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Entrepreneurs
Who was the Chicago-based entrepreneur who was also publisher of Ebony, Jet and Negro Digest magazines, and expanded his business enterprise into cosmetics and the fashion industry?
1. Jesse Binga
2. John H. Johnson
3. Thomas Burrell
4. Berry Gordy, Jr.
John H. Johnson
John Harold Johnson, businessman and publisher, was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company which published Ebony, Jet and Negro Digest.
Who was the entrepreneur who was also a prolific inventor and manufacturer best known for his invention of the modern gas mask and the first automatic traffic signal?
1. Benjamin Montgomery
2. Madame C. J. Walker
3. Frederick Douglass
4. Garrett Morgan
Garrett Morgan
In addition to his many other inventions, Garret Morgan operated a sewing machine repair business after obtaining a patent for an improved sewing machine.
Who was the Chicago-based entrepreneur who became the first Black woman to own and operate an advertising agency in the country?
1. Patricia Shaw
2. Barbara Gardner Proctor
3. Annie Malone
4. Naomi Sims
Barbara Gardner Proctor
After working successfully with a number of advertising agencies, Barbara Gardner Proctor began her own advertising agency in 1970, called Proctor and Gardner Advertising, Inc., and by1975 she was chosen as "Advertising Person of the Year" by the sixth district of the American Advertising Federation.
What Detroit-born entertainment mogul created Motown Records, which at one time was the largest Black business in profits in the United States?
1. Smokey Robinson
2. Phillip Payton, Jr.
3. Berry Gordy, Jr.
4. Patricia Shaw
Berry Gordy, Jr.
Record producer and songwriter, Berry Gordy, Jr, is best known as the founder of the Motown record label and its subsidiaries and for creating a portfolio of successful recording artists.
What Georgia-based business that includes a hair care products line, a renowned international beauty and trade show, an African-American magazine and once included a hot springs spa and motel?
1. Revlon, Incorporated
2. Bronner Brothers, Enterprise
3. Ebony Fashion Fair
4. Upscale Magazine
The Bronner Bros. Enterprise is one of the largest private African-American hair and skin care producers in the United States. Founded in 1947 by brothers Dr. Nathaniel H. Bronner, Sr. and Arthur E. Bronner, Sr., the company has grown significantly and taken on several other ventures.
Which of the following was NOT among the top African American women CEOs of all time?
1. Madame C.J. Walker
2. Angela Davis
3. Ursula Burns
4. Oprah Winfrey
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is not and has never been a CEO of a company; rather, she is an activist educator, scholar and writer who is best known for her work of the 60s with the Black Panthers and the Communist Party.
What Chicago-based entrepreneur and philanthropist became the richest African - American woman in the country?
1. Oprah Winfrey
2. Beyonce
3. Diana Ross
4. Maya Angelou
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey’s success in the broadcasting industry amassed her abundant wealth and world-wide recognition.
What was the street that from 1910 to 1960 was known as the mecca for African-American entrepreneurship and financial activity in Atlanta?
1. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
2. Sweet Auburn Avenue
3. Lucky Beale Street
4. Peachtree street
Sweet Auburn Avenue
Sweet Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia is part of an historic African-American neighborhood whose name was coined by civic leader John Wesley Dobbs, referring to the "richest Negro street in the world".
Who was the entrepreneur who introduced the nation’s first African American-oriented network and expanded use of new multimedia technologies to produce news and entertainment?
1. Linda Johnson Rice
2. John H. Johnson
3. Robert L. Johnson
4. Marion Berry
Robert L. Johnson
Robert L. Johnson was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and was the country’s first Black billionaire.
What two professions offered economic outlets for Black women in the early 1900s who would otherwise have been restricted to working in domestic service?
1. Hairdressing and beauty culture
2. Science and technology
3. Washer women and child rearing
4. Barbering and catering
Hairdressing and beauty culture
Businesses related to Black hair and beauty were the most lucrative businesses for Black women in the 1900s when the most successful professions Black women could enter were teaching and nursing.
What organization, led by Elijah Muhammed, grew from a small sect to a multimillion-dollar enterprise?
1. The Loewen Group
2. Nation of Islam
3. Freedman’s Bank
4. Black Star Line
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam, an Islamic religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan, presently owns hundreds of businesses nationwide and operates its own farm to support its members.
Who was a former washerwoman who became an entrepreneur and launched a hair care enterprise in the early 1900s?
1. Mary Church Terrell
2. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
3. Madame C. J. Walker
4. Oprah Winfrey
Madame C. J. Walker
Madame C.J. Walker created a hair care empire that earned her the label “first self-made African American female millionaire”.
Founded in 1935, what is the nation’s oldest organization that focuses on the economic development of African-American women and their families?
1. National Women’s Network
2. National Black MBA Association
3. National Afro-American League
4. National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs
National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs
The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s club was formed in 1935 by seven visionary African-American women when African American women were not allowed to join the white national business and professional women’s organization.
Who was the Black entrepreneur, who in 1987, leveraged a buyout worth $1 billion?
1. Oprah Winfrey
2. Jay-Z
3. Reginald Lewis
4. John H. Johnson
Reginald Lewis
Reginald Lewis was the first African American to build a billion dollar company, with the purchase of Beatrice Foods, a conglomerate with 64 companies in 31 countries—the largest leveraged buyout of its time.
Which Alabama entrepreneur was honored in 1992 by Black Enterprise magazine on his 100th birthday as the “Black Entrepreneur of the Century?”
1. Booker T. Washington
2. Marcus Garvey
3. Arthur G. Gaston
4. Edward Gardner
Arthur G. Gaston
By the 1960s, Arthur G. Gaston, born in 1892 and known as the “Black Titan”, was probably the richest Black man in America and the leading employer of Blacks in Alabama.
What is the oldest graduate business school at an historically Black college or university (HBCU), founded in 1946?
1. Howard University
2. Jackson State University
3. Atlanta University (now CAU)
4. Morehouse College
Atlanta University (now CAU)
Founded in 1865, Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) is the nation's oldest graduate institution serving a predominantly African-American student body. It started offering graduate education exclusively in various liberal arts areas, and in the social and natural sciences and gradually added professional programs in social work, library science, and business administration.
What magazine was launched in 1970 by Earl G. Graves to promote the accomplishment of African Americans in business and the professions?
1. Fortune Magazine
2. Negro Digest
3. Black Enterprise
4. Jet Magazine
Black Enterprise
Known as the "premier business news and investment resource for African Americans", Black Enterprise was founded by Earl G. Graves.
Black Wall Street was a term used to describe what two wealthy Black business districts in early twentieth century America?
1. Harlem and Durham
2. Tulsa (OK) and Durham
3. Chicago and Atlanta
4. Tulsa (OK) and Atlanta
Tulsa (OK) and Durham
In the early 20th century, Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a well-to-do Black community and was referred to as Black Wall Street. As well, Parrish Street in Durham, North Carolina was known as Black Wall Street in the late 1800’s and early 1900’. Both were patterned after Wall Street in New York City. The Tulsa Wall Street was destroyed as the result of a race riot; while the Durham Wall Street was destroyed by fire.
What widely circulated Black newspaper, founded in Chicago in 1905 by Robert S. Abbot, was noted for encouraging African Americans to migrate to the North to find better opportunities for advancement?
1. Midwest Monitor
2. Chicago Tribune
3. Chicago Defender
4. Freedom’s Journal
Chicago Defender
While the Chicago Defender attacked all kinds of racial injustice, discrimination and violence, it is most recognized as being a major catalyst for that migration of half a million Blacks from the South to the North between 1915 and 1920.
What agency, established in 1865, held more than $55 million of African American earnings during its existence?
1. Freedmen’s Loan and Trust Company
2. Freedman’s Savings Bank
3. First Federal Savings Bank of New York
4. First National Bank of Washington, DC
Freedman’s Savings Bank
The Freedman's Saving and Trust Company, commonly known as the Freedman's Savings Bank, was a private corporation chartered by the U.S. government to encourage and guide the economic development of the newly emancipated African-American communities in the post-Civil War period. Eventually it had 35 branches.
What entrepreneur became the first American woman bank president—Black or white—in 1903?
1. Adrienne Herndon
2. Maggie Lena Walker
3. Annie Turnbo - Malone
4. Madame C. J. Walker
Maggie Lena Walker
Maggie Lena Walker founded the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in and served as its president. It later merged with other enterprises to form the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company (VA).
Who was one of America’s first successful Black models, and afterwards developed a multimillion dollar business?
1. Winfrey Mary
2. Naomi SIms
3. Twiggy Oprah
4. Ellen Pleasant
Naomi SIms
Naomi Sims is considered the first Black supermodel who, after retiring from modeling in 1973, started her own successful wig collection business. This business expanded "into a multimillion-dollar beauty empire and at least five books on modeling and beauty".
What organization was founded in 1900 by Booker T. Washington?
1. National Urban League
2. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
3. National Negro Business League
4. Black Business League
National Negro Business League
Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League in 1900 to promote “commercial agricultural, educational, and industrial advancement…and the commercial and financial development of the Negro”.
Who was the Jamaican-born organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, the Negro World newspaper, and other business enterprises between 1914 and 1925?
1. James Forten
2. Marcus Garvey
3. Frederick Douglass
4. T. Thomas Fortune x
Marcus Garvey
Jamaican-born Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., was a political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).
Born into slavery, who was the founder of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and also the wealthiest African American in Atlanta in the 1920s?
1. Norris B. Herndon
2. Edmund A. Ware
3. Alonzo F. Herndon
4. Booker T. Washington
Alonzo F. Herndon
Through his enterprises, including Atlanta Life, Alonzo F. Herndon became Atlanta's first Black millionaire and was featured in The Crisis Magazine’s “Men of the Month” in March 1921.
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In this quiz, you will look through the lens of African Americans who created new economic opportunities for themselves and see the great businesses they built, often from nothing.
