Black Women Entrepreneurs Who Changed The Game--And Made History
Black Women Entrepreneurs Who Changed The Game — And Made History - Page 4
Written by
Ann Brown
Published on
February 25, 2014
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African-American women have always been industrious — and still are. According to the National Women’s Business Council, there are 911,728 African American women-owned businesses in the United States. This is an incredible increase of 66.7 percent since 2002 and a 191.4 percent jump since 1997.
African American women-owned business made $36.8 billion in 2007 (the latest stats available). And more than one in 10 (or 11.7 percent) of all women-owned businesses across the country are owned by African-American women. New York has the most black woman-owned firms with 98,877, followed by Georgia (88,920), and Florida (86,001).
Though African-American women are thriving as entrepreneurs, it isn’t easy starting a new business. Sometimes it is great to use those who have gone before us as examples. For Black History Month, we take a look at some inspiring quotes for African-American women entrepreneurs past and present.
“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”
Madame C.J. Walker turned selling into an art. Known as the first black women millionaire in the United States, she was born Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of former slaves. Walker went from being an uneducated farm laborer and laundress to one of the 20th century’s most successful, self-made women entrepreneurs, according to the official website for Madame C.J. Walker.
Walker suffered from a scalp ailment that caused most of her hair to fall out. So she came up with some homemade remedies and after working for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who made beauty products, Walker founded her own business in 1905. Her first product–Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula.
She also reached out to help other women get into business. She created the Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia in 1917 and it is considered one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in the country.
Running A Billion-Dollar Business: Janice Bryant Howroyd
“Discipline is not a dirty word. There is far more freedom and opportunity for creativity and success in enjoying discipline. Years ago someone I very much respect told me the reason they were successful is that they embraced doing what other people resent or are reluctant to do.”
Never heard of her? Well, you should have. Janice Bryant Howroyd is the first black woman to own a billion-dollar business–Act•1 Group, an international recruitment and business management firm. Her company is the nation’s largest black female-owned business and in 2012 it had revenues of $2 billion. Launched in 1978, today the firm, which offers various services from employee background checks to executive travel management employs, more than 1,300 people in 240 U.S. offices and eight other countries.
Arts Entrepreneur: Edmonia Lewis (Approx. 1844-1911)
“Today is pay-day and pay-day is always an unpleasant time…we must sell our work if we want to live.”
Mary Edmonia Lewis was a sculptor whose work allowed her to travel the world. “Her first notable commercial success was a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Sales of copies of the bust allowed her to sail to Rome, Italy, where she mastered working in marble. She quickly achieved success as a sculptor,” reports Biography. Colonel Robert Shaw died leading the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment.
She is considered the first successful African-American and Native-American sculptor. Born in New York as daughter of a black father and part-Ojibwa mother, she was orphaned at a young age and during her childhood she roamed the woods with Chippewa Indians. With the help of an older, successful brother she attended Oberlin College in Ohio.
Unfortunately, her college years ended after she was beaten by a white mob. Finding her way to Boston, sculptor Edward A. Brackett took her under his wing.
Her works are now part of the permanent collections of the Howard University Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”
What hasn’t Oprah Winfrey mastered–daytime TV, magazines, film, network television? Winfrey is the second African-American woman to launch her own network (after Cathy Hughes), OWN. Winfrey, who founded Harpo Productions in the late ’80s, became America’s first black woman billionaire. According to Forbes, her worth is now about $2.7 billion. Hers is an oft-told true rags-to-riches story. And now she’s giving back with her school in South Africa, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
Education and Civil Rights Leader: Mary McLeod Bethune (1875 – 1955)
“I never stop to plan. I take things step by step.”
Mary McLeod Bethune left her mark on education and on women’s rights. She was an educator, civil rights leader, and government official who founded the National Council of Negro Women and Bethune-Cookman College. You can read more about her contributions to black education here.
For Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Government she served as the informal “race leader at large,” making her one of the most influential African-American leaders in the Black Cabinet, which led the Federal Council on Negro Affairs.
Bethune became the first black leader and the first woman to have a monument, the Bethune Memorial Statue, in 1974 in a public DC park. In 1994, she became the only black woman to be given a memorial site in the nation’s capital when National Park Service took control of the Council House, Bethune’s last official residence and NCNW’s original headquarters.
via @PeaceNLoveLisa
Finding Success In Beauty: Lisa Price
“I was not born with a lot of money. I’m just an average woman who listened to the universe when it told me to believe in myself. I hope that others will learn from my story and find the beauty in themselves. It is inherent in all of us.”
Lisa Price is the epitome of stick-to-it-ive-ness. She knew she had hit on something great when she founded Carol’s Daughter, a line of homemade beauty products in 1993 in her Brooklyn kitchen, with just $100. Price then hit the pavement, selling her products at church flea markets and street fairs, reports Essence. Today Carol’s Daughter is a celebrity favorite and a multimillion-dollar firm.
Power Of The Written Word: Ida B Wells (1852-1931)
“I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way… so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.”
Ida B. Wells-Barnett paved the way for black journalists becoming a partner in the Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. “She stands as one of our nation’s most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy,”reports Duke University.
Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, Wells refused to do so on a Memphis train in 1884. It was in Memphis where she first began to fight for racial and gender justice. When ordered into the smoking or “Jim Crow” car, she refused.
“I refused, saying that the forward car [closest to the locomotive] was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand…He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out,” she is quoted as saying.
She sued the railroad and won her case, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and her victorious ruling was overturned.
After three of her friends were lynched, she focused her efforts on an anti-lynching movement. She was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and later ran for the Illinois State legislature, making her one of the first Black women to run for public office in the United States.
Source: WENN
The Ultimate Mompreneur: Cathy Hughes
“It’s critical for us to tell our story from our perspective. When the company is black-owned, you have black decision makers, a black perspective and black employees.”
Who says moms can’t do it all! “From teenage mother to media power player, Hughes is the founder of Radio One, which includes 53 radio stations in the U.S., and TVOne, a cable network,” reports Essence. While she had her share of setbacks, Hughes persevered. She now owns one of the world’s largest media companies.
From Slave To Millionaire: Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904)
“I`d rather be a corpse than a coward.”
Mary Ellen Pleasant was born the illegitimate daughter of a slave and a Virginia governor’s son in Georgia and worked as linen worker at the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans. She later went to worked for a Cincinnati merchant who promised that he would free her but instead placed her in nine years of indentured servitude with an aging Quaker merchant known as Grandma Hussey.
Turns out the Husseys were abolitionists who helped slaves flee to Canada and safe states.
Pleasant had no “freedom papers” so she passed herself off as white so she could work as a steward and cook in a boardinghouse. She began investing in real estate and used her money for social change and to help former slaves go into business for themselves. “She became successful at leveraging social change that many called her San Francisco’s ‘Black City Hall’. Her money and activities helped ex-slaves avoid extradition, start businesses and find employment in hotels, homes and on steamships and railroads of California,” reports Concrete Loop.
She even gave famed abolitionist John Brown money for his crusade.
After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Pleasant moved back to San Francisco where she was to learn that her investments were now worth a whopping $30 million. “She then publicly changed her racial designation in the City Directory from ‘white’ to ‘black’ and led the Franchise League movement that earned blacks the right to testify in court and to ride the trolleys. Her lawsuit in 1868 against the North Beach and Mission Railroad was used as a precedent in 1982 to achieve contemporary civil rights,” says Concrete Loop.
Sadly, we took a look around and didn’t see much about Pleasant, even though she’s clearly a fascinating figure. What did pop up was a Comedy Central clip about her life from the show Drunk History starring Lisa Bonet. Check it out below.
