Black Fortunes

Ron Butler narrates this fascinating biography of the first six blacks who escaped slavery and became millionaires. They were born in the Jacksonian period, survived slavery, and became successful business men and women, each accumulating more than a million dollars by the Roaring Twenties. Most made their fortunes in real estate and invested their money soundly in their businesses, the market, and their communities. Butler's melodious voice never falters as he delivers stories of the trials, heartaches, and successes of these early millionaires. Listeners gain an appreciation for the difficulties each overcame on the road to financial independence. These intertwined biographical sketches provide lessons in perseverance, determination, and business savvy. M.B.K. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

March 5, 2018
Wills, a former contributor to Good Morning America, chronicles the incredible stories of six self-made African-American millionaires who amassed great wealth in the decades after Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation. Hannah Elias (1865–1903) was given land by her millionaire lover and used her money to help African-Americans move into Harlem; schoolteacher O.W. Gurley (1868–1921) developed his land in Oklahoma into an all-black commerce district known as Black Wall Street; and Robert Reed Church (1839–1912) purchased properties in Memphis, which he transformed into the black music enclave that became Memphis’s famed Beale Street. Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904) profited from the Gold Rush and used her wealth to fund abolitionist causes, including John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid. Annie Minerva Turnbo (1877–1957), a self-taught chemist from Peoria, Illinois, built the first black hair care empire, only to be outdone by her former pupil, Madam C.J. Walker (1867–1919). Willis unearths these figures from obscurity using fluid prose and juicy detail (Elias had a “round face with a flat nose and big brown eyes with heavy eyelids. One of the girls who worked with Elias summed her up this way: ‘she exhibited a peculiar influence over white men’ ”). This highly readable group biography illustrates the ways those early millionaires “survived assassination attempts, lynchings, frivolous lawsuits, and criminal cases” and, in doing so, paved the way for Oprah, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z.

September 15, 2017

Based on a University Honors-winning proposal Wills developed at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, this book chronicles the first African American millionaires, from Mary Ellen Pleasant, whose Gold Rush wealth helped abolitionist John Brown, to a Mississippi school teacher who developed an area in Tulsa called "the Black Wall Street." With a 25,000-copy first printing.prepub alertThe first word on titles and trends By Barbara Hoffert

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