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The White visitor headed up the stairs to the large open space above the storerooms and merchants’ offices on Philadelphia’s South Wharves and introduced himself to James Forten, the “gentleman of color” he had heard so much about....

Abolitionist and capitalist Mary Ellen Pleasant does not seem like the obvious choice for a lesson on Black entrepreneurship. Her work as a freedom fighter, boardinghouse keeper, and investor renders her atypical in histories of...

Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a Black man whose very existence flies in the face of our understanding of the way things were in nineteenth-century New York. He made his fortune as a broker. Although a pioneer, far from being some novice...

Nothing about Madam C. J. Walker’s origins would suggest that she would become the most famous Black businesswoman and philanthropist of her day. Indeed, for most of her life, the woman known as Madam C. J. Walker lived in fairly...

Chicago is unique among major American cities in that its first non-Native American resident, as well as its first entrepreneur, was Black. Although much of the life of Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable (1745–1818) remains unknown, his...

The statistics on Black women-owned businesses in the United States are very impressive. A report from JP Morgan indicated that “the number of businesses owned by Black women grew 50% from 2014 to 2019, representing the highest growth...