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theses

This dissertation provides new insights on the role of business in the African American freedom struggle by tracing African American business across the various waves of the Great Migration. Traditionally, historians of the Great Migration have imagined Southern migrants as wage laborers seeking employment in Northern industrial cities. As a result, the importance of entrepreneurship to the black migration experience has been overlooked. However, a significant number of African Americans moved north and engaged in enterprise. Black entrepreneurs saw business as a key way to achieve freedom, and they migrated north to gain the self-determination and economic independence business ownership could provide. Using Detroit as a case study, this dissertation traces the movement of black entrepreneurs from the South to the North in the 1910s, examines the growth of a prosperous black business community through the 1940s, and analyzes the destruction of that community by urban planning initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on the writings of black intellectuals, oral histories, memoirs, black newspapers, census records, city directories from Detroit and Southern cities, draft records, and the records of city officials, the dissertation demonstrates that the economic landscape for black business in Detroit adjusted over time in ways that made it more difficult for black entrepreneurs to attain their goal of freedom through business.

ETD_8001

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Kendra Boyd

doi:10.7282/T3Z60RV5

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.