Black fortunes : the story of the first six African Americans who escaped slavery and became millionaires / Shomari Wills.

"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 busines...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wills, Shomari (Author)
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2018]
Edition:First edition.
Subjects:
Genre:
Physical Description:xv, 300 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm
Format: Book
Contents:
  • Prologue : The first black millionaire
  • Abolitionism and capitalism
  • King Cotton's bastard
  • Funding the insurrection
  • Robert Reed Church and the Civil War
  • The near lynching of a millionaire
  • Forty acres deferred
  • Bob Church versus Jim Crow
  • Mother of civil rights in California
  • Saint or sinner?
  • Building the promised land in Oklahoma
  • Founding the black hair industry
  • Black Cleopatra
  • Last days of Mary Ellen Pleasant
  • The most powerful black man alive
  • "Black Wall Street" rises
  • Battle for hair supremacy
  • The trials of Hannah Elias
  • Black millionaire legacy
  • End of the promise
  • Paris by way of Harlem.