How Black Entrepreneurship Thrived During Segregation & Why Black Ownership Must Remain Intact

Black Entrepreneurship has been around since Black people were enslaved in America. Not many people realize it, but even during the enslavement of Black people, some of those who were enslaved found a way around slave labor and utilized their talents after working during the day in order to earn money at night, some to even gain their freedom.

It was after the abolition of slavery and the institution of the laws of segregation that there was an even greater push toward Black entrepreneurship. Segregation attempted to hurt the Black community by refusing to serve them in local establishments, refusing enrollment to schools, and even down to the water where there were whites only fountains and “coloreds” only fountains. Even financial institutions shut them out, making it much harder for them to acquire wealth.

Therefore, Black people began to work together and build for one another in order to create a life in a land that, despite being free, hated them yet. The great thing, however, was that Black people knew every skill there was in building and creating having performed duties that no one else could, even healing some health issues that so called skilled white doctors couldn’t.

Read how Leon Howard Sullivan and the Black Community Utilized the 10/36 Method to Work and Build Together

Because of all the architectural, medical, and even educational skill that many had, they set up not only their own schools, clinics and post offices etc, but they were founders of their own communities, established all with Black money being circulated in their own communities, from barber shops to grocery stores and even founding their own banks and architectural firms for the African American community.

The foundation of Black people in America is entrepreneurship and building each other up. It was the foundation of their existence in America. Even when enslaved, they leaned on one another to survive and even thought up other ways of communication that white people didn’t understand. Black people were and have always been their own community, forced and willingly, against all odds.

This is why Black Entrepreneurship must remain in tact and never fall by the way side. Those memories of all accomplishments will launch Black people forward in ways unimaginable and in a short time because deep inside, they know all the institutions that they founded are necessary for Black people to never be placed in the situation they came out of (slavery) again.

Being founded and created by Black people ensures that no one can shut them out of anything any longer. Black people became secure, in more than one area than the most famous Greenwood out of the state of Oklahoma, but in various other prosperous areas in America, in many states. Black financial power proved itself then in such an impactful way that white people were threatened, so much so that they would attack in violence and in laws. However, there was nothing that ever stopped the legacy of entrepreneurship of Black people in America who had learned to survive when all was against them.

Read about William Lanson and How He Founded New Liberia Neighborhood

That brings us to why Black Businesses and Black Entrepreneurship must remain in order to solidify the Black and Beautiful future:

• Ownership can be passed down as wealth, from real estate to businesses.
• Leaders make more leaders, from the ground up.
• Prevents slavery – mentally, financially and psychologically for generations.
• Education depends on it. Whoever owns the land, lays the foundation for everything else, including what is learned and how it’s learned.
• Business Capital controls what goes on in every society, including the government, due to the economic power it brings.
• Entrepreneurship brings the power of lending, not borrowing, which again, prevents slavery in any form.
  The end goal is Independence.

The basis for any successful future is owning it. Just as the saying goes – own your future. This is why Black Entrepreneurship must hit another height, to ensure generations know and remember how to treat one another, build and network with each other from the ground up and own to keep, develop and repeat.