Business in Black and White

Lewis A. Randolph is professor of Political Science at Ohio University and co-editor, with Gayle T. Tate, of Dimensions of Black Conservatives in the United States: Made in America.Robert E. Weems, Jr., is Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (NYU Press).

• List of TablesAcknowledgments Introduction: The Initiatives Leading to Black Capitalism 1 The Origins of the Commerce Department's Division of Negro Affairs, 1925-1940 2 Emmer Lancaster and the Ascendancy and Fall of the Commerce Department's Division of Negro Affairs, 1940-1960 3 More Than Civil Rights: The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and African American Enterprise 4 The Democratic Party and Black Capitalism during the Presidential Election of 1968 5 Nixon and the "Militants": The GOP and Black Capitalism during the Presidential Election of 1968 6 The National Response to Richard M. Nixon's Black Capitalism Initiative 7 The Ford Administration and Black Capitalism 8 The Carter Administration and African American Enterprise Epilogue: Whatever Happened to Black Capitalism? Appendix NotesBibliography IndexAbout the Author

While much of the new scholarship on African American business history examines black entrepreneurial life and activities, Business in Black and White offers a fresh departure by examining presidential initiatives to support black business development from Coolidge to the Reagan administration. . . Business in Black and White is well researched and lays a frim foundation for any future discussions of the federal government's engagement with urban black economic development. - Quincy T. Mills (The Journal of African American History) [An] extraordinarily detailed and well-documented historical inquiry. . . . Robert Weems engaging, well-written book makes a significant and invaluable contribution in several areas of study. - Juliet E.K. Walker,author of The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship Since the 1800s, scholars have analyzed Black enterprise in America. This is a very significant addition to their work because it concentrates on how American presidents tried to assist Black enterprise. In addition to analyzing these policies, and other historical forces, Weems wraps his examination around the importance of black customers for these traditions and how these customers have enhanced the staying power of these firms. This work should be read by scholars, students, policy makers, and the general public as a way for the past to enhance the future. - John Sibley Butler,author of Entrepreneurship and Self-Help among Black Americans: A Reconsideration of Race and Economics Too often the history of capitalists in twentieth-century America assumes that all of them were white and the history of the civil rights struggle ignores the realm of business. This terrific book tells the long forgotten, fascinating story of how presidents from Coolidge to Reagan viewed African American entrepreneurs and used their power to aid or thwart blacks' commercial ambitions. - Lizabeth Cohen,author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America