The best books about African American business history

Professor Walker’s book represents the definitive overview of African American business history.

Her narrative begins on the African continent, where she explodes myths about African Americans not possessing a long-standing business tradition.

Similarly, Walker’s discussion of the entrepreneurial activities of enslaved Africans is a ground-breaking contribution to historical scholarship.

This is at the top of my favorite books list!

Professor Butler’s classic book is a foundational work in the realm of African American business history.

Combining both sociological and historical analysis, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans includes case studies of notable African American business districts.

For instance, years before recent interest in the horrific destruction of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” in 1921, Butler provided an in-depth examination of this phenomenon.

This book is also valuable because it provides an important comparative analysis of historic African American entrepreneurship with that of various nonwhite immigrant groups.  

This classic work, originally published in 1940, provides a panoramic examination of African American insurance companies (including a detailed overview of individual firms).

Although An Economic Detour focuses on black insurers, its’ broader analysis encompassed all black-owned enterprises during this period. Specifically, Stuart declared that, under the dictates of Jim Crow racial segregation, African American entrepreneurs were relegated to only serving African American consumers.

This, necessarily, had an inhibiting impact on their profitability. Especially since non-African American entrepreneurs also had access to the African American consumer market.

As someone who has written extensively on black-owned insurance companies, An Economic Detour has been a long-standing “go-to” resource for me.

Ivan Light’s Ethnic Enterprise in America utilizes both sociological and historical analysis.

From my perspective, what makes Light’s classic book unique and important is its’ detailed discussion of “rotating credit associations.”

These were/are community-based networks that allow participants to raise capital for a variety of economic projects (such as starting or growing a business).

According to Light, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans regularly (and successfully) used rotating credit associations; African Americans did not (although rotating credit associations were/are a part of African tradition).

Ethnic Enterprise in America plausibly suggests that this form of “cultural amnesia” can be linked to the trauma associated with the enslavement of transplanted Africans in America.

Published over fifty years ago, this book remains useful and informative.    

Black Business in the New South provides a detailed examination of North Carolina Mutual, the largest African-American-owned insurance company.

Among other things, Weare’s analysis includes a cogent assessment of how black-owned companies, in all industries, compared to their white counterparts. He asserts that African American enterprises, historically, have been economically backward and socially advanced.

Specifically, for a variety of reasons, the profits of black enterprises tend to be smaller than their white counterparts. However, in the realm of corporate social responsibility, black companies have been more community-minded than white companies.

On a personal note, this book served as a template for my first book.