Blacks as consumers contribute almost one Trillion dollars to the United States economy, but all most of us get is the satisfaction that comes from the purchases. We purchase billions upon billions of necessary items from large faceless corporations, but we also buy from local businesses products and services such as barber shops and  nail salons. At the end of the day they leave our communities richer than they came, only to be replaced by the next ethic group.
As in politics, we are taken for granted as consumers. We are perceived as easy prey who does not complaint even when we a served low quality goods and services. Some of us feel powerless as consumer because of socio-economic situation.  Whether we have jobs or get public assistance, we are all consumers and should be taken seriously. As consumers, we need to get benefits beyond product or service satisfaction. Businesses spend billions each year to keep their customers happy and we need to get the benefits proportional to the black population. Black Benefit Index is a measure of corporate relationship with their customers. Our measurements are based on jobs, community philanthropy, corporate representation, public relations, quality of product and price.  Black Benefit Index is intended to change corporate behavior by shining a light on their activities in the black community. As consumers we need to stand up and be counted, because one thing is certain in the United States is there are choices. Most goods and services in the same price ranges are similar in quality. For example, if Toyota does not treat us with respect, we can jump in a Ford or Honda. If McDonald’s do the same, we can go to Burger King or KFC.
Black Benefit Index will be based on a ratio  benefit to the population divided by the population percentage times 100. This will give a score revolving around 100. Companies with scores above 100 give back to the community is beneficial to the community for their purchases, and those below 100 does not give us back enough benefit relative to our purchases. Perception it is said is everything, and the Black Benefit Index will put a number on this perception. We will prove if McDonald is good for the community, or Toyota does not care about the black community. The black community has propelled some companies from obscurity to prominence, such Metro PCS, Hyundai, KIA, Tommy Hilfiger.

Global Black Enterprise
Connect Locally and Globally

The internet is a vast territory containing millions of websites. Our job at Global Black Enterprise is to compile those black stories we think are relevant to uplift and motivate, and hopefully those reading will learn something in the process.

What is globalization?
http://www.globalization101.org/What_is_Globalization.html

What does it mean to be black?
 http://theblacksentinel.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/what-does-it-mean-to-be-black/
The meaning of Enterprise
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/enterprise

Burke Notes:

The Global Enterprise 100 is here. I have conceptualized a list of what I would like to become the Global Black Enterprise 100 of companies that have the interests of blacks all over the globe. These corporations operate all around the globe and will consist of companies such as McDonald’s, Cocoa Cola, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Electric. We in the United States look up to these corporations because they employ a lot of black people. These are global corporations that operate all around the world, but do they treat all black consumers around the world as they do in the United States.
I plan to look at how they operate around the globe and the benefits derived from their operations when it comes to black consumers. We all know they are good corporate citizens when they operate in the United States, but in less developed country they cut corners because local governments with corrupt officials allow them to get away with things they would not get away with in developed countries.
I will be looking at such data as how many blacks around on their board to look for the interest of blacks and how they operate in other parts of the world. I will track their progress in reference to the benefits derived as consumers of the products produce by the company. Even though we might not own the means of production, I think we can derive benefits from these corporation through employment by them, becoming a part of  their supply chain, spending in our communities through philantropic efforts,  and in the case of franchises, gain some of the profits by becoming a franchiser.  This list will keep them all honest, because people in many countries have choices of the companies they buy product from and become as satisfied consumer.



African Americans Abroad

http://www.farai.com/from-crisis-to-opportunity-my-transition-from-journalism-to-business/

From Crisis to Opportunity: My Transition from Journalism to Business

Business
http://allafrica.com/stories/201107260119.html
BRICs Scramble for Africa Markets

http://www.onepeoples.com/current/greatcompanies.html

Great Companies for Blacks

http://diversityinc.com/article/8235/How-to-Get-More-Blacks-and-Latinos-in-Accounting/
How to Get More Blacks and Latinos in Accounting

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/07/26/republic-of-congo-is-the-new-made-in-africa-tablet-actually-chinese/

Republic of Congo: Is the New ‘Made In Africa’ Tablet Actually Chinese?

Culture

Economy

http://www.blackvoicenews.com/commentary/more-commentary/46549-african-ambassadors-dazzle-black-entrepreneurs.html

African Ambassadors Dazzle Black Entrepreneurs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/racial-wealth-gap_b_911351.html

Budgeting for Greater Inequality

http://blacksgonegeek.blogspot.com/2011/07/job-seeker-mindset-training.html

Job Seeker Mindset Training

Health

http://healthmarketinnovations.org/blog/2011/jul/22/encouraging-innovation-meeting-health-worker-shortages

Encouraging innovation, meeting health worker shortages

http://www.thegrio.com/health/from-baltimore-to-botswana-making-the-climate-change-connection.php

From the Bronx to Botswana: Making a climate change connection

http://www.thegrio.com/health/ghana-eradicates-guinea-worm-after-23-year-fight.php

Ghana eradicates Guinea worm after 23-year fight

Personalities

http://www.blackvoicenews.com/news/46512-lillian-mobley-queen-of-the-community-succumbs.html

Lillian Mobley, Queen of the Community, Succumbs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/black-teens-unusual-talen_n_910709.html

Tyler Thompson, Black California Teen, Has An Unusual Special Talent: Singing Chinese Opera

Compiler’s Biography:
My name is Colly A. Burke and  I am the compiler of this indexed newsletter. As a senior in high school I took international relations and I was hooked on how the world work globally. The previous 4 years the die was cast when I started reading the Wall Street Journal and eventually graduated to the Financial Times. Throughout the years I earned a couple degrees and started a couple of businesses that failed, but I never got globalization out of my blood. In 2010 I received my MBA from University of Phoenix in Global Management, and thought that it would be a great idea to cut through the internet clutter and give black people, those who are interested in global affairs the information that matters and hopefully make them  better understand, including myself aware of what is happening around us locally and globally. My intent is to  try and connect the links of where we as a people are heading and the path to getting their. Globalization is here to stay and the smoother the path can be made, the better it will be for all our people. I am developing a blog at http://www.globalblackenterprise.com and I am the owner of http://www.caribisle.net, where I sell products that pamper your feet.

To subscribe please visit
http://letterly.net/globalblackenterprise

Please send us a feedback at collyaburke@gmail.com

We must seek benefits beyond product satisfaction

As consumers there has to be benefits beyond product satisfaction, because like other races we need jobs, quality of products and someone to look out for our interests. As black consumers we were always perceived as people anyone could sell anything to, at any price. Although this is a stereotype, there are certain truth to this. Now, as in the past other races have come into our neighborhoods, open businesses and at the end of the day, and them getting rich, leave our communities richer than they came. This makes room for the race to exploit our communities. Internationally this is also true. Resource rich African countries were exploited by the European in the past, and now they are replaced by the Chinese who needs resources to expand their own economies. What they leave behind are infrastructures that will deteriorate over time. The corrupt leaders of these countries allow this to happen. Although there are patches of success, the continent is still struggling with famine and wars.
We must claim our benefits here in the United States and worldwide. We must not only be concern about product satisfaction and price. Even thought we do not own the means of production we need to be concern about building for the future through getting our fair share of jobs, making sure the products we consume are healthy and safe, and we are among those make the final decisions. My idea is to create a black benefits index that include jobs, health and safety, corporate representation, quality of product, community involvement (philanthropy), public relations and price. The Black Benefit Index will compare companies we spend money on each day see which one are the ones that work in our interest. Perceptually we think McDonald’s is good and Toyota is bad. We will in the end come up with the Global Black Enterprise Index 100, which are the 100 companies that exist to serve our best interests and offer the best benefits by providing us with jobs, producing healthy products and puts money into our communities to improve them.

The Global Black Enterprise 100 is here. I have conceptualized a list of what I would like to become the Global Black Enterprise 100 of companies that have the interests of blacks all over the globe. These corporations operate all around the globe and will consist of companies such as McDonald’s, Cocoa Cola, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Electric. We in the United States look up to these corporations because they employ a lot of black people. These are global corporations that operate all around the world, but do they treat all black consumers around the world as they do in the United States.
I plan to look at how they operate around the globe and the benefits derived from their operations when it comes to black consumers. We all know they are good corporate citizens when they operate in the United States, but in less developed country they cut corners because local governments with corrupt officials allow them to get away with things they would not get away with in developed countries.
I will be looking at such data as how many blacks around on their board to look for the interest of blacks and how they operate in other parts of the world. I will track their progress in reference to the benefits derived as consumers of the products produce by the company. Even though we might not own the means of production, I think we can derive benefits from these corporation through employment by them, becoming a part of  their supply chain, spending in our communities through philantropic efforts,  and in the case of franchises, gain some of the profits by becoming a franchiser.  This list will keep them all honest, because people in many countries have choices of the companies they buy product from and become as satisfied consumer.

THE BIG DIVIDE

By Phillip Jackson

Wednesday, June 30, 2010.

The lack of response to globalization by Black America is frightening and troubling. While much of the world has adapted to the new-world economy and new-world standards of existence, most of Black America is still operating much the same way it did in the 1950s and 1960s. But now, throughout Black communities in America, there is a whisper campaign by Black people who don’t know each other and Black people who live in different parts of the country, saying to each other, “We are in trouble!” We know it and the rest of the world knows it! Black America, as we know it, is in danger of not surviving globalization.

In the 21st century, there are only two kinds of people. Not Black or White, or rich or poor, or foreign or national. The two kinds of people in the world today are those who are educated and those who are not. Although education has become the new currency of exchange in the 21st century, the old American educational paradigm stopped working decades ago for Black Americans. Simply sending Black children to American schools without a clear purpose or goal has contributed to the demise of the Black community. Black America watched formerly third-world countries catapult over America to become educational super powers while America rested on its old, stale educational laurels and fell way behind much of the world in educational performance. And because Black America unthinkingly depended on the American education system to educate its children, we have fallen way behind.

The horrific educational, social, health, economic and criminal justice indicators in much of Black America predict a meltdown of gargantuan proportions in the near future for the Black community. But still, the thing that is most remarkable and unbelievable is the lack of response by Black Americans to this impending doom! Without numerous positive changes, practical well-thought-out ideas, massive mobilization and immediate action, the fate of many Black Americans is sealed. We will not be able to prosper in the cities of America or possibly in any city in the world where the new currency for existence is access to global information, higher-order critical thinking and advanced technological skills. There used to be a time when it was better to be poor in America than rich in other countries. Now it might be better to be poor in some other countries than to be poor in America.

Black people in America must immediately disengage from the diversions of mind-deadening entertainment, useless sports, hyper-sexuality, excessive social celebrations, pointless conversations and debates, meaningless media and the civil rights issue de jour approach to managing our problems. We must focus on the most important issue in our communities — making education the highest priority. We must create a culture of literacy and learning that replaces intellectual apathy and resistance to educational progress. Somehow, we must re-inspire our children to want to learn and to love to learn. But having educated children is not enough. We must have educated families and educated communities. Every Black man, woman and child must become part of this new community of learners.
Black America must take education out of the schools and universities and root it in our homes, our workplaces, our communities, our churches and even in our streets and prisons. The purpose of education as defined by the Equipped for the Future initiative, a federally sponsored effort to develop a framework for accountability in adult education, is to help people actualize their roles in society as parent/family members, citizen/community members and workers in the economy. If the education system that serves us is not meeting these objectives, it is a disservice to our children and our communities.
The ability of a people to survive in changing times is not magic, nor is it by chance. Success depends on that people being able to change to survive in a new environment! And new environments demand new skills for survival. Equipped for the Future tells us that without certain basic skills, survival will be extremely difficult for Black people, or any people, in the 21st century. These essential skills are the ability to read with understanding; convey ideas in writing; speak so that others can understand; observe critically; listen actively; solve problems and make decisions appropriately; plan and put those plans into action effectively; use math to solve problems and to communicate; cooperate with others; guide others; advocate and influence; resolve conflict and negotiate; take responsibility for life-long learning; learn through research; reflect and evaluate; and use information and communication technology. These are the skills necessary to survive in the 21st century.

Black people in America must immediately disengage from the diversions of mind-deadening entertainment, useless sports, hyper-sexuality, excessive social celebrations, pointless conversations and debates, meaningless media and the civil rights issue de jour approach to managing our problems.”

The solution to the issue of Black America’s poor response to globalization is to 1) Deconstruct value systems that have caused Black people to arrive at the precipice of non-existence; 2) Construct value systems that will rebuild the Black family as a purveyor of positive values, cultures, mores and education, and re-establish the Black family as the primary and most important social unit of our culture and society; 3) Embrace education as the highest value in the Black community; 4) Effectively manage the negative cultural influences that hugely impact the thinking and actions of Black boys; and 5) Understand that for the rest of existence, change is a required part of the living process. The faster Black America is able to put this plan into action, adopt these new principles and manage change, the more likely we will survive.

Today, many Black people seem to be having “cosmic flashbacks” to our time in slavery, which was the first crude effort at globalization that helped to set the stage for today’s globalization. For years, Black America was buffered from modern globalization by political boundaries and economic barriers. Now globalization has come to our country, our cities, our communities, onto our blocks and into our homes, schools and workplaces. Globalization has happened, whether Black America is ready for it or not. We still have time to make the necessary changes that will guarantee that Black people will survive into the 21st century and that we will thrive in this global economy. But there is not much time. With globalization, Black America has entered into the “Educate or Die” era. In this era, there are only two questions worth answering: “Will we change? Can we survive?” How we emerge from this era is up to us.

Phillip Jackson is the executive director of The Black Star Project

REPRINTED from The New Black  Magazine.com

Even as U.S. society struggles to move beyond its confining binary view of race — white versus black with nothing in between — Brazil, a country where the celebration of racial mixture has long been a central part of the national self-image, may be heading in the opposite direction.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, this South American nation received more African slaves than any country in the Americas. But the shortage of white women, and a less rigid view of racial differences, led Portuguese settlers to mix more readily with nonwhite women than did their English counterparts in North America. The result was the creation of a large, racially mixed population. And unlike the Anglo Americans in the United States, who generally saw society in stark, bipolar racial terms and chose to deny the mixture that did occur, the Portuguese learned to view race on a continuum — white and black with many shades in between.

This doesn’t mean that there was no racism. Indeed, the array of terms used in Brazil to describe different shades of skin color speaks to the existence of a long-standing racial hierarchy in which whites were deemed to be on top and unmixed blacks on the bottom. But despite that, the recognition of gradations of mixture made the idea of race more fluid than it is in the U.S., where social convention has held that anyone with one drop of “African blood” is black. In Brazil, degrees of whiteness — and social acceptance — could be achieved through selective mating.

Indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th century, Brazil’s immigration policy was largely based on an effort to “whiten” the population by adding more European immigrants to the mix. In 1912, Brazilian scientist João Batista de Lacerda predicted that by 2012, the ongoing process of mixture would produce a Brazilian population that was 80% white, 3% mixed race and 17% Indian.

In the 1930s, Brazil shifted direction slightly. It didn’t so much reject the practice of “whitening” as superimpose a companion national ideology that boasted of the benefits of racial and cultural mixture. Thanks largely to the work of Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre, Brazilians came to view widespread mixture as a sign of their cultural superiority and their society’s lack of racism.

Both at home and abroad, Brazil came to be seen a model of racial tolerance. In 1942, prominent African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier argued that Brazil could teach the U.S. a thing or two about race relations.

But by the 1960s, a small but savvy Brazilian “black movement,” inspired in part by the U.S. civil rights movement, began to challenge the national consensus on race. For the next generation, activists called for more research on racial inequality in Brazil, and though they were ultimately incapable of creating an effective mass movement, they successfully influenced the debate. By 2001, their controversial demand for affirmative action in public universities became a reality.

For the last five years, a growing number of universities have adopted and experimented with different types of affirmative action quotas designed primarily to aid blacks and the poor. On the one hand, the fractious debate over affirmative action has helped convince more Brazilians that their history of racial mixture did not erase color-based discrimination. On the other, the establishment of a quota system is obliging a society that has always had a fluid notion of race to begin to standardize, collapse and solidify racial categories in order to determine who exactly should benefit from this race-based entitlement.

As it happens, Batista de Lacerda’s prediction that “blacks” would “disappear” wasn’t that far off. What he did not foresee, however, was the persistence of the large intermediate category between black and white. According to the 2000 census, 53% of Brazilians consider themselves white, 39% pardo — a broad, generic mixed-race category — less than 1% indigenous and Asian and only 6% black.

Because the Brazilian black movement has traditionally had a dual mission — the first to combat color discrimination, the second to forge a black consciousness — it has long championed the adoption of a binary racial classification system in which there are only two choices: black and white. For the purposes of enforcing affirmative action, some universities have begun to do just that. Quotas are not limited to those who are preto (black) but also to mixed-race pardos. Hence, a new de facto black category has emerged, and it represents no less than 45% of the population.

But given the fluidity of race here, it isn’t always clear who is or is not black. Although most university affirmative action programs simply allow for self-classification, two of them require the submission of photos and have formed committees to verify the veracity of racial claims.

Civil rights attorney Humberto Adami told me that he thinks all this is a good thing. Now that blackness confers a benefit, he says, the whitening process will be reversed and more pardos will come to consider themselves fully black. “People are already bringing their [black] grandmothers out of the closets,” he said.

Adami, who helped defend quota students against legal challenges, says universities are just the beginning. He supports the controversial Racial Equality Statute, which is stalled in Congress and is expected to remain there during this presidential election year. If passed, the seemingly innocuous yet far-reaching bill would require all employers to collect racial data from workers and establish quotas in a variety of economic sectors, both public and private. Critics fear that the law would divide society along “pseudo-racial” lines and foster the kind of overt racial tension with which Brazil is not familiar. Proponents argue that those divisions already exist.

Still others, such as Graziella Silva, a Harvard doctoral candidate and Rio native, believe that affirmative action will go through an assimilation process of its own and that it ultimately will be Brazilianized to recognize mixture. “We need to model our public policy on the reality of mixed people,” she told me.

Perhaps because I come from a nation that is at long last beginning to acknowledge racial mixture and to move beyond dangerously rigid notions of race, I hope she’s right.

Gregory Rodriguez has written widely on issues of national identity, social cohesion, assimilation, race relations, religion, immigration, ethnicity, demographics, and social and political trends in such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, where he is an op-ed columnist.

REPRINTED from MyAfricandisporia.com

The historical injustices against black Americans have been numerous and prolonged. But despite slavery, racism and Jim Crow laws, many blacks have achieved an exceptionally high level of accomplishment in the United States. It is yet another injustice that the stories of these great black achievers are unknown to most Americans of any race or ethnicity. This is unjust because it ignores the accomplishments of those who have achieved in the face of such adversity, and because it deprives the rest of us of the lessons to be learned from studying their lives. Many current intellectuals claim that the success of blacks requires an antecedent elimination of racism. The success of these black innovators disproves such a claim, and raises the question of the actual conditions necessary for the rise of a despised ethnic minority. A second question needing an answer involves the reasons for such widespread contemporary ignorance regarding the accomplishments of these great black thinkers. Finally, the stories are inspirational in themselves, apart from any educational benefits to be derived from them.

The great black creators and entrepreneurs both historically and currently are too numerous to mention. For example, Garrett Morgan was an innovator and manufacturer who invented both an efficient gas mask and the automatic traffic signal. During a long business career, Morgan manufactured clothing, hair products and his gas mask. In the 1920s, he was a key founder of the Cleveland Call, one of the most successful black newspapers in the Midwest. Dr. Percy Julian, an organic chemist, developed a new method of synthetically producing cortisone and, in the 1950s, established Julian Laboratories in Oak Park, Illinois. In a few years Julian’s company grew to be a widely successful pharmaceutical company, which he sold in 1961 for well over two million dollars. Dr. Charles Drew pioneered new techniques in the preservation of blood plasma that were instrumental in saving the lives of countless soldiers during World War Two.

In terms of purely business success, the list is equally impressive. Arthur G. Gaston started his business career in 1923 by founding a burial service in Alabama to guarantee blacks a decent funeral. By 1932 it had grown large enough to be incorporated. Gaston started the Booker T. Washington Business College in 1939 and the Brown Belle Bottling Company in 1946, offering Joe Louis Punch. He followed these successes with a motel in 1954, an investment firm in 1955, a savings and loan association in 1957, a senior citizens home in 1963 and two radio stations in 1975. In 1986, at the age of 94, he opened the A. G. Gaston Construction Company. Gaston was a consummate self-made man, who overcame Jim Crow laws among other obstacles to eventually bring in more than $20 million in annual revenue. Named Black Enterprise magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Century,” Gaston’s lifelong principle can serve as the credo of American entrepreneurship: “Money has no color. If you can build a better mousetrap, it won’t matter whether you’re black or white. People will buy it.”

Herman J. Russell similarly refused to permit the South’s Jim Crow laws to retard his business career. He started as a shoeshine boy and a newspaper delivery boy, later worked as a plasterer, then founded the Herman J. Russell Construction Company in 1952 in Atlanta and built it gradually into a $170 million business. Albert Murray grew up the son of a sharecropper in 1920s Georgia, and at sixteen – to support himself through high school – worked a 4 PM to midnight shift pushing wheelbarrows of burnt clay at a local asbestos factory for $14 a week. After serving time in the military during World War Two, he finished college and then law school, eventually becoming a judge in New York City. But he and his wife, Odetta, wanted to own a resort and, despite the racially-segregated policies of the 1950s, bought and operated Hillside Inn in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Odetta ran the resort, while Albert drove in from his legal duties on Friday, did all the heavy work over the weekend, then drove back to New York on Sunday. Now 79 years old, the Murrays still run the day-to-day operations of the resort. They have subdivided tens of acres of their 109 acre plot and sold one-acre plots to black professional prospective homeowners, in additon to generating nearly $1,000,000 in annual revenue from the hotel.

Recently, Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, sold his company to Viacom for $2.7 billion, making Johnson the first black billionaire and placing him among the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. Today, David Steward’s World Wide Technology, a St. Louis based distributor of information technology, generates over $800 million annually in business. William Mays, a scientist/entrepreneur, founded the Mays Chemical Company as a one-man operation in 1980, and since built it into a giant chemical distributor that generated $172 million in revenue in 2000. Barbara Manzi founded Manzi Metals in 1993 with her own savings, now has contracts with Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and the U.S. Defense Department, and netted $4.3 million in revenue in 2000. Black Enterprise magazine and books are a source of information regarding the many successful contemporary black entrepreneurs.

Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731 in Maryland, the child of a free mulatto mother and an African father, who had purchased his own freedom. Banneker excelled in mathematics as a student and, when taking over his parents farm, at agriculture. When a traveling salesman named Josef Levi showed Banneker a pocket watch, the young man was so fascinated by it that Levi gave it to him. In 1753, using the watch as a model, Banneker carved a wooden clock that kept perfect time, striking every hour for forty years. It was the first wooden clock ever produced in the United States.

As a freedman, Banneker had the opportunities provided by American liberty but denied to most blacks, and he took full advantage of them. When neighbors introduced him to astronomy, he mastered the science so thoroughly that he predicted the solar eclipse of April 14, 1789 and used his knowledge to publish an almanac that became the main reference for farmers of the Mid-Atlantic states. President Washington, aware of Banneker’s intellect, appointed him to the six man team that designed the blueprints for Washington, D.C. When the team’s leader, Major L’Enfant, suddenly resigned and took the plans with him to France, Banneker’s photographic memory enabled him to reproduce them in full. A lengthy letter of his to Thomas Jefferson was so filled with insight that it caused Jefferson to change his mind regarding the alleged intellectual inferiority of blacks. In tribute, Jefferson sent a copy of Banneker’s almanac to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. “The color of the skin is in no way connected to the strength of the mind or intellectual powers,” wrote Banneker, in a statement far ahead of its time.1

Andrew Jackson Beard is another little known innovative black thinker. Born into slavery in Alabama in 1849, Beard became a flourishing entrepreneur and inventor after emancipation. He designed new plows and with the profits made on his innovations developed a thriving real estate business. Beard was responsible for several inventions, but his greatest advance was the automatic railroad car (or “Jenny”) coupler, enabling railroad cars to be coupled automatically, thereby greatly reducing risk to the workers. Beard received a patent for the Jenny coupler in 1897, and it was the forerunner of today’s automatic coupler. His story reminds us that despite often bitter racial hatred in the South, some black Americans possessed the extraordinary talent and initiative to succeed there.2

The one black genius of that era to achieve enduring recognition, and whose groundbreaking advances were also achieved in the Jim Crow South, was George Washington Carver, who was born a slave in Missouri in 1860. After earning a Master’s Degree from Iowa State in 1896, he received a letter from Booker T. Washington, Head of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, requesting his instructional services. He spent the rest of his life at Tuskegee as an agricultural scientist. He is famous for developing peanuts and sweet potatoes as leading crops, but additionally created a new type of cotton, Carver’s Hybrid, and dozens of other agricultural innovations. His early identification of the need for crop rotation enabled southern farmers to keep their soil productive. At his death, Carver, a lifelong bachelor, left his entire savings to establish a research fund for scientists. For his accomplishments, he is generally recognized as the greatest agricultural innovator of history.

Evidence regarding the causes of black American achievement is provided by the examples of such Michigan innovators as Elijah McCoy and Fred Pelham. In The Empire Builders, American historian, Burton Folsom, reminds us that in 1850 Michigan created a state constitution that restricted the government’s powers, leaving economic development in private hands. Based on its greater degree of economic freedom, Michigan developed into one of the world’s leading industrial centers, not surprisingly presenting opportunities for black entrepreneurs. Elijah McCoy, for example, was a mechanical engineer who initially worked for the Michigan Central Railroad as a locomotive fireman. He invented a revolutionary device to lubricate a machine’s moving parts. His product, the lubricator cup, made it possible to oil machinery while in operation, and to distinguish it from cheaper imitations became known as “the real McCoy,” the origin of that phrase. He obtained 51 additional patents, including an early version of the ironing board and a cup for imbibing medicine. McCoy patented fifty different automatic lubricators and, at age 77, started the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company in Detroit to manufacture his various products.3

Fred Pelham is another black innovator who thrived in Michigan. Pelham was president of his class at the University of Michigan in 1887, worked as a civil engineer with the Michigan Central Railroad and built numerous bridges that remain standing today. He created the innovative skew arch bridge design. “The obstacles facing minority entrepreneurs were substantial, but many did overcome them and used their freedom to excel in Michigan’s economic life.”4

Freedom, of course, is the condition required by all men to flourish, especially the great innovative thinkers who carry mankind forward. Slavery is both a moral abomination and a thoroughly impractical system, for in stifling the minds of those enslaved it prevents the most creative thinkers from developing the advances that benefit all mankind. Late-19th- century America, following the 13th Amendment ending slavery in 1865, was a historically unsurpassed era of freedom. “The intellectual, cultural and political climate of the country upheld freedom, limited government, and property rights in this era. The economic results are not surprising. The most innovative and creative minds were free to develop new products and methods, to start their own companies, to bring their innovations to the marketplace, to convince consumers that the new products were superior to the old and, in time, to earn fortunes.”5

Black entrepreneurs took immediate advantage of their new freedom. Sarah Breedlove, for example, was born a free African-American in 1867, but was orphaned at age seven, married at fourteen and widowed shortly thereafter. She supported herself and her young daughter on the paltry income of a washerwoman. But interested in beauty and hair care, she developed cosmetic products for black women. When she married Charles Walker, she changed her name to Madame C. J. Walker and opened a beauty school that became hugely successful. She invented a hot comb, developed new shampoos and cosmetics and became the first woman of any race to become a millionaire.6

C. J. Walker’s is one of the most inspiring and (unfortunately) little known American rags-to-riches stories. But hers is not the only example of black entrepreneurs taking advantage of America’s late-19th-century freedom to prosper. Some black businesses established in that era have been successfully run by the same family for generations. In 1883, 19 year old C.H. James started a business in West Virginia by bartering household goods for vegetables and then selling the produce for cash. His business gradually grew from one wagon to a department store on wheels that sold cotton, threads, pots, sugar and other goods. Supplying predominantly white coal miners, James built his business on the explicitly-held principles of dependability, integrity and a warm personality. By 1918, his company had become the largest wholesale food distributor in the state, with sales in excess of $350,000 a year. James was a determined individualist who claimed that no one should permit bigotry to deter him from relentless pursuit of business success. In 1918, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to him: “[I have pointed] to you as a man who actually is by his actions and not merely by his words solving the race problem in this country.” James’s son, E.L., rebuilt the company after the Depression bludgeoned it into bankruptcy and the business has continued to move forward. Today, the founder’s great grandson, Charles H. James III, has, by means of spin-offs, acquisitions, mergers and a lucrative McDonald’s contract built the company into a $31 million business.7

Further, entire towns and business districts of entrepreneurial blacks flourished in that era of U.S. history. Early in the 20th century, black Americans established such new towns as Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Nicodemus, Kansas, Langston, Oklahoma and others. Boley, Oklahoma had a population of 4,000 at the turn of the century. The town was governed and run by blacks, and boasted, among other establishments, a bank, twenty-five grocery stores, five hotels, seven restaurants, a water works, an electric plant, four cotton gins, a bottling works, a telephone exchange and a lumberyard.8

Tulsa, Oklahoma and Durham, North Carolina both had thriving black business communities. In turn-of-the-20th-century Tulsa, bigotry denied blacks access to the main business district even as customers, so enterprising blacks turned the Greenwood section of the city into a bustling commercial center. Numerous service industries thrived, black doctors, lawyers and other professionals maintained offices there and the neat homes of the middle class “lined Detroit Avenue, reflecting their business or professional success.” In Durham, black entrepreneurs succeeded in manufacturing as well as in service industries, including one of the city’s largest brick producing companies. Here, the white community was not hostile to black success, and white capitalists such as Washington Duke (the tobacco magnate for whom Duke University is named) and Julian Carr were helpful in the establishment of black businesses. In 1898, John Merrick and Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore established the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the largest and most successful black enterprises in the history of American capitalism, a firm that 100 years later would employ over 1,000 individuals and boast assets exceeding $200 million. In addition to 150 thriving businesses, Durham’s black commercial district was home to an area internationally known as the “Negro Wall Street,” a collection of banks and insurance companies that represented “one of the most dramatic examples of concentrated African American financial might this country has ever produced.” These financial institutions were so sound that they helped virtually every black business in Durham survive the Depression.9

The fates of these black business strongholds is both shocking and revealing. The Greenwood district of Tulsa was burned to the ground by a mob of racist thugs in 1923 in a spree of destruction unrestrained by the legal system. Durham’s magnificent black business district was wiped out by the federal and state governments’ urban renewal program in the mid-1960s. Although Durham’s black entrepreneurs revitalized in the 1980s with the opening of two shopping malls and several manufacturing companies, perhaps the greatest value is the lesson to be learned from these examples.10

A despised racial minority needs political/economic freedom, with its concomitant legal protection of individual rights, even more than do members of the majority, for they are potentially subject to vicious physical attack by racists. Even if all whites in the country were so irrational as to fear, hate and shun blacks, such bigotry would be insufficient to halt black economic progress, if the rights of black individuals were legally protected. Under capitalism, the purpose of the government is to protect individual rights, including property rights. Tragically, the Tulsa government failed to operate on this fundamental capitalist principle. The black producers of Tulsa did not need paternalistic government or even its good will; nor did they require an end to bigoted attitudes among white people. They required only the protection of their legal rights as U.S. citizens; their own enterprise did and would take care of the rest. Similarly, in Durham, the government itself violated the rights of these black property owners. The absence of capitalism, of a government exclusively and scrupulously devoted to the protection of individual rights, was responsible for the destruction of these black business centers. When the government fails to protect, or itself violates individual rights, there is no hope of economic advance, especially for members of a persecuted ethnic minority. Statism is necessary to keep a racial minority oppressed. Under capitalism, there are no obstacles that the most enterprising members of the minority group cannot overcome.

Further proof of this principle is provided by the case of black Caribbean immigrants. The United States received a sizable Caribbean immigration in the early 20th century and by 1930 Caribbeans constituted roughly one percent of the U.S. black population. The Caribbean immigrants, as with virtually all American immigrants, tended to be hard-working, entrepreneurial and frugal. Based on the still significant element of freedom in the American mixed economy of that era, many Caribbeans opened and operated successful businesses. “As early as 1901, [Caribbeans] owned 20 percent of all black businesses in Manhattan, although they were only 10 percent of the black population there.” Despite the existence of anti-black prejudice, Caribbeans have an average income roughly equal to whites, and second generation Caribbeans have a standard of living greater than the average white American.11

Because racists recognize that the ethnic minorities they oppose will flourish under the political/economic freedom of capitalism, they conduct a relentless war against the free market system. The antebellum South not only created and supported a legal system that sanctioned the enslavement of blacks, but also mandated that blacks be kept illiterate. Indeed, “many Southern states not only refused to educate free Negroes but made it a crime for them even to attend private schools at their own expense.” In the postbellum South, Jim Crow legislation made it illegal for blacks to attend the better schools, be hired for the best jobs or live in white neighborhoods, no matter how qualified the individual.12

In South Africa, apartheid legislation was necessary to prevent white-owned companies from hiring the black workers they would otherwise have employed, and laws were passed against racially-mixed marriages and romantic relationships more broadly. Nor is the bigots’ necessary relapse into statism limited to relationships between whites and blacks. Anti-Semitic Eastern European regimes herded Jews into walled-off ghettoes and sanctioned periodic bloody pogroms. In the Western United States, laws were passed attempting to curb the success of Chinese and Japanese immigrants. In several Southeastern Asian countries, the ethnic Chinese minorities have been legally persecuted due to envy of their success. Bigots know that without the coercive power of the state to enforce their prejudices, they are powerless to prevent the advance of the ethnic minorities they fear. Capitalism is the bigot’s worst enemy – and nightmare.13

Additional evidence is shown by the varying rates of black economic progress over the past sixty years. Black Americans moved heavily into the northern cities during World War Two and the following post-war years. The years between 1940 and 1970 were a relatively freer period of America’s mixed economy. Because the majority of blacks had lived in the Jim Crow era South, where legal restrictions impeded their advance, the percentage of black families subsisting below the official poverty line was 87 percent in 1940. In the freer North, with better schools and jobs open to blacks, their rise into middle class prosperity began. By 1960, the number of poor black families had dropped to 47 percent; by 1970, to 30 percent. This represents an enormous and too-little known achievement on the part of black Americans. Then came massive government intervention in the form of the welfare state, which Marxist intellectuals and politicians directed heavily toward blacks because of their still-disproportionate poverty. Proliferating government programs and huge spending were a post-1970 phenomenon. With increasing number of poor urban blacks being seduced onto the dole by Washington’s welfare pimps, the result was predictable: black economic progress slowed drastically. Black families below the poverty line stood at 29 percent in 1980 and at 26 percent in 1995. In the era of massive welfare programs, black families still moved upward out of poverty but at a significantly reduced rate. Today, roughly 50 percent of black Americans are middle class, greater than 40 percent live in homes that they own and more than 30 percent live in the suburbs. Given the rise of government intervention and the decline of freedom over the past thirty years, one can only wonder how much higher these figures would be if the freedom of the earlier period had been allowed to continue or be expanded.14

There is a prevalent belief today that the success of blacks and other minorities requires an antecedent elimination of racism. This is false. Though the end of all forms of bigotry is an undiluted good toward which all rational men should strive, it is not a necessary condition of an ethnic or racial minority’s success. What is necessary is the legal protection of individual rights, including the right to property, provided by the capitalist system.

In the past, the fears of white racists regarding black preeminence explained the absence of credit accorded to these great black innovators and entrepreneurs. But today the liberal media and intellectuals claim to support “black empowerment.” What then is the current cause of the bizarre public silence regarding the entrepreneurial success achieved by numerous black Americans? Anti-Western, ostensibly pro-black intellectuals have promulgated the myth that Western Civilization is a stolen legacy of African culture. In the name of “black pride,” they relentlessly push this fantasy while ignoring magnificent black achievers right under their noses. Why? Because their anti-Western, anti-capitalist prejudices prevent them from acknowledging the existence of successful black capitalists. In the mythical universe they inhabit, white Western capitalists are exploitative of the poor, the minorities, the Third World, etc. An entire class of successful black American entrepreneurs is worse than impossible on their view. It shatters the Marxist delusions they cling to and brings them face-to-face with the enormous benevolence of capitalism. In the name of justice, the prejudices of both white racists and Marxist intellectuals must be swept aside. The achievements of great black American inventors and entrepreneurs must be honored along side those of all of their countrymen.

Authored by Andrew Bernstein

REPRINTED from Black Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame