Black Businesses – Still Left Out

(Madison Times) — Since this country began Black people have been excluded from participation in opportunities for wealth-building.  Despite the obstacles placed before our ancestors, they made it on their own in many cases.  But for the most part they were hamstrung by restrictions that prevented them from achieving economic empowerment on the same level as Whites.  While I don’t think that can be argued on any intelligent level, it’s still probably good to cite a few examples.  First of all, if you owned a plantation and received free labor it goes without saying that you would prosper and those providing the free labor would not.  Thaddeus Stevens’ plea for reparations to formerly enslaved Blacks notwithstanding, Black people were “freed” without a way of providing for their families, that is, except to continue to work for their former enslavers, as General Gordon Granger suggested in his General Order on June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas.

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