My passion and expertise related to African American business history began years ago when I searched for a Ph.D. dissertation topic. After mulling over a variety of options, I ultimately decided to examine the history of an African American insurance company in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. While working on this project, I began to formulate ideas for future research in the realm of African American business history. I subsequently developed into one of the acknowledged experts in this field. Based upon my track record, I served as a historical consultant and appeared in the documentary Boss: The Black Experience in Businesswhich premiered on PBS in April 2019.
I wrote...
Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century
Business in Black and White provides a panoramic discussion of various initiatives that American presidents have supported to promote black business development in the United States. Many assume that U.S. government interest in promoting black entrepreneurship began with Richard Nixon's establishment of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in 1969. Drawn from a variety of sources, Robert E. Weems, Jr.'s comprehensive work extends the chronology back to the Coolidge Administration with a compelling discussion of the Commerce Department's “Division of Negro Affairs.”
Weems deftly illustrates how every administration since Coolidge has addressed the subject of black business development, from campaign promises to initiatives to downright roadblocks.
Despite almost four centuries of black independent self-help enterprises, the agency of African Americans in attempting to forge their own economic liberation through business activities and entrepreneurship has remained noticeably absent from the historical record. Juliet Walker's award-winning ""History of Black Business in America"" is the only source that provides a detailed study of the continuity, diversity, and multiplicity of independent self-help economic activities among African Americans.This new, updated edition divides the original work into two volumes. The first volume covers African American business history through the end of the Civil War and features the first comprehensive account of black…
Professor Butler’s classic bookis 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 long-awaited revision of a classic work traces the unique development of business enterprises and other community organizations among black Americans from before the Civil War to the present.
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 Detourfocuses 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 Detourhas 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.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
Black Business in the New Southprovides 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.
At the turn of the century, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company became the "world's largest Negro business." Located in Durham, North Carolina, which was known as the "Black Wall Street of America," this business came to symbolize the ideas of racial progress, self-help, and solidarity in America. Walter B. Weare's social and intellectual history, originally published in 1973 (University of Illinois Press) and updated here to include a new introduction, still stands as the definitive history of black business in the New South. Drawing on a wide range of sources-including personal papers of the company's leaders and oral…
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
