The Business of Freedom

The Business of Freedom tells the story of Black enterprise through the lives of the people who built it. Some, like Booker T. Washington and Madam C. J. Walker, are familiar figures in the history of Black business. But many are lesser-known strivers whose ambitions briefly illuminated the possibilities of the age. From the hopeful dawn of emancipation to the bustle of Harlem, award-winning historian Shennette Garrett-Scott follows Black entrepreneurs who carved opportunity out of exclusion to build banks, grocery stores, cotton mills, and real estate empires. Their successes were real, but so were the limits imposed by segregation, unequal access to capital, and the violence that shadowed Black prosperity. The Business of Freedom reveals Black capitalism as a strategy for both individual and collective empowerment--and shows why free enterprise alone could never deliver the freedom its champions promised.