women wealth guide
Moving in Silence
T he centuries-long existence of quiet Black wealth BY LULA WHITE
Photo credit W. E. B. Du Bois with the Fisk University class of 1888 Photo credit vieilles_annonces on flickr
Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919) “the first Black woman millionaire in Americ history.com
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s the world turns on the turbulence of dictators and shaky global markets, Black America trains our eyes on our financial freedom and liberty. Let us remember the power plays we’ve always made, quietly and shrewdly against the backdrop of mass brutality. For centuries, across Europe and the New World, we’ve risen above the hand that was dealt to us. Going as far back as 1532, when Alessandro de’Medici became the first Duke of Florence, Italy. Nicknamed “il Moro” because of his darker skin, Alessandro effectively became the equivalent of a Black Italian prince, according
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hopeforwomenmag.com
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to Catherine Fletcher’s The Black Prince of Florence. He was backed by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, who, it was rumored, may have been his father. The royal courts of England were scattered with Black Tudors during the Elizabethan age, as is made clear in Onyeka Nubia’s historical work, England’s Other Countrymen. Across the Atlantic on the shores of the New World in 1655, a former indentured servant from Angola, Africa, named Anthony Johnson filed a lawsuit to protect his property – another Black man being claimed by white slaveowners. Anthony became the first legal slave owner in