Black Wealth in the United States of America
Black History Month is coming to a close.
For the majority of this month, we’ve celebrated firsts. We’ve remembered names. We’ve shared quotes, reposted photos, and revisited stories of resilience and brilliance.
And that celebration matters.
It matters because history is not just memory, it can also serve as instruction. It is context and proof of what has already been done against extraordinary odds.
As February ends, this essay is an attempt to look at the history of black wealth and not only show that it has been built before, but can be built again with strategy and intention.
As I continue to share my work, I remain committed to showcasing Black wealth through both fiction and non-fiction. Not simply as aspiration, but as reality. Through storytelling and research alike, I want to explore ownership, capital, legacy, and the mechanics behind prosperity. Because representation is powerful, but representation paired with understanding is transformative.
If we understand where wealth has been built before, we can better identify where it can be built next.
I. The Historical Architecture of Wealth in America
To understand Black wealth today, we must first understand how wealth was historically built in America.
Wealth in the United States did not emerge randomly. It was structured through policy, land allocation, industrial ownership, and government-backed opportunity. Certain groups were positioned at the starting line of asset accumulation. Others were not.
Let’s take a look at the different causes for wealth in America.
1. Land Ownership
In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Congress passed the Homestead Act. The legislation granted 160 acres of public land to any citizen, or intended citizen, who would live on and improve the land for at least five years. Later amendments increased allotments to 320 acres in certain regions.
On its surface, the policy appeared open. In practice, it overwhelmingly benefited white settlers.
Between 1862 and 1934, the federal government distributed roughly 270 million acres of land, nearly 10% of the landmass of the United States, to private individuals through homesteading programs. This land was not marginal territory. It included fertile agricultural regions, mineral-rich zones, and strategically valuable areas that would later become hubs of commerce and development.
The opportunity was extraordinary:
Land could be farmed and generate income.
Land could be sold for profit.
Land could be used as collateral for loans.
Land could be passed down to children.
It was not just property.
It was equity before equity markets were widely accessible.
It was capital formation at scale.
However, the Homestead Act operated within a country that had not yet granted full citizenship, protection, or political rights to Black Americans. While the 14th Amendment (1868) technically expanded citizenship, enforcement of rights in the South was inconsistent and often violently suppressed. Black Americans faced systemic intimidation, discriminatory lending, racial violence, and legal obstruction that limited access to homesteading opportunities.
At the same time, westward expansion itself was an engine of generational wealth. Railroads were subsidized with massive land grants. Speculators acquired land at low cost and resold it at profit. Entire towns were built atop formerly public land that had been transferred into private hands.
This process created a multiplier effect:
Land → agricultural production → surplus income → reinvestment
Land → mineral rights → extraction wealth → industrial capital
Land → development → urban growth → property appreciation
For many white families, the land acquired through homesteading became the foundation of multi-generational wealth. Farms were inherited. Mineral rights were retained. Parcels were subdivided and sold as cities expanded.
By contrast, Black Americans were emerging from slavery with no land grants, no compensation, and no structural access to this massive public wealth transfer.
The promise of “40 acres and a mule”, issued in 1865 under Special Field Orders No. 15, briefly suggested land redistribution to formerly enslaved families along the Southern coast. But the policy was reversed within months under President Andrew Johnson, and much of the land was returned to former Confederate owners.
Reconstruction offered a short window of economic and political participation. Black Americans established businesses, acquired small plots of land, and built institutions. But this progress was undermined by the rise of Jim Crow laws, Black Codes, voter suppression, and racial terror campaigns that destabilized economic gains.
By 1910, Black farmers owned approximately 14 million acres of land, a significant achievement given the context. Yet discriminatory lending practices, violence, forced sales, partition laws, and USDA bias in agricultural credit access contributed to dramatic land loss over the next century. Today, Black land ownership has declined to a fraction of its early 20th-century peak.
Land became equity.
Equity became inheritance.
Inheritance became leverage.
And leverage compounds.
When one generation acquires land at little to no cost and passes it forward, each subsequent generation begins with options, which is access to capital, stability, and bargaining power.
When another generation begins without land, without capital, and without policy protection, the climb toward wealth requires different strategies and greater risk.
The absence of that foundational land transfer is not simply historical trivia.
It is a structural explanation for why generational wealth patterns diverged.
Understanding this does not reduce Black Americans to victims of history. Rather, it clarifies the playing field on which wealth accumulation began, and why entrepreneurship, cultural innovation, and alternative economic pathways became necessary strategies.
The historical architecture of American wealth was built on land.
And land, more than almost any other asset class in early America, determined who would have a head start in the compounding game.
2. Industrial Capital and Early Business Ownership
As the United States moved from an agrarian economy into an industrial one in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the engines of wealth changed.
Land remained valuable, but industrial capital like factories, railroads, steel production, banking institutions, oil, and large-scale manufacturing became the dominant vehicles of wealth accumulation. Ownership of productive infrastructure replaced acreage as the primary source of massive economic expansion.
The Industrial Revolution in America was not simply about invention. It was about scale.
Railroad networks connected markets. Steel production fueled urban growth. Factories centralized labor. Banks financed expansion. Insurance companies underwrote risk. Corporations introduced equity ownership structures that allowed wealth to compound far beyond individual labor.
Ownership in these sectors meant:
Equity in corporations
Dividends from industrial profits
Access to capital markets
Control over employment and supply chains
And like land distribution before it, access to industrial ownership was not evenly distributed.
Black Americans, emerging from slavery into Reconstruction and then Jim Crow, faced formal and informal barriers to capital access. Segregation laws limited economic mobility. Racial violence destabilized thriving communities. Discriminatory banking practices restricted loans. Exclusion from unions and skilled trades limited access to higher-paying industrial jobs.
As a result, many Black Americans were concentrated in:
Agricultural labor (including sharecropping)
Domestic service
Railroad porter roles
Hospitality and service positions
Manual labor positions with little equity upside
These roles generated income, but rarely ownership.
And yet, even within these constraints, Black enterprise emerged.
During Reconstruction, Black communities established thousands of businesses. From barbershops and tailoring shops to newspapers, grocery stores, insurance firms, and banks. Economic self-sufficiency became both a survival strategy and assertion of autonomy.
One of the most striking examples of Black industrial-era enterprise was the rise of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood District became one of the most prosperous Black communities in the United States in the early 20th century. It included banks, theaters, medical offices, retail shops, and professional services. A localized economic ecosystem built largely because segregation forced internal circulation of Black dollars.
The prosperity of Greenwood demonstrated a powerful principle:
When excluded from mainstream systems, parallel economies can emerge.
However, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which the district was destroyed, illustrated another reality: wealth built without systemic protection remains vulnerable to violent disruption.
Despite these setbacks, Black entrepreneurship continued.
Madam C.J. Walker built a haircare empire in the early 1900s by recognizing a neglected market: Black women whose needs were ignored by mainstream cosmetic companies. She did not simply sell products; she created a distribution network of trained sales agents, many of whom were Black women earning independent income. Her business model combined product innovation, branding, and decentralized entrepreneurship. It was industrial logic applied to a culturally specific market.
The strategy was clear: identify demand where mainstream industry refuses to look.
In later decades, as corporate America expanded and capital markets deepened, new forms of wealth emerged through finance and acquisition.
Reginald F. Lewis leveraged debt and acquisition strategy to purchase and scale Beatrice International Foods, building one of the first Black-owned billion-dollar companies. His wealth was not derived from starting small retail businesses; it was built through leveraged buyouts and corporate restructuring. Techniques typically associated with Wall Street insiders.
Robert F. Smith built wealth through private equity, understanding that ownership of companies, rather than participation as labor, drives exponential returns. Private equity represents a modern evolution of industrial capital: control over productive enterprises, access to institutional capital, and strategic consolidation.
The throughline across eras is not industry, it is ownership.
When direct access to dominant capital markets was limited, Black entrepreneurs often built wealth in underserved consumer markets: beauty, food services, entertainment, community banking, insurance, and media.
When access to capital increased, even marginally, wealth creation expanded into acquisitions, corporate finance, and investment management.
But barriers remained.
Black-owned banks historically received less capitalization and faced greater scrutiny. Redlining reduced collateral value for Black entrepreneurs seeking loans. Exclusion from venture capital networks limited participation in emerging tech industries. Informal investor circles often operated through homogenous social networks.
The result was not absence of ambition, but constrained scale.
Still, the pattern is clear:
Black wealth has often emerged through entrepreneurship in overlooked markets, through internal capital circulation, and through strategic acquisition of productive assets when access allowed.
The lesson is not merely historical.
It is strategic.
When a community is excluded from dominant ownership structures, two primary responses tend to emerge:
Build parallel systems.
Find entry points into existing capital structures and scale through acquisition.
Both strategies appear repeatedly in the history of Black wealth in America.
And both remain relevant today.
3. Redlining and Housing Policy
From the 1930s through the 1960s, federal housing policies, particularly through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, graded neighborhoods by perceived lending risk. Predominantly Black neighborhoods were marked in red.
This practice, known as redlining, limited mortgage access and suppressed property appreciation.
The result?
Homeownership, America’s most significant middle-class wealth-building vehicle, grew unevenly.
According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (2022), the median white household holds roughly 6 - 8 times the wealth of the median Black household. Housing equity accounts for a significant portion of that disparity.
This is not about individual effort alone. It is about policy design.
II. The Modern Racial Wealth Gap: What the Data Says
According to the 2022 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances:
Median white household wealth: $285,000
Median Black household wealth: $44,000
That gap is not explained by spending habits.
It is primarily driven by:
Home equity differences
Business ownership disparities
Stock market participation
Intergenerational transfers
Black Americans are less likely to inherit wealth and more likely to financially support extended family, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “kinship obligation economics.”
Yet, despite these structural realities, Black wealth is growing, particularly among entrepreneurs and professionals in specific sectors.
The question becomes: Where are the leverage points?
III. How Black Americans Have Built Wealth
Patterns reveal themselves when we examine the data and history closely.
1. Entrepreneurship in Cultural Markets
Music, sports, beauty, and fashion have been dominant avenues of Black wealth creation.
Jay-Z transformed cultural influence into diversified ownership: liquor brands, entertainment companies, venture investments.
Rihanna built Fenty Beauty around inclusivity gaps in cosmetics.
These examples highlight a pattern:
Identify underserved markets.
Build brand equity.
Convert cultural capital into ownership stakes.
However, these industries are highly competitive and often gatekept.
2. Professional Services and Corporate Leadership
In the last 30 years, Black wealth has increasingly grown through:
Law
Medicine
Corporate leadership
Consulting
Tech roles
High-income professions provide capital that can later be redirected into ownership assets.
But income alone does not create wealth.
Ownership does.
3. Real Estate
Black real estate investors have historically built wealth through:
Multi-family properties
Fix-and-flip investing
Small apartment buildings in urban cores
Short-term rentals
Real estate remains one of the most accessible scalable vehicles because:
It can be leveraged with debt.
It generates cash flow.
It appreciates over time.
IV. Untapped Industries and Strategic Opportunity
If we study where wealth is growing broadly in America, we can identify industries where Black participation remains underrepresented, and where opportunity exists.
1. Private Equity and Acquisition Entrepreneurship
Many small businesses in America are owned by Baby Boomers approaching retirement.
There is a growing market for “acquisition entrepreneurship”: buying profitable businesses rather than starting from scratch.
Barriers:
Capital requirements
Deal flow access
Financial literacy in deal structuring
Opportunity:
SBA-backed loans
Search fund models
Partnerships and syndicates
Ownership of businesses that may seem boring (logistics companies, HVAC services, waste management, regional distribution) may not be glamorous, but they are cash-flow engines.
2. Technology Infrastructure
Black representation in venture-backed startups remains low.
However, opportunities exist in:
Cybersecurity
AI implementation consulting
Government tech contracting
Data analytics firms
Vertical SaaS for niche markets
Rather than competing in hyper-competitive consumer apps, building B2B infrastructure companies can generate recurring revenue and acquisition potential.
3. Energy and Sustainability
The transition toward renewable energy presents opportunity in:
Solar installation companies
Energy efficiency retrofitting
EV charging infrastructure
Local grid modernization contracting
Government incentives (Inflation Reduction Act programs) are injecting capital into this sector.
Early movers in regional markets can build durable wealth.
4. Agricultural Revitalization
Black farmers once represented 14% of American farmers in 1910. Today that number is under 2%.
Land remains one of the most powerful assets.
Opportunities include:
Regenerative agriculture
Specialty crop farming
Direct-to-consumer agriculture (CSA models)
Agricultural technology integration
Land is leverage. And leverage compounds.
5. Intellectual Property
Books. Film. Music catalogs. Software code. Patents.
Ownership of IP can generate:
Royalties
Licensing deals
Equity stakes
Long-tail revenue
For creators, including authors, IP ownership is a form of wealth that scales beyond labor.
This may be one of the most under-discussed wealth strategies in Black communities: owning the rights to the stories.
V. Stereotypes and Misconceptions
Several damaging narratives must be examined honestly.
Because narratives shape policy. They shape perception. And over time, they shape opportunity.
When conversations about Black wealth are reduced to simplified explanations — whether blame-based or defeatist — they distort reality. Some narratives suggest that the racial wealth gap is primarily the result of individual spending habits or poor financial decision-making. Others imply that systemic barriers are so overwhelming that meaningful wealth-building is nearly impossible. Both extremes oversimplify a far more complex economic history.
These narratives persist in part because they are convenient. It is easier to attribute economic outcomes to culture alone than to examine decades of housing policy, credit allocation, land distribution, capital access, and inheritance patterns. It is equally easy to resign to hopelessness rather than study strategy and leverage. But convenience does not equal accuracy.
If we are going to have an honest conversation about Black wealth, we must separate myth from mechanism. We must distinguish between income and assets, between visibility and scale, between isolated success stories and structural patterns. Without that clarity, discussions about progress become reactive instead of strategic.
Confronting these narratives is not about assigning blame. It is about reclaiming precision. Because when we understand the real drivers of wealth: ownership of appreciating assets, access to capital, equity participation, and intergenerational transfer - we can move beyond rhetoric and toward solutions grounded in economic reality.
Myth 1: “The Wealth Gap Exists Because of Spending Habits”
Research consistently shows that income disparities and asset ownership, not consumption, drive the wealth gap.
Even high-earning Black households often have lower net worth due to:
Lower inheritance levels
Higher family support obligations
Lower stock market participation
Spending is not the primary driver, assets are.
Myth 2: “Athletes and Entertainers Are the Main Path”
While highly visible, athletes and entertainers represent a tiny fraction of Black wealth creation.
The majority of affluent Black households derive wealth from:
Business ownership
Professional services
Real estate
Corporate equity compensation
In this specific myth, visibility distorts perception.
Myth 3: “Systemic Barriers Mean Wealth Is Impossible”
This narrative is equally harmful.
Structural barriers are real. Policy history is real.
But history also shows:
Black Americans have repeatedly built parallel economies, leveraged cultural innovation, and created ownership structures even within constraints.
The key is strategic focus.
VI. The Psychology of Wealth Building
Wealth is not only structural, it is behavioral.
When a community has experienced:
Financial exclusion
Housing discrimination
Predatory lending
Wage instability
Risk tolerance changes.
Investment participation drops.
Conservative financial behavior may emerge.
Rebuilding wealth requires not only capital but trust in systems, and literacy in how those systems function.
VII. Strategic Pathways Forward
Based on historical analysis and current opportunity landscapes, several strategies appear promising:
1. Prioritize Ownership Over Income
Equity stakes > salaries. This doesn’t mean avoiding salaried positions. It means understanding their limits. A salary provides income. Equity provides ownership. Income pays bills. Ownership builds leverage.
A salaried position can be a powerful starting point. It can fund investments, provide stability, and create access to professional networks. But salaries, by design, are linear. They are tied to time, performance reviews, and organizational structures. Equity, on the other hand, is exponential. It appreciates. It compounds. It can be sold, borrowed against, or passed down.
The strategic shift is not to reject employment, but to use employment as a platform. To convert earned income into assets. To seek compensation packages that include stock. To invest in businesses. To acquire cash-flowing enterprises. To participate in ownership structures that grow beyond individual labor.
Historically, the greatest expansions of wealth in America have not come from wages alone, but from ownership of appreciating assets like land, businesses, equity shares, intellectual property. Understanding this distinction changes the conversation from “earning more” to “owning more.”
And ownership is what compounds across generations.
2. Increase Stock Market Participation
Index investing remains one of the simplest compounding vehicles.
At its core, index investing means purchasing a fund that tracks a broad market index; such as the S&P 500 or the total U.S. stock market, rather than attempting to pick individual winning stocks. Instead of betting on one company, the investor owns a small piece of hundreds or even thousands of companies across industries. It is diversification by design.
What makes index investing powerful is not complexity, but consistency. Historically, the U.S. stock market has returned approximately 7 - 10% annually over long time horizons when adjusted for inflation. While returns vary year to year, sometimes dramatically, the long-term trajectory has trended upward alongside economic growth, innovation, and corporate expansion. When dividends are reinvested and investments are held over decades, compounding begins to accelerate. Gains generate additional gains. Time becomes a multiplier.
This matters in a wealth conversation because compounding favors patience and participation more than timing and prediction. Index investing does not require insider access, advanced financial modeling, or high-net-worth status. It requires discipline, consistency, and time in the market.
Yet stock market participation has historically been lower among Black households compared to white households. Research from the Federal Reserve consistently shows a gap in direct and indirect stock ownership, even when controlling for income. The reasons are layered: historical exclusion from financial systems, distrust rooted in discriminatory banking practices, lower levels of inherited capital, and fewer workplace retirement accounts tied to equity markets.
The impact of that participation gap is significant. Over the last century, equities have been one of the primary engines of middle-class and upper-middle-class wealth accumulation in the United States. When households are absent from that engine, compounding works unevenly.
Increasing participation in broad-market investing is not a complete solution to the wealth gap. But it is a practical, accessible mechanism for long-term asset growth. It shifts the conversation from speculation to ownership. From chasing short-term wins to building gradual, durable equity in the broader economy.
In the context of Black wealth building, index investing represents something important: participation in the growth of the entire market, not just isolated industries. It is not flashy and doesn’t generate headlines. But over decades, disciplined ownership of productive assets, even through something as simple as an index fund, can meaningfully change financial trajectories.
Compounding may be quiet, but it is relentless.
3. Encourage Acquisition Entrepreneurship
Buying businesses may outperform starting new ones.
Entrepreneurship is often romanticized as building something from scratch. The late nights, the vision, the grind of creating a brand-new company. But statistically, startups carry high failure rates, particularly within the first five years. New businesses must prove product-market fit, build customer trust, establish operational systems, and survive unpredictable cash flow, all at once.
Acquisition entrepreneurship operates differently.
Instead of creating a company from zero, an entrepreneur purchases an existing, cash-flowing business with customers, revenue history, supplier relationships, and established operations. The risk profile shifts. Rather than betting on an unproven idea, the buyer evaluates financial statements, margins, contracts, and performance trends. The question becomes less about “Will this work?” and more about “Can this be improved, scaled, or optimized?”
This distinction matters.
Across the United States, millions of small businesses are owned by Baby Boomers approaching retirement. Many of these companies: logistics firms, HVAC services, manufacturing shops, distribution companies, medical practices, waste management providers generate consistent cash flow but lack succession plans. As owners retire, these businesses will either be sold, closed, or consolidated.
For buyers with access to capital and strategic discipline, this represents opportunity.
Through mechanisms like SBA-backed loans, seller financing, and structured buyouts, entrepreneurs can acquire businesses with limited upfront capital relative to the asset being purchased. The acquired company’s existing cash flow often services the acquisition debt. Over time, debt is paid down, equity grows, and the owner controls a productive asset that can later be sold or passed down.
For Black wealth building in particular, acquisition strategy offers something powerful: scale without starting at zero.
Historically, exclusion from large capital markets limited opportunities to build high-growth industrial firms from scratch. But acquiring profitable “boring” businesses creates ownership in infrastructure sectors that quietly generate durable wealth.
It shifts the focus from visibility to viability.
Buying businesses is not easier than starting one. It requires financial literacy, negotiation skill, and operational discipline. But when executed strategically, it can accelerate equity accumulation faster than building a company from the ground up.
And in a wealth conversation centered on ownership, leverage, and compounding acquisition entrepreneurship deserves serious attention.
4. Invest in Intergenerational Planning
Trusts, wills, and life insurance matter.
Because building wealth is only half the equation. Transferring it efficiently is the other half.
In the United States, a significant portion of long-term wealth accumulation has occurred not just through individual earnings, but through intergenerational transfer. Assets passed from parents to children: homes, businesses, investment accounts, land provide a starting point that dramatically alters financial trajectories. Inheritance functions as leverage. It reduces risk. It provides capital for entrepreneurship. It shortens the distance between effort and opportunity.
Without formal estate planning, however, wealth can fragment quickly.
When individuals pass away without a will, assets are distributed according to state intestacy laws, which may not reflect the family’s intentions. Property can become tied up in probate for months or years. Heirs’ property — land inherited informally without clear title — can become vulnerable to forced partition sales, legal disputes, and below-market buyouts. Across the South in particular, heirs’ property has been a significant driver of Black land loss over the past century.
Trusts and properly structured estate plans provide protection. They clarify ownership. They reduce probate delays. They establish clear lines of succession. They can protect businesses from being liquidated to cover estate costs. They can ensure that assets are managed responsibly across generations.
Life insurance plays a parallel role.
Historically, life insurance has been one of the most accessible wealth-building and wealth-preservation tools available to working-class families. A properly structured policy can provide immediate liquidity at death, which can help with paying off mortgages, funding education, stabilizing family businesses, or seeding investment accounts. In communities where liquid capital has often been scarce, life insurance has functioned as emergency capital and legacy capital simultaneously.
Yet estate planning gaps remain common. Surveys consistently show that a majority of American adults do not have a will, and participation rates are often lower among households with fewer inherited assets. In communities where wealth accumulation has been more recent or hard-won, formal planning may be delayed. This has not been out of negligence, but because asset protection has historically not felt accessible or urgent.
But as wealth grows, structure must grow with it.
If ownership is the foundation of wealth, then legal clarity is the infrastructure that sustains it.
Trusts, wills, and insurance policies are not glamorous topics. They do not trend on social media. But they are strategic tools that convert individual success into generational continuity. They transform income into legacy. They ensure that assets built with discipline and sacrifice are not unintentionally dissipated.
In a long-term vision for Black wealth building, estate planning is not optional.
It is the mechanism that turns progress into permanence.
5. Normalize Wealth Education Early
Financial literacy should begin in adolescence.
Compounding does not only apply to money, it applies to knowledge.
The earlier an individual understands how credit works, how interest accumulates, how businesses generate profit, and how investments appreciate over time, the earlier they can make decisions that align with long-term ownership rather than short-term consumption. A teenager who understands the basics of index investing, business equity, and leverage enters adulthood with a different lens. Money is not just something to spend. It becomes something to deploy.
Time is one of the most powerful variables in wealth creation. A young adult who begins investing at 18 has decades of compounding ahead. Even modest contributions, when invested consistently over 30 or 40 years, can grow substantially. Conversely, delayed exposure to financial concepts often leads to delayed participation, and delayed participation weakens the multiplier effect of time.
But financial literacy extends beyond investing.
It includes understanding credit scores and borrowing costs. It includes recognizing predatory lending structures. It includes learning how to read a balance sheet, evaluate risk, and distinguish between assets and liabilities. It includes exposure to entrepreneurship not just as aspiration, but as structure.
Historically, many families learned these lessons informally through proximity to business ownership or inherited assets. When that proximity is absent, education becomes even more critical.
Introducing financial literacy in adolescence normalizes ownership thinking early. It allows young people to see career choices not only through the lens of salary, but through equity potential. It reframes debt as a tool that can either build or erode wealth depending on how it is structured. It builds familiarity with systems that once felt distant or inaccessible.
Conclusion: Wealth as Strategy, Not Accident
Black wealth in America has never been accidental.
It has been:
Built through entrepreneurship.
Constrained by policy.
Accelerated by ownership.
Preserved through planning.
The wealth gap is not explained by laziness or moral failure.
It is explained by access to appreciating assets.
The future of Black wealth will likely be built not only in visible cultural industries, but in:
Infrastructure
Energy
Private equity
Intellectual property
Real estate
Technology services
The question is not whether wealth can be built.
History shows that it can.
The more important question is whether we will focus on ownership, leverage, and long-term asset accumulation with the same intentionality that earlier generations were denied.
Wealth is rarely loud, but it is almost always strategic.
References
Federal Reserve. (2022). Survey of Consumer Finances.
Darity, W., & Mullen, A. (2020). From Here to Equality.
Oliver, M., & Shapiro, T. (2006). Black Wealth / White Wealth.
Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law.
U.S. Department of Agriculture – Historical Black Farm Ownership Data.
Brookings Institution – Racial Wealth Gap Research.
Pew Research Center – Wealth and Homeownership Statistics.
U.S. Census Bureau – Business Ownership Statistics.