Celebrating Black Economic History...Education and Entrepreneurs

Excerpts from "Surviving And Thriving 365 Facts in Black Economic History"by Julianne Malveaux, http://www.lastwordprod.com
(Used by permission.)

Quotes

• ...Dozens of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were organized before the turn of the century, funded in part by church contributions and bake sales and buoyed by simple tenacity.

For a list of all HBCUs, see:  http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/list/whhbcu/edlite-list.html

• North Carolina Mutual was founded in 1898, and it is the oldest and largest African-American life insurance company in the US.  http://www.ncmutuallife.com/

• Reginald F. Lewis (1942 - 1993) opened the first African American law firm on Wall Street in 1983.  In Baltimore, Maryland, there is a museum honoring the state's African American History named in his memory.  Mr. Lewis was also a distinguished gentleman of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.

• Robert L. Johnson, the founder (with Sheila Johnson) of Black Entertainment Television (BET). [BET] was sold to Viacom for about $3 billion. (Most stunning entrepreneurial story of the late 20th century)

• On June 1, 1921, Tulsa Oklahoma's Black Wall Street, a prospering African American community was burned to the ground by mobs of envious Whites and even bombed from the air.

For more information on the 1921 Tulsa Oklahoma Race Riot, see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot