gaston was one of the wealthiest black men in America, if notthewealthiest. But his legacy extended far beyond the monetary. He was a man who had proved it was possible to overcome staggering odds and make a place for himself as a leader, a captain of industry, and a far-sighted philanthropist. Writing with grace and power, Jenkins and Hines bring their distinguished ancestor fully to life in the pages of this book.Black Titanis the story of a man who created his own future—and in the process, blazed a future for all black businesspeople in America.
Location: Pardee Stacks HC102.5.G375 J46 2004Publication Date: 2003
The Business Strategy of Booker T. Washington: Its Development and Implementation by
Michael Boston offers a radical departure from other interpretations of Booker T. Washington by focusing on the latter's business ideas and practices. More specifically, Boston examines Washington as an entrepreneur, spelling out his business philosophy at great length and discussing the influence it had on black America. He analyzes the national and regional economies in which Washington worked and focuses on his advocacy of black business development as the key to economic uplift for African Americans. The result is a revisionist book that responds to the skewed literature on Washington even as it offers a new framework for understanding him. Based upon a deep reading of the Tuskegee archives, it acknowledges Washington not only as a champion of black business development but one who conceived and implemented successful strategies to promote it as well. The Business Strategy of Booker T. Washington makes abundantly clear that Washington was not an accommodationist; it will be required reading for any future discussion of this titan of history.
Location: Online and Pardee Stacks E185.97.W4 B676 2010Publication Date: 2010
Confronting the Odds: African American Entrepreneurship in Cleveland, Ohio by
An updated and revised edition of the award-winning studyThe history of African American entrepreneurship has produced a number of studies of economic development on the national level, but very few have examined this growth at the local level. Confronting the Odds was written to bridge that gap, and Bessie House-Soremekun provides this historical analysis of African American entrepreneurship in Cleveland, Ohio, from the early 1800s to the present. Additionally, in examining these historical and current trends, House-Soremekun presents brief biographies of several successful entrepreneurs, among them George C. Fraser, best-selling author; Robert P. Madison, internationally acclaimed architect; Leroy Ozanne, founder of Ozanne Construction Company; and Rachel Y. Daniel, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Synergy International Limited, Inc. and Decision Point Marketing and Research, Inc.House-Soremekun's statistical analysis of the factors that contributed to the success of African American businesses in Cleveland is supported by extensive research, and her policy recommendations about how entrepreneurship could be stimulated through public and private programs are thought provoking. Confronting the Odds documents life histories of business owners, compares African American male and female business owners, and offers insights into why some businesses succeed and others fail.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD2358.5.U62 C54 2009Publication Date: 2009
Democracy, Race, and Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Sadie T. M. Alexander by
The first book to bring together the key writings and speeches of civil rights activist Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander--the first Black American economist "Sadie Alexander embodies the Black feminist saying, 'the political is personal.' Her speeches brilliantly intertwine economics and law and will empower the next generation scholars-activists fighting for social justice."--Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, President, Women's Institute for Science, Equity and Race In 1921, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander became the first Black American to gain a Ph.D. degree in economics. Unable to find employment as an economist because of discrimination, Alexander became a lawyer so that she could press for equal rights for African Americans. Although her historical significance has been relatively ignored, Alexander was a pioneering civil rights activist who used both the law and economic analysis to challenge racial inequities and deprivations. This volume--a recovery of Sadie Alexander's economic thought--provides a comprehensive account of her thought-provoking speeches and writings on the relationship between democracy, race, and justice. Nina Banks's introductions bring fresh insight into the events and ideologies that underpinned Alexander's outlook and activism. A brilliant intellectual, Alexander called for bold, redistributive policies that would ensure racial justice for Black Americans while also providing a foundation to safeguard democracy.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2021
Encyclopedia of African American Business by
This two-volume set showcases the achievements of African American entrepreneurs and the various businesses that they founded, developed, or promote as well as the accomplishments of many African American leaders--both those whose work is well-known and other achievers who have been neglected in history.Nearly everyone is familiar with New York City's Wall Street, a financial center of the world, but much fewer individuals know about the black Wall Streets in Durham and Tulsa, where prominent examples of successful African American leaders emerged. Encyclopedia of African American Business: Updated and Revised Edition tells the fascinating story that is the history of African American business, providing readers with an inspiring image of the economic power of black people throughout their existence in the United States. It continues the historical account of developments in the African American business community and its leaders, describing the period from 18th-century America to the present day. The book describes current business leaders, opens a fuller and deeper insight into the topics chosen, and includes numerous statistical tables within the text and in a separate section at the back of the book. The encyclopedia is arranged under three broad headings: Entry List, Topical Entry List, and Africa American Business Leaders by Occupation. This arrangement introduces readers to the contents of the work and enables them to easily find information about specific individuals, topics, or occupations. The book will appeal to students from high school through graduate school as well as researchers, library directors, business enterprises, and anyone interested in biographical information on African Americas who are business leaders will benefit from the work.
Location: Pardee Reference Collection HD2358.5.U6 E53 2018Publication Date: 2017
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by
An estimated one-third of all American adults eats something from at a fast-food restaurant every day. Millions start their mornings with paper-wrapped English muffin breakfast sandwiches, order burritos hastily secured in foil for lunch, and end their evenings with extravalue dinners consumed in cars. But while people of all ages and backgrounds enjoy and depend on fast food, it does not mean the same thing to each of us. For African Americans, as acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain reveals in Franchise, fast food is a source of both despair and power--and a battlefield on which the fight for racial justice has been waged since the 1960s. On the one hand, we rightly blame fast food for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, and fast food restaurants are viewed as symbols of capitalism's disastrous effects on our nation's most vulnerable citizens. Yet at the same time, Chatelain shows, fast food companies, and McDonald's in particular, have represented a source of economic opportunity and political power. After Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968, many activists turned to entrepreneurship as the means to achieving equality. Civil rights leaders, fast food companies, black capitalists, celebrities, and federal bureaucrats began an unlikely collaboration, in the belief that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could improve the quality of black life. Equipped with federal loans and utterly committed to the urban centers in which they would open their little sites of hope, black franchise pioneers achieved remarkable success, and by the late 2000s, black-franchised McDonald's restaurants reported total sales exceeding $2 billion. Fast food represented an opportunity for strivers who had been shut out of many industries, denied promotions in those that would tolerate them, and discouraged, in numerous ways, from starting their own businesses, all because of the color of their skin. But a parallel story emerged, too--of wealth being extracted from black communities, of the ravages of fast food diets, of minumum wage jobs with little prospect for advancement. Taking us from the first McDonald's drive-in in San Bernardino in the 1940s to civil rights protests at franchises in the American South in the 1960s and the McDonald's on Florissant Avenue in Ferguson in the summer 2014, Chatelain charts how the fight for racial justice is intertwined with the fate of black businesses. Deeply researched and brilliantly told, Franchise is an essential story of race and capitalism in America.
Location: Pardee Stacks TX945.3 .C46 2020Publication Date: 2020
In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street by
The never-before-told story of five decades of African Americans onWall Street Here, for the first time, is the fascinating history of the AfricanAmerican experience on Wall Street as told by Gregory Bell, the sonof the man who founded the first black-owned member firm of the NewYork Stock Exchange. A successful finance professional in his ownright with close ties to leading figures in both the blackfinancial and civil rights communities, Bell tells the stories ofthe pioneers who broke down the ancient social and politicalbarriers to African American participation in the nation sfinancial industry. With the help of profiles of many importantblack leaders of the past fifty years including everyone from JesseJackson and Maynard Jackson, former mayor of Atlanta, to E. StanleyO Neal, COO and President of Merrill Lynch, and Russell Goings,founder of First Harlem Securities and cofounder of First HarlemSecurities he shows how in the years following World War II thegrowing social, political, and financial powers of AfricanAmericans converged on Wall Street. Set to publish during BlackHistory Month, In the Black will be warmly received by AfricanAmerican business readers and general readers alike.
Location: Pardee Stacks HG172.A2 B45 2002Publication Date: 2002
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#8221--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
Staking a Claim: Jake Simmons and the Making of an African-American Oil Dynasty by
From the post-Reconstruction period to the modern civil rights era, nearly a century of state-sanctioned economic subjugation created what many regard as a permanent black underclass in America. What would have happened had freed slaves truly been enfranchised into the political and economic system after the Civil War? Staking a Claim, the life of Jake Simmons, Jr. - the international tycoon who was the most successful African-American in the history of the oil industry - affords us a rare perspective on this question. Simmons's great-grandfather, Cow Tom, a slave interpreter to a Creek Indian, rose to become the first black chief of a Native American tribe. This was in Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma), where blacks were able to secure rights denied them in the white-controlled states. Cow Tom passed on a unique legacy of independence and entrepreneurial spirit that gelled in Jake. His resolve strengthened by his studies with Booker T. Washington, Jake took a series of calculated risks that allowed him to accomplish what would have seemed impossible to many - and become enormously rich at it. He began by brokering oil leases for black landowners who had formerly been cheated by white drillers in Oklahoma and Texas. Expanding his operations into postcolonial Africa, he negotiated amiably where America's multinational oil giants feared to tread, winning enormous concessions while earning the goodwill of African leaders.As a political power broker, Jake Simmons was no less impressive. He remained throughout his life what he called "a crusader for human dignity." In 1938 he brought one of the first school desegregation cases to the Supreme Court. It was said that while he served as the head of Oklahoma's NAACP his opinion held sway over ten thousand voters. White politicians across the South vied for his support. He asked his sons, "How the hell can a black man stay in bed in the morning when white men rule the world?" - and he lived by those words.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9570.S56 G74 1990Publication Date: 1990
Succeeding Against the Odds: The Autobiography of a Great American Businessman by
One of America's wealthiest entrepreneurs, John H. Johnson rose from the welfare rolls of the Depression to become the most successful Black businessman in American history; the founder of Ebony, Jet, and EM magazines; and a member of the Forbes 400. Like the man himself, this autobiography is brash, inspirational, and truly unforgettable.
Location: Pardee Stacks Z473.J75 A3 1989Publication Date: 1989
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