Read Book [PDF] Black Fortunes: The Story of the

<strong>“By telling the little-known stories of six pioneering African American entrepreneurs, <em>Black Fortunes</em> makes a worthy contribution to black history, to business history, and to American history.”—</strong>Margot Lee Shetterly, author of <em>Hidden Figures</em><br /><br />The astonishing untold history of America’s first black millionaires—former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties—self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.<br /><br />While Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Michael Jordan, and Will Smith are among the estimated 35,000 black millionaires in the nation today, these famous celebrities were not the first blacks to reach the storied one percent. Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a