HBCU Money™ Business Book Feature – On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment
On Her Own Groundis the first full-scale, definitive biography of Madam C. J. Walker — the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist — by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.The daughter of slaves, Madam C. J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then — with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women — everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century politi-cal figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

On Her Own Ground is not only the first comprehensive biography of one of recent history’s most amazing entrepreneurs and philanthropists, it is about a woman who is truly an African American icon. Drawn from more than two decades of exhaustive research, the book is enriched by the author’s exclusive access to personal letters, records and never-before-seen photographs from the family collection. Bundles also showcases Walker’s complex relationship with her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, a celebrated hostess of the Harlem Renaissance and renowned friend to both Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. In chapters such as “Freedom Baby,” “Motherless Child,” “Bold Moves” and “Black Metropolis,” Bundles traces her ancestor’s improbable rise to the top of an international hair care empire that would be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985. Along the way, On Her Own Ground reveals surprising insights, tells fascinating stories and dispels many misconceptions.

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The HBCU Money™ Daily Market Watch

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Our Money Matters /\ February 24, 2012

NAME PRICE (GAIN/LOSS %)

African American Publicly Traded Companies

Citizens Bancshares Georgia (CZBS) $4.00 (4.76% DN)

Carver Bank New York (CARV) $6.11 (12.71% DN)

Radio One (ROIA) $1.12 (7.44% DN)

African Stock Exchanges

Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres (BRVM)  145.50 (0.55% UP)

Bourse des Valeurs Mobilieres de Tunis (BVMT)  N/A

Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres d’Afrique Centrale (BVMAC)  N/A

Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE)  6 971.74 (0.06% DN)

Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)  1 011.36 (0.10% UP)

Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE)  70.73 (N/A)

Stock Exchange Mauritius (SEM)  5 424.63 (N/A)

Casablanca Stock Exchange (Casa SE)  11 397.33 (0.21% UP)

Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE)  N/A

Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)  34 260.76 (UNCH)

Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE)  N/A

International Stock Exchanges

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) 8 151.96 (0.19% UP)

NASDAQ Stock Exchange (NASDAQ)  2 604,21 (0.36 % UP)

London Stock Exchange (LSE)  3 074.65 (0.01% DN)

Tokyo Stock Exchange 834.29 (N/A)

Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) – (N/A)

*All quotes reported as of 5:30 PM Eastern Time Zone

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4 HBCU Alumni Found The HBCU Chamber Of Commerce

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 1 comment

There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity. — Douglas MacArthur

USChamber

On February 18th four business owners officially met to establish the HBCU Chamber of Commerce. The founding companies were AK, Inc. an investment and operations firm in Houston, TX that owns HBCU Money and operates in the agriculture, energy, finance, media, research, and transportation industries; Carter Media Enterprises a media company in Baltimore, MD that owns and operates HBCU Digest; Style Root, Inc. a public relations firm in New York City, NY; and Urban Argyle an events company in Atltanta, GA that are creators of innovative events geared toward image, activism, and awareness.

The chamber’s stated mission is “To promote and assist in developing sound economic progress in our community.” It will serve as the lobbyist voice for businesses owned by HBCU alums, students, and even HBCU institutionally owned businesses. The chamber will be creating institutes and initiatives, one of which it highlighted is its Rebuild Black Wall Street by 2020 initiative listed below:

  1. 51% of African America’s buying power in African American owned banks & credit unions
  2. African America owning 1.7 billion acres
  3. 51% of African America employed by African American owned companies
  4. Forgive all African American student loan debt
  5. Top 100 largest HWCU endowments to give HEF designated HBCUs 15% of asset value
  6. No income tax for African America individuals or companies for 25 years
  7. All drug related felonies for African Americans be expunged from records and voting rights restored

The goals are lofty but its impact on the African American economy will be profound and will allow future generations to truly build the economic institutional infrastructure that has been needed. To have a voice that is focused on our interest is vital as opposed to hoping that lawmakers will distribute and enact policies that would be accessible to everyone. Something we have tried in the past and has continued to leave us at a loss of opportunities. The founding of the HBCU Chamber of Commerce shows a move to creating an institutional mechanism that secures and increases the probability of opportunity coming to us.

The founding of this organization is also amazing when one considers the impact of four alums from four different HBCUs (Virginia State University, Morgan State University, Tennessee State University, and North Carolina A&T University) being represented in the founding. It highlights the promise of what HBCU collaboration can truly achieve and why we should strive to have more of it.

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Posted in Business

HBCU Money™ Business Book Feature – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire

Posted on February 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million and a business empire spanning communications, real estate, and insurance. Gaston was, by any measure, a heroic figure whose wealth and influence bore comparison to J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Here, for the first time, is the story of the life of this extraordinary pioneer, told by his niece and grandniece, the award-winning television journalist Carol Jenkins and her daughter Elizabeth Gardner Hines.

Born at a time when the bitter legacy of slavery and Reconstruction still poisoned the lives of black Americans, Gaston was determined to make a difference for himself and his people. His first job, after serving in the celebrated all-black regiment during World War I, bound him to the near-slavery of an Alabama coal mine—but even here Gaston saw not only hope but opportunity. He launched a business selling lunches to fellow miners, soon established a rudimentary bank—and from then on there was no stopping him. A kind of black Horatio Alger, Gaston let a single, powerful question be his guide: What do our people need now? His success flowed from an uncanny genius for knowing the answer.

Combining rich family lore with a deep knowledge of American social and economic history, Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Hines unfold Gaston’s success story against the backdrop of a century of crushing racial hatred and bigotry. Gaston not only survived the hardships of being black during the Depression, he flourished, and by the 1950s he was ruling a Birmingham-based business empire. When the movement for civil rights swept through the South in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gaston provided critical financial support to many activists.

At the time of his death in 1996, A. G. Gaston was one of the wealthiest black men in America, if not the wealthiest. But his legacy extended far beyond the monetary. He was a man who had proved it was possible to overcome staggering odds and make a place for himself as a leader, a captain of industry, and a far-sighted philanthropist. Writing with grace and power, Jenkins and Hines bring their distinguished ancestor fully to life in the pages of this book. Black Titan is the story of a man who created his own future—and in the process, blazed a future for all black businesspeople in America.

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Posted in Books

HBCU Money™ B-School: Accredited Investor

Posted on February 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Accredited Investors Under the Securities Act of 1933, a company that offers or sells its securities must register the securities with the SEC or find an exemption from the registration requirements. The Act provides companies with a number of exemptions. For some of the exemptions, such as rules 505 and 506 of Regulation D, a company may sell its securities to what are known as “accredited investors.” The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D as:

  1. a bank, insurance company, registered investment company, business development company, or small business investment company;
  2. an employee benefit plan, within the meaning of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, if a bank, insurance company, or registered investment adviser makes the investment decisions, or if the plan has total assets in excess of $5 million;
  3. a charitable organization, corporation, or partnership with assets exceeding $5 million;
  4. a director, executive officer, or general partner of the company selling the securities;
  5. a business in which all the equity owners are accredited investors;
  6. a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, excluding the value of the primary residence of such person;
  7. a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year; or
  8. a trust with assets in excess of $5 million, not formed to acquire the securities offered, whose purchases a sophisticated person makes.

http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm

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Posted in B-School