Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America

Availability:
in stock, ready to be shipped
$39.95 - $39.95
$39.95
$41.99
$41.99 - $41.99
$41.99
Explores business development in the Black Power era and the centrality of economic goals to the larger black freedom movement.

The Business of Black Power emphasizes the centrality of economic goals to the larger black freedom movement and explores the myriad forms of business development in the Black power era. This volume charts a new course forBlack power studies and business history, exploring both the business ventures that Black power fostered and the impact of Black power on the nation's business world. Black activists pressed business leaders, corporations, and various levels of government into supporting a range of economic development ventures, from Black entrepreneurship, to grassroots experiments in economic self-determination, to indigenous attempts to rebuild inner-city markets in thewake of disinvestment. They pioneered new economic and development strategies, often in concert with corporate executives and public officials. Yet these same actors also engaged in fierce debates over the role of business in strengthening the movement, and some African Americans outright rejected capitalism or collaboration with business.

The seven scholars in this collection bring fresh analysis to this complex intersection of African Americanand business history to reveal how Black power advocates, or those purporting a Black power agenda, engaged business to advance their economic, political, and social goals. They show the business of Black power taking place in the streets, boardrooms, journals and periodicals, corporations, courts, and housing projects of America. In short, few were left untouched by the influence of this movement.

Laura Warren Hill is assistant professor of history at Bloomfield College. Julia Rabig is a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

ISBN-13: 9781580464406

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer - Limited

Publication Date: 06-01-2012

Pages: 354

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Laura Warren Hill Julia Rabig 1

1 Toward a History of the Business of Black Power Laura Warren Hill Julia Rabig 15

Part 1 Black Capitalism in Pursuit of Black Freedom

2 Fighting for the Soul of Black Capitalism: Struggles for Black Economic Development in Postrebellion Rochester Laura Warren Hill 45

3 A McDonald's that Reflects the Soul of a People: Hought Area Development Corporation and Community Development in Cleveland Nishani Frazier 68

Part 2 Selling Women, Culture, and Black Power

4 Black (Buying) Power: The Story of Essence Magazine Alexis Pauline Gumbs 95

5 Creating a Multicultural Soul: Avon, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Race in the 1970s Lindsey Feitz 116

Part 3 The Business of Black Power in City and Suburb

6 From Landless to Landlords: Black Power, Black Capitalism, and the Co-optation of Detroit's Tenants' Rights Movement, 1964-69 David Goldberg 157

7 "Gilding the Ghetto" and Debates over Chicago's Gautreaux Program Andrea Gill 184

Part 4 Community Development Corporations and the Business of Black Power Policymaking

8 "What we Need is Brick and Mortar": Race, Gender, and Early Leadership of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Brian Purnell 217

9 "A Fight and a Question": Community Development Corporations, Machine Politics, and Corporate Philanthropy in the Long Urban Crisis Julia Rabig 245

Conclusion: Whose Black Power? The Business of Black Power and Black Power's Business Michael O. West 274

Epilogue: Whatever Happened to the Business of Black Power? Robert E. Weems Jr. 304

List of Contributors 313

Index 315