By Leonard E. Colvin Chief Reporter New Journal and Guide Despite poverty and disparities of varying kinds, the 47.8 million African-Americans have a $1 trillion consumer and income footprint, according to a recent Nielsen survey. “At 47.8 million strong and a buying power that’s on par with many countries’ gross domestic products, African-Americans continue to outpace spending nationally,” said Cheryl Grace, Nielsen’s Senior Vice President of Community Alliances and Consumer Engagement and co-creator of the DIS Report. But how this capacity was attained is due to resistance to historic barriers. Before the first shot was fired to begin the U.S. Civil War, enslaved Blacks were the most valuable commodity in the nation. Ninety percent of the 4.4 million Blacks in America at that time were not free, and lived and worked in the southern region of the country. They were valued for the millions in income and profits from agricultural products, building and maintaining infrastructure that were provided by their free labor. Plantation owners were not the only ones who benefitted. States, firms distributing the goods or administering the transactions, and educational institutions did too. Laws were created in Virginia and other states to restrict the movement of enslaved Blacks and reinforce the use of slave labor and the ability of free Blacks to own property and operate businesses. But resistance from enslaved and freed Blacks to such barriers was common. According to an article in the Business History Review entitled “Black-owned businesses in the South, 1790-1880” by Loren Schweninger, those Blacks in the Upper South, including Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina “emerged from quite different circumstances than in the lower states economically.” Many of the enslaved Blacks freed following the American Revolution were predominately dark-skinned, possessed few skills, were illiterate and struggled to survive physically. In the lower South, as the 19th century opened, there was an expansion of Black skilled artisans and others establishing businesses and owning property. They were deemed quasi-businessmen, operating small Blacksmith shops, cooperages, or barbering establishments. Baltimore Blacksmith Jacob Guillard built a comfortable trade between 1796 and 1806. But he lost property after signing a $510 note to acquire his enslaved son and ran away to the North. Alexandria, Virginia builder Thomas Braddock hired several apprentices in his house construction business between 1812-1829, acquiring and building several rental houses in the process. Norfolk carpenter Cuddy Dunn, and Lynchburg wheelwright Archer Cooper were among the few men who were able to establish and sustain small businesses in their communities during this colonial period. “In the upper states before 1840, persons of mixed racial origin fared even better,” the paper said. The two largest Black farmers in Virginia, Priscilla Ivey and Frankey Miles had cohabitated with white slaveowners. Richmond bookkeeper Christopher MacPherson was emancipated by h
