“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.” – Horace Mann
While classrooms, homework, professors, classmates, and internships will teach you a lot, sometimes it is an important book that can help shape the way you look at the information being delivered to you. These books will help wrap a culturally relevant point of view to the education you are receiving. It is important to not just understand supply, demand, labor, and capital, but to understand it from our perspective. Learn the history of African Americans as business owners, executives, and inventors so that maybe you create the next great business empire. Read the biographies to get the intimate trials, tribulations, and success of African American business pioneers before you. Ultimately, see how to build, create, develop, and pass on wealth to generations ahead of you.
If you read these books before walking across that stage we promise that you will be a powerful force in business to reckon with.
CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY
History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship
In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street
Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success
On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker
Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire
Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire
Succeeding Against the Odds: The Autobiography of a Great American Businessman
The Hidden Cost Of Being African American – How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality
The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings
SECURITY ANALYSIS
The Richest Man In Babylon
Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family–How Family Members and Their Advisers Preserve Human, Intellectual, and Financial Assets for Generations
Black Asset Poverty and the Enduring Racial Divide
W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics
“Books worth reading once are worth reading twice; and what is most important of all, the masterpieces of literature are worth reading a thousand times.” – John Morley
HBCU Money 
Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell 1983
It gives a historical account of various ethnic group’s immigrant experiences in America.
Wonderful concept, however, I think there can be a healthy debate about whether those should be the 16 books. At that level shouldn’t it be 100 books ? I am working on a very similar concept from a STEM perspective. I applaud your efforts and hope I’ll have something to share soon. I have read three of those books. You have inspired me to read the others. Keep up the good work !!
I would love to see your list of STEM books. I am not in the field but I still have a heathy interest.