African Americans in Business - Today
For additional titles (books, articles, etc), search BU Libraries Search using these terms: African American Businesspeople and African American Business Enterprises.
See also: Library of Congress: African Americans in Business and Entrepreneurship: A Resource Guide.
White Burgers, Black Cash : fast food from Black exclusion to exploitation by
The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community Today, fast food is disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods and marketed to Black Americans through targeted advertising. But throughout much of the twentieth century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces. In White Burgers, Black Cash, Naa Oyo A. Kwate traces the evolution in fast food from the early 1900s to the present, from its long history of racist exclusion to its current damaging embrace of urban Black communities. Fast food has historically been tied to the country's self-image as the land of opportunity and is marketed as one of life's simple pleasures, but a more insidious history lies at the industry's core. White Burgers, Black Cash investigates the complex trajectory of restaurant locations from a decided commitment to Whiteness to the disproportionate densities that characterize Black communities today. Kwate expansively charts fast food's racial and spatial transformation and centers the cities of Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., in a national examination of the biggest brands of today, including White Castle, KFC, Burger King, McDonald's, and more. Deeply researched, grippingly told, and brimming with surprising details, White Burgers, Black Cash reveals the inequalities embedded in the closest thing Americans have to a national meal.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2023I'm Not Yelling by "I'm Not Yelling provides a strategy for savvy black business women navigating a predominantly white corporate America. It empowers black women to find their voices in toxic work environments and succeed. Statistical and anecdotal evidence guide the way. Explore the data and hear the accounts of Black women in business who face, work through, and rise above workplace discrimination. Find your voice as a women entrepreneur. Successful business women use their voice to become strong Black leaders who instill positive change in the workplace culture.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
Please Sit over There: how to manage power, overcome exclusion, and succeed as a Black woman at work by
The key to your career advancement is understanding how power works--who has it, where it hides, and how it's used. Please Sit Over There teaches Black women the career skills they need to navigate an uneven playing field and achieve long-lasting professional success. Black women continuously navigate systems that were never intended for them while playing by a set of rules they never agreed to or were ever trained for. In this book, Francine Parham shares her knowledge as a Black woman and a former global executive of two major corporations on how to move up in the workplace while maintaining a sense of sanity. The key skill--one that Black women are rarely taught--is understanding the power dynamics within your organization and learning how to shift the power to your advantage. Parham shows how to use your voice, strategically build the right relationships, and support others once you have achieved a powerful position--tools any woman can use to increase her power and ensure a successful, fulfilling career. Parham says Black women are already empowered; there is no shortage of qualified professional Black women in the talent pipeline. But it does not feel empowering when organizations force Black women to work every day to overcome biases, discriminatory institutional practices, and unwritten rules of power at play that hinder their career development and professional advancement. Please Sit Over There honors the painstaking work being undertaken to deconstruct broken institutions and demonstrates how Black women can achieve their goals while those institutions still exist-effectively opening doors for all women of color.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
You've been chosen : thriving through the unexpected by
A relentlessly optimistic memoir by one of the most influential Black business leaders in America today, offering hope and practical guidance for navigating life's most difficult challenges, inspired by the author's cancer journal that went viral "Focus. Pray. Act. Serve. And we'll get through this together." Cynthia "Cynt" Marshall has spent her life beating the odds. Growing up in the public housing projects of Richmond, California, Cynt never wondered why her mother didn't sit down to dinner every night, realizing only later that she sometimes sacrificed her own meal so her six children could eat. Cynt's father, meanwhile, had a terrifying temper and physically abused his wife and children for years. But Cynt didn't let her background deter her. Instead, she focused on her education, propelling herself through college and into her first job in corporate America. As a rising professional, Cynt overcame overt and subtle racism to become one of the first Black, female officers at AT&T by age forty, while surviving multiple miscarriages and family tragedies. As her husband helped her see a new way of creating a family, she started to see that her plan was not always God's plan. Cynt was president of AT&T North Carolina when, at fifty-one, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer, just one lymph node from Stage 4. Overnight, her life changed from managing corporate strategy to managing an aggressive chemotherapy schedule, her best hope for survival. Instead of giving up, Cynt got on her knees. Her lifelong spiritual foundation and faith in the power of prayer carried her forward as she shared her journey online through heartfelt posts that chronicled the challenges and unexpected blessings of cancer, transforming her diagnosis from a death sentence into a chance to serve people around the world. With positivity and deep faith, Cynt Marshall reminds us that we are each uniquely equipped for the challenges life presents us. In sharing her deeply inspiring story, she helps ensure that we will not just survive but thrive through trials, celebrate challenges, and laugh at what life brings us
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
Black Faces in High Places : 10 strategic actions for Black professionals to reach the top and stay there by
A timely resource for Black professionals on how to rise to the top of their organizations or industries and, just as importantly, to stay there. Black Faces in High Places is the essential guide for Black professionals who are moving up through their organizations or industries but need a roadmap for how to get to the top and stay there. Based on the authors' considerable experiences in business, in the public eye, and as a minority, the book shows how African-American professionals can (and must) think and act both entrepreneurially and "intrapreneurially". In this book, you will: Expand yourself beyond your comfort zone Recognize and demonstrate the four facets of excellence Build beneficial relationships and powerful networks Identify different mentors and learn from others' experiences Discover ways of working with others to facilitate collective action Black Faces in High?Places highlights the experiences of other Black faces in high places who were able to navigate various crossroads, reach the top, and stay there, including insights from President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Cathy Hughes, Angela Glover Blackwell, Ken Chenault, Senator Cory Booker, Geoffrey Canada, and others.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
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
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: 2018
African American Entrepreneurs : successes and struggles of entrepreneurs of color in America by
African American entrepreneurs are key contributors to the American economy. Faced with numerous challenges, many African American entrepreneurs have learned to transcend tough obstacles, leverage resources, and strategically pursue opportunities to achieve business success. This book captures the stories and mindsets of contemporary African Americans in their quest for the American dream.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
Pioneering African-American Women in the Advertising Business : biographies of mad Black women by
Much has been written about the men and women who shaped the field of advertising, some of whom became legends in the industry. However, the contributions of African-American women to the advertising business have largely been omitted from these accounts. Yet, evidence reveals some trailblazing African-American women who launched their careers during the 1960s Mad Men era, and went on to achieve prominent careers. This unique book chronicles the nature and significance of these women's accomplishments, examines the opportunities and challenges they experienced and explores how they coped with the extensive inequities common in the advertising profession. Using a biographical narrative approach, this book examines the careers of these important African-American women who not only achieved managerial positions in major mainstream advertising agencies but also established successful agencies bearing their own names. Based on their words and memories, this study reveals experiences which are intriguing, triumphant, bittersweet and sometimes tragic. These women's stories comprise a vital part of the historical narrative on women and African-Americans in advertising and will be instructive not only to scholars of advertising and marketing history but to future generations of advertising professionals.
Location: Pardee Stacks HF5810.A2 D39 2017Publication Date: 2017
