IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v46y2009i10p2061-2078.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban Locations of Eminent Black Entrepreneurs in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Robert L. Boyd

    (Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University, 207 Bowen Hall, Hardy Road, Mississippi State, Mississippi, 39762-5503, USA, boyd@soc.msstate.edu)

Abstract

Extraordinarily successful Black entrepreneurs have received relatively little attention in the literature on Black socioeconomic progress in the US. The present study fills this gap by identifying the urban centres that have been the main locations of Black entrepreneurs who have been classified by scholars as ‘eminent’. Biographical data from highly regarded encyclopaedic sources show that these entrepreneurs have concentrated in a small number of urban centres and have a skewed spatial distribution that resembles the famous ‘Pareto curve’. These data also indicate that, over most of the 20th century, Black communities in the urban South produced a disproportionate share of the Black Americans whose business successes have been nationally recognised. However, the data suggest that, by the end of the century, the largest metropolitan areas outside the South—Chicago, New York and Los Angeles—were becoming the primary locations of eminent Black entrepreneurs in the US.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert L. Boyd, 2009. "Urban Locations of Eminent Black Entrepreneurs in the United States," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(10), pages 2061-2078, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:46:y:2009:i:10:p:2061-2078
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098009339434
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098009339434
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098009339434?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boyd, Robert L., 2008. "Residential segregation by race in cities and the employment of blacks in insurance occupations during the early 20th century," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 757-766, April.
    2. Walker, Juliet E. K., 1986. "Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship in the United States before the Civil War," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 343-382, October.
    3. Franklin Wilson, 1975. "The ecology of a black business district," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 353-375, June.
    4. Amos Hawley, 1972. "Population density and the city," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 9(4), pages 521-529, November.
    5. Robert L. Boyd, 2006. "Transformation of the Black Business Elite," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 87(3), pages 602-617, September.
    6. Higgs, Robert, 1976. "Participation of blacks and immigrants in the American Merchant class, 1890-1910: Some demographic relations," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 153-164, April.
    7. Ingham, John N., 2003. "Building Businesses, Creating Communities: Residential Segregation and the Growth of African American Business in Southern Cities, 1880–1915," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(4), pages 639-665, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert L. Boyd, 2012. "The ‘Black Metropolis’ Revisited," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(4), pages 845-860, March.
    2. Robert l. Boyd, 2015. "The ‘Black Metropolis' in the American Urban System of the Early Twentieth Century: Harlem, Bronzeville and Beyond," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 129-144, January.
    3. Fairchild, Gregory B., 2008. "Residential segregation influences on the likelihood of black and white self-employment," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 46-74, January.
    4. Robert L. Boyd, 2020. "Dispersed or Concentrated? Urban Distributions of Ethnic Retail Entrepreneurs: the Late Nineteenth-Century USA," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 41-56, March.
    5. Boyd, Robert L., 2012. "The organization of an ethnic economy: Urban black communities in the early twentieth century," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 633-641.
    6. Susan B. Carter & Richard Sutch, 1997. "Historical Perspectives on the Economic Consequences of Immigration into the United States," NBER Historical Working Papers 0106, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jones, Maggie E.C. & Logan, Trevon D. & Rosé, David & Cook, Lisa D., 2024. "Black-Friendly businesses in cities during the Civil Rights Era," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    8. Cervero, Robert & Bosselmann, Peter, 1994. "An Evaluation of the Market Potential for Transit-Oriented Development Using Visual Simulation Techniques," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt8qf9116b, University of California Transportation Center.
    9. Evelyn Kitagawa, 1977. "On Mortallty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 14(4), pages 381-389, November.
    10. Robert L. Boyd, 2005. "Black Musicians in Northern US Cities during the Early 20th Century: A Test of the Critical Mass Hypothesis of Urban Sub-culture Theory," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(13), pages 2363-2370, December.
    11. McDaniel, P.L. & Liu, G. & Jonas, J., 1989. "High-pressure deuterium solid-state NMR study of the dynamics of pyridine intercalated CdPS3," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 203-211.
    12. Shaw, John Gordon, 1994. "Transit, Density, and Residential Satisfaction," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt8xk3c9z7, University of California Transportation Center.
    13. Shaw, John G., 1994. "Transit, Density, and Residential Satisfaction," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt5xs0r6vz, University of California Transportation Center.
    14. Boyd, Robert L., 2003. "Were black entrepreneurs displaced from the retail trade by white immigrant merchants? A study of northern cities in the early twentieth century," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 447-455, September.
    15. Boyd, Robert L., 2008. "Trends in the occupations of eminent black entrepreneurs in the United States," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2390-2398, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:46:y:2009:i:10:p:2061-2078. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.