Black Innovators and Entrepreneurs Under Capitalism

That innovative black Americans flourished in late 19th- and early 20th-century America is a little-known part of our heritage.

Tuskegee University Archives/Museum

by Andrew Bernstein | Mar 4, 2022 | History

That innovative black Americans flourished in late 19th- and early 20th-century America is a little-known part of our heritage. This talk by Andrew Bernstein celebrates a number of great minds — including Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in America; George Washington Carver, who revolutionized agricultural science; and others — that, under the freedom of the capitalist system, triumphed over bigotry to reach great intellectual achievements.

Lecture from Ayn Rand Institute’s OCON 2015.

Andrew Bernstein holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the City University of New York. He lectures all over the world.

The views represent those of the author and not necessarily those of Capitalism Magazine.

RELATED ARTICLES

The Story of the Victorian-Era Anti-Mandate Movement

The Story of the Victorian-Era Anti-Mandate Movement

The Leicester Anti-Vaccination League of the 1870s and 1880s England was one of the more effective anti-vaccine mandate movements in Western history. It rose up in response to the Vaccination Act of 1867 as passed by Parliament in compliance with intense industry lobbying and the familiar graft.

The Most Important Thing the Founders Built Wasn’t the Constitution

The Most Important Thing the Founders Built Wasn’t the Constitution

Their deepest fear was an ignorant citizenry—a public that could be handed liberty and squander it because they lacked the mental tools to defend it. The Founders understood something that gets lost in the monument-and-marble version of history: a republic is not a structure. It’s a practice. And practices die when people forget how to perform them.