| dbo:abstract
|
- Black-owned businesses (or Black businesses), also known as African-American businesses, originated in the days of slavery before 1865. Emancipation and civil rights permitted businessmen to operate inside the American legal structure starting in the Reconstruction Era (1863–77) and afterwards. By the 1890s, thousands of small business operations had opened in urban areas. The most rapid growth came in the early 20th century, as the increasingly rigid Jim Crow system of segregation moved urban Blacks into a community large enough to support a business establishment. The National Negro Business League—which Booker T. Washington, college president, promoted—opened over 600 chapters. It reached every city with a significant Black population. African-Americans have operated virtually every kind of company, but some of the most prominent Black-owned businesses have been insurance companies, banks, recording labels, funeral parlors, barber shops, beauty salons, restaurants, soul food restaurants, record stores, and bookstores. By 1920, there were tens of thousands of Black businesses, the great majority of them quite small. The largest were insurance companies. The League had grown so large that it supported numerous offshoots, serving bankers, publishers, lawyers, funeral directors, retailers and insurance agents. The Great Depression of 1929-39 was a serious blow, as cash income fell in the Black community because of very high unemployment, and many smaller businesses closed down. During World War II many employees and owners switched over to high-paying jobs in munitions factories. Black businessmen generally were more conservative elements of their community, but typically did support the Civil Rights Movement. By the 1970s, federal programs to promote minority business activity provided new funding, although the opening world of mainstream management in large corporations attracted a great deal of talent. Black entrepreneurs originally based in music and sports diversified to build "brand" names that made for success in the advertising and media worlds. (en)
|
| dbp:caption
|
- Real estate mogul Robert Reed Church, the South's first Black millionaire, in a photograph for the Washington D.C.-based newspaper "The Colored American," in 1903. (en)
- Portrait of businessman, autobiographer and politician Mifflin Wistar Gibbs in 1902. (en)
- A lithograph of noted abolitionist and autobiographer Lunsford Lane reproduced in William George Hawkins' biography of him. (en)
- Portrait of Elizabeth Keckley, abolitionist, seamstress to First Lady Lincoln and autobiographer, date unknown. (en)
- Watercolor of James Forten , the wealthiest Black man of his time in Philadelphia, and believed to have been painted during his lifetime. (en)
- Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made woman millionaire in the U.S, photographed between 1905 and 1914. (en)
- A photo of Walker's manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, 1911. (en)
|
| dbp:quote
|
- There were 2.6 million black or African American-owned firms nationally in 2012, up from 1.9 million or 34.5 percent from 2007. Many apps and online directories, such as The Nile List or Official Black Wallstreet, have emerged offering a database of African American owned businesses that consumers can support. (en)
- The number of Black-owned businesses doubled from 20,000 in 1900 to 40,000 in 1914. There were 450 undertakers in 1900, but by 1914 they had doubled to 1000. The number of drugstores rose from 250 to 695. The number of retail merchants – most of them quite small – jumped from 10,000 to 25,000. (en)
|
| rdfs:comment
|
- Black-owned businesses (or Black businesses), also known as African-American businesses, originated in the days of slavery before 1865. Emancipation and civil rights permitted businessmen to operate inside the American legal structure starting in the Reconstruction Era (1863–77) and afterwards. By the 1890s, thousands of small business operations had opened in urban areas. The most rapid growth came in the early 20th century, as the increasingly rigid Jim Crow system of segregation moved urban Blacks into a community large enough to support a business establishment. The National Negro Business League—which Booker T. Washington, college president, promoted—opened over 600 chapters. It reached every city with a significant Black population. (en)
|
.jpg?width=300)
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
