Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. By Juliet E. K. Walker. (New York: Twayne, 1998. xxvi, 482 pp. $45.00, isbn 0-8057-1650-5.)

Juliet E. K. Walker has produced an excellent, and much-needed, interpretive history of African American business in the United States. Her work stresses the African origins of a commercial culture among blacks, one that was preserved and nurtured during slavery and given full expression during the twentieth century. 1

Her principal thesis, contrary to the ideas of E. Franklin Frazier and others, is that the relative failure of African Americans to establish successful and large-scale business ventures has little to do with a lack of "business tradition." Far more important has been the extent of white racism, especially at all levels of government. And that is not simply an idle assertion—in large measure she makes a convincing case for its operation right up to the present time. . . .

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