Black fortunes : the story of the first six African Americans who escaped slavery and became millionaires / Shomari Wills.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-285) and index.

Prologue: The first black millionaire -- Abolitionism and capitalism -- King Cotton's bastard -- Funding the insurrection -- Robert Reed Church and the Civil War -- The near lynching of a millionaire -- Forty acres deferred -- Bob Church versus Jim Crow -- Mother of civil rights in California -- Saint or sinner? -- Building the promised land in Oklahoma -- Founding the black hair industry -- Black Cleopatra -- Last days of Mary Ellen Pleasant -- The most powerful black man alive -- "Black Wall Street" rises -- Battle for hair supremacy -- The trials of Hannah Elias -- Black millionaire legacy -- End of the promise -- Paris by way of Harlem.

Provides a history of America's first black millionaires--former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties--self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison. Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of men and women broke new ground to attain the highest levels of financial success. --From publisher description.