Moving On Up: African Americans are succeeding...

When the news on minority business growth was released last week, news touting the 45 percent growth in African American owned business, 31 percent growth in Hispanic owned business, and 22 percent growth in Asian owned business, several forces could be credited for this success. There were the demographic trends - the population of people of color has been growing more quickly than the majority population. There were simple trends of size and scale - minority business had been a blip on the screen for so long that it had nothing to do but to grow. There were gurus, heroes and advocates, the creation of the federal Minority Business Development Agency and the hard work of folks like Earl Graves at Black Enterprise Magazine. But before all that, there was John H. Johnson, the founder of Johnson Publications, Ebony and Jet magazines. Johnson wasn't the first Black entrepreneur, but he was one of the first public cheerleaders for African American economic success.