Today, black-owned barber shops play a central role in African American public life. The intimacy of commercial grooming encourages both confidentiality and camaraderie, which make the barber shop an important gathering place for African American men to talk freely. But for many years preceding and even after the Civil War, black barbers endured a measure of social stigma for perpetuating inequality: though the profession offered economic mobility to black entrepreneurs, black barbers were obliged by custom to serve an exclusively white clientele. Quincy T. Mills traces the lineage from these nineteenth-century barbers to the bustling enterprises of today, demonstrating that the livelihood offered by the service economy was crucial to the development of a black commercial sphere and the barber shop as a democratic social space. Cutting Along the Color Line chronicles the cultural history of black barber shops as businesses and civic institutions. Through several generations of barbers, Mills examines the transition from slavery to freedom in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth-century expansion of black consumerism, and the challenges of professionalization, licensing laws, and competition from white barbers. He finds that the profession played a significant though complicated role in twentieth-century racial politics: while the services of shaving and grooming were instrumental in the creation of socially acceptable black masculinity, barbering permitted the financial independence to maintain public spaces that fostered civil rights politics. This sweeping, engaging history of an iconic cultural establishment shows that black entrepreneurship was intimately linked to the struggle for equality.

The author of "Crowns" returns with an unforgettable collection of narratives, quotes, and photographs from the most sacred of spacesQthe black barber shop.

In a largely previously untold story, from 1865 to 1950, black litigants throughout the South took on white southerners in civil suits. Drawing on almost a thousand cases, Milewski shows how African Americans negotiated the southern legal system and won suits against whites after the Civil War and before the Civil Rights struggle.

From the award-winning author of Dressing Up, a riveting and diverse history of women’s hair that reestablishes the cultural power of hairdressing in nineteenth-century America. In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant, but it could also impact one’s place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was also a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce. In Beyond Vanity, Elizabeth Block expands the nascent field of hair studies by restoring women’s hair as a cultural site of meaning in the early United States. With a special focus on the places and spaces in which the hair industry operated, Block argues that the importance of hair has been overlooked due to its ephemerality as well as its misguided association with frivolity and triviality. As Block clarifies, hairdressing was anything but frivolous. Using methods of visual and material culture studies informed by concepts of cultural geography, Block identifies multiple substantive categories of place and space within which hair acted. These include the preparatory places of the bedroom, hair salon, and enslaved peoples’ quarters, as well as the presentation places of parties, fairs, stages, and workplaces. Here are also the untold stories of business owners, many of whom were women of color, and the creators of trendsetting styles like the pompadour and Gibson Girl bouffant. Block’s ground-breaking study examines how race and racism affected who participated in the presentation and business of hair, and according to which standards. The result of looking closely at the places and spaces of hair is a reconfiguration that allows a new understanding of the cultural power of hair in the period.

The term “emerging market” refers to a country where incomes are currently low but that is likely to experience rapid growth and increasing economic competitiveness. Identifying emerging markets is important for international development, and for investors they represent intriguing opportunities to reap uncommon gains. Yet many of the characteristics of emerging markets—including demographic shifts, rising educational attainment, and growing urbanization—are also found closer to home, in communities that have been underserved by the existing financial-services system. Gregory Fairchild introduces readers to the rising set of entrepreneurs whose efforts to reach marginalized groups are reshaping the emerging markets of the United States. He explores how minority-owned and community-development institutions are achieving innovations in consumer- and small-business-targeted financial services to further economic development and reduce inequality. Fairchild illustrates these transformative models through compelling narratives: the decision by a Chinese-ethnic credit union to open a branch in a new neighborhood, investment by a minority-led private equity firm in satellite radio for the developing world, and efforts by a community-development-loan fund to bring fresh foods into a food desert in Philadelphia. He analyzes the models of these organizations, measures their successes and failures, and provides suggestions for sustainable growth of similar organizations. Bringing together quantitative research, powerful stories of real-world entrepreneurs, and nuanced insights on public policy, Emerging Domestic Markets offers a vital set of prescriptions for inclusive financial development.

They advocated economic independence from whites and founded insurance companies that became some of the largest black-owned corporations.--L. Diane Barnes "Alabama Review"