Black-owned business in the context of "African-American culture"

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⭐ Core Definition: Black-owned business

In the United States, black-owned businesses (or black businesses), also known as African American businesses, originated in the days of slavery before 1865. Emancipation and civil rights permitted businessmen to operate inside the American legal structure starting in the Reconstruction era (1865–77) and afterwards. By the 1890s, thousands of small business operations had opened in urban areas. The most rapid growth came in the early 20th century, as the increasingly rigid Jim Crow system of segregation moved urban blacks into a community large enough to support a business establishment. The National Negro Business League—which Booker T. Washington, college president, promoted—opened over 600 chapters. It reached every city with a significant black population.

African-Americans have operated virtually every kind of company, but some of the most prominent black-owned businesses have been insurance companies including North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, banks, recording labels, funeral parlors, barber shops, cosmetics, beauty salons, newspapers, restaurants, soul food restaurants, real estate, record stores, and bookstores.

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👉 Black-owned business in the context of African-American culture

African-American culture, also known as Black American culture or Black culture in American English, refers to the cultural expressions of African Americans, either as part of or distinct from mainstream American culture. It is defined by a history of collective struggle for civil and political rights, and rooted in shared practices, identities, and communities.

African-American culture has been influential on American and global culture. African-Americans have made major contributions to American literature, music, visual art, media, politics, science, business, and cuisine. Notably, African-American musical forms such as Jazz, Rock and Roll, and Hip-hop have been among the United States' most successful cultural exports.

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Black-owned business in the context of Black liberation

The Black power movement or Black liberation movement emerged in the mid-1960s from the mainstream civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter White supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the views of the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966, are widely seen as the cornerstone. Black power was influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events such as the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa.

During the peak of the Black power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many African Americans adopted "Afro" hairstyles, African clothes, or African names (such as Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who popularized the phrase "Black power" and later changed his name to Kwame Ture) to emphasize their identity. Others founded Black-owned stores, food cooperatives, bookstores, publishers, media, clinics, schools, and other organizations oriented to their communities. American universities began to offer courses in Black studies, and the word Black replaced negro as the preferred usage in the country. Other leaders of the movement included Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panther Party.

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