78 books like Black Business In The New South

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.    

Michelle Lanier’s My N.C. from A to Z is illustrated by another awesome North Carolina native, Dare Coulter.

This wonderful book celebrates the great state of North Carolina, highlighting our African American heritage, unveiling historical landmarks, and introducing kids to social justice icons. Spotlights include the Great Dismal Swamp, Ella Baker, Black Wall Street, and Pauli Murray.

I get a kick out of a story that presents a main character who doesn’t fit the expected norms of a hero or heroine. A feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper/cook is not your typical amateur sleuth. When her checks bounce because her rich employer fails to pay her, Blanche goes on the lam. Hiding as a maid for a wealthy family, things look bleak when a murder occurs in the home.  Blanche calls on her savvy and wit to discover the truth. As the story unfolds, the author uses humor and biting sentences to present a glimpse into the foibles of southern society toward domestic help. This is the first of this cozy mystery series featuring a very memorable character, Balance White. An enjoyable read!  

Once you read Blanche on the Lam, I believe you won’t hesitate to search out book two of the series to see what further adventures… show more.

When I started a book club in 2019, this was one of the first books we read! In West Mills is set in rural North Carolina and follows Azalea “Knot” who refuses to let her town dictate how she’s going to live. She has a mind of her own. She has spunk. But her life of wild choices is leading to some difficult consequences: ostracization from her family, living as an outcast in her own community. What I loved about this book was how lived-in it felt—all of the characters are flawed, and their dialogue and domestic scenes are so fully realized and believable. I highly recommend this book for fans of historical fiction and family dramas!

When I teach students about the Civil Rights Movement, many of them had previously learned that the freedom struggle ended after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. I disabuse them of this notion by highlighting all the political work that was inspired—rather than stymied—by King’s passing. In this book, Fergus provides a provocative idea: What if the radicals of the late 1960s and 1970s were able to influence liberals and conservatives alike? By showing the ways that Black Power actually resonated with the leaders of pre-Reagan America, Fergus recovers the various approaches to capitalism, political participation, and compromise that can’t be easily categorized as Left or Right.

Wilmington’s Lie, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, documents one of the darkest episodes in North Carolina’s history – the violent overthrow of an elected government in the Black-majority city of Wilmington. It was a massacre that left at least 60 Black men dead. I lived in North Carolina for decades before I heard about this history. And I’m hardly alone. Until recently, this coup had been described as a “race riot” and largely omitted from textbooks, while its White supremacist organizers had been revered as great North Carolinians. If you want to understand what people mean when they talk about the “whitewashing” of American history, this book is the ultimate case study.

By investigating what white liberal Greensboro meant with the word “civility” against what black activists meant by “civil rights,” Chafe dives deep into the limits of white liberalism, undermining the claim that civil rights could be achieved by following a slow, southern, and civil, approach.