In a 1933 poem entitled “Your Duty To-morrow,” Marcus Garvey wrote:

Forget not the past with all its good and ill reports.
Contemplate your future by the experiences you have had,
If you must strike to live, strike hard and sure . . .

In 1974, landscape architect Ernest Edwards wanted to buy and develop land in a white area of southern New Jersey. “I knew they wouldn’t look kindly on a Black builder, so I hired a white engineer and a white lawyer to act in my place,” he says. When the locals found out and blocked his efforts, the engineer took him to Lawnside, N.J., where a builder had abandoned a project because of water seepage. Edwards figured out the problem. . .

The reason most often cited for the small percentage of African-American-owned businesses in the United States is the lack of access to capital. Historically, when faced with limited access to institutional financing, most oppressed ethnic groups, including African-Americans, have devised ways to finance their projects from within their own groups. Often, small groups organize and pool their money. In China these groups are called “hui,”. . .