Four pioneering African-American women millionaires after slavery

America’s Civil War from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865 nearly destroyed the United States. The civil war began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. The south in particular forged their economy on slave labor.

“By 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the United States. In the same year, the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined.”

For 250 years, Americans worked on the breaking of people for profit.

Fredrick Douglass, an abolitionist noted that slavery is not a sanitized form of forced labor, but first and foremost, a system of violence, an assault on black bodies, black families, and black institutions.

The enslaved Africans, who bore the brunt of violence, made to work from sunrise to sunset did not enjoy the sweat of their labor. Many died from exhaustion, others lived rough.

Following President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on September 2, 1862 which granted freedom to the enslaved Africans, six African American millionaires emerged. Of these we pay attention to four pioneering millionaires who were women.

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