Skip to main content

Robert Weems Explores African American Entrepreneurs in Wichita, Kansas

Robert Weems Jr., courtesy Wichita State University
In 2011, Robert Weems, Jr., accepted a position as the Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History at Wichita State University. Since his arrival there, he has been researching the history of African American businesses in Wichita. Because many earlier African American businesses no longer exist, Weems is concerned that their histories will be lost, “this whole significant area of the African-American experience . . . come and gone with barely a trace.” “In general we know African-American history continues to be one of the more under-reported areas of historical inquiry,” says Weems. “But [when] we look at the economic and business dynamic of the African American experience, that’s especially underreported.” To help remedy the gap, he is conducting interviews with Wichita's surviving black entrepreneurs with a view to establishing a database of information about Wichita's African-American business history that will be of use to future students and scholars.  The interviews and other materials will be housed in the Ablah Library’s Special Collections at WSU. Weems can be heard discussing some of his findings in an interview on KMUW, Wichita Public Radio, which aired on June 27, 2013.
   Readers can also listen to a series of Weems' reports in the series "Past and Present" on KMUW.
   Weems, a long-time BHC member and a former Trustee, is the author of  Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925-1985 (1996), and Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (1998); his most recent book is Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century (New York University Press, 2009). Weems can be seen discussing the latter book on C-Span in May 2012. His other current project is a biography of the Anthony Overton, the first African American to found a business conglomerate, who began his entrepreneurial career in Kansas City, Missouri.

Popular posts from this blog

The Exchange has moved to the BHC's website

  Dear members subscribers of The Exchange   The Exchange, the weblog of the BHC, is now part of our website ( https://thebhc.org ). We migrated the blog to serve our membership and interested parties best since Blogger is discontinuing its email service.   Note that this will be the last message we will send from Blogger .   The Exchange was founded by Pat Denault over a decade ago, and it has become an essential channel for announcements from and about the BHC and from our subscribers and members. Announcements from The Exchange will come up on the News section of our website as they did before. However, if you wish to receive these announcements via email, and you have not done so yet, please subscribe to The Exchange by: Going to our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org ), s crolling down to the end of the page, and clicking on "Subscribe to the Latest BHC News." Or go to the “News” section of our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org/ ),   and click on “The

Regina Blaszczyk on the Business of Color

In September, MIT Press published Regina Lee Blaszczyk 's book, The Color Revolution , in which she "traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture." Readers can see some of the 121 color illustrations featured in the book at the MIT PressLog here and here . The author has recently written an essay on her research for the book in the Hagley Archives for the Hagley Library and Archives newsletter.    Reviews can be found in the New York Times , The Atlantic , Leonardo , and Imprint ; one can listen to an audio interview with Reggie Blaszczyk, and read her posts, "How Auto Shows Sparked a Color Revolution" on the Echoes blog and "True Blue: DuPont and the Color Revolution" on the Chemical Heritage Foundation website . Also available is a CHF video of the author discussing another excerpt from her rese

New resource available: Business history and race: a partial, open bibliography

Business history and race: a partial, open bibliography The Business History Conference is working to facilitate the creation of a bibliography of scholarly work on race and business history. We hope that the bibliography will serve as a resource for those seeking to create more inclusive syllabi and understand the historical context for our present moment of reckoning with structural racism in the United States and across the globe. The bibliography is crowdsourced and draws on the collective expertise of the BHC membership. The BHC wishes to expand the list of references already curated and invites your contributions to the bibliography (The current list of references contains 154 titles). Submit your suggestions by (a) emailing additional references to Anne Fleming of the BHC Electronic Media Oversight Committee <acf80 at law.georgetown.ed> or BHC Web Editor Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez <padelacruzf at gmail.com>, (b) tweeting titles to @TheBHCNews or (c) adding it