Racial violence after slavery deliberately suppressed black business formation.

Evidence

According to the Brookings Institution, black Americans comprise 14 percent of the US population today, yet black businesses account for only 2.2 percent of all US businesses with more than one employee. A White House Council of Economic Advisers analysis suggests that “differences in business ownership account for 20 percent of the wealth gap” between white and black households. The limited number of black-owned businesses traces its roots directly to the aftermath of slavery, when lynching and other forms of racial violence were carried out with the intention of preventing black Americans from building wealth, securing economic stability, and attaining a middle-class status. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 449

Categorization

• SEED: Profile of Barber’s grandson Jim Barber, himself a state senator and grandson of one of the founders of Chattanooga, a successful black man in the Jim Crow South.
• XREF: connects to: White violence against black schools only stopped when it created economic self-harm — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 477