Black History Quiz Bowl

Business

Billy R. Vickers

This person is the president and chief executive officer of Ohio based Modular Assemblies Innovations (MAI). MAI is the parent corporation of a group of companies -- Great Lakes Assemblies, LLC , Gulf Shore Assemblies, LLC and Indiana Assemblies, LLC -- that provide modular assembly manufacturing and supply chain management services.

Black Swan Records

Founded in 1921 by Harry Pace in Harlem, this was the first U.S. record label owned and operated by African-Americans. It was originally the Pace Phonograph Corporation and was renamed Black Swan Records after the 19th century opera singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who was known as the Black Swan.

Warren Shadd

Howard University graduate and jazz drummer is owner of SHADD Pianos and Keyboards, and is the first African-American piano manufacturer. That makes him the first large-scale commercial African-American instrument manufacturer.

Joseph L. Searles

In 1970, he became the first Black American to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

William Venoid Banks

In 1975, he became the first African American to own and operate a television station in the United States, WGPR-TV in Detroit, MI.

Madam C.J. Walker

Born in Sarah Breedlove, she created specialized hair products for African-American hair and was one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire.

Mellody Hobson

(born 1969) She is an American businesswoman who is the president of Ariel Investments and former Chair of the Board of Directors of Dreamworks Animation. In 2000, she ascended to become the president of Ariel, a Chicago investment firm that manages over $10 billion in assets. It is also one of the largest African American-owned money management and mutual fund companies in the United States.

Patricia Garrison-Corbin

She was the founder of the first African-American female owned Wall Street financial services corporation, PG Corbin & Company, in 1986.

Reginald F. Lewis

He (1942 – 1993), was an American businessman. He was the richest African-American man in the 1980s. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he won a football scholarship to Virginia State College, graduating with a degree in political science in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1968.

Robert Louis Johnson

He (born 1946) is an American entrepreneur, media magnate, executive, philanthropist, investor, and the first black American billionaire. He is the co-founder of BET (Black Entertainment Television).

Samuel B. "S.B." Fuller

He (June 4, 1905 – October 24, 1988) was an American entrepreneur. He was founder and
president of the Fuller Products Company, publisher of the New York Age and Pittsburgh Courier, head of the South Side Chicago NAACP, president of the National Negro Business League, and a prominent black Republican. During the 1950s, Fuller was probably the richest African American man in the United States. His cosmetics company had
$18 million in sales and a sales force of five thousand (one third of them white). S.B. Fuller's life was an illustration of business success and self-help. His company gave inspiration and training to countless aspiring entrepreneurs and future leaders, including John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing.

Chris Gardner

This stockbroker was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Gardner is a self-made millionaire, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and philanthropist who, during the early 1980s, struggled with homelessness while raising his young son. His story is portrayed in the 2006 motion picture "The Pursuit of Happyness", starring actor Will Smith.

The Enterprise Railroad Company

This company in Charleston, SC, was a black-owned corporation organized in 1870 to transport freight by horse-drawn street railway between the Charleston wharves and the railroad depot. This seems to have been the only black-owned railroad in U.S. History.

The Negro Motorist Green Book by Victor Hugo Green

This book was an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers, commonly referred to simply as the Green Book. It was originated and published by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, when open discrimination against non-whites was widespread, and African Americans faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest.

The Philadelphia Tribune by Chrisopher James Perry, Jr.

available since 1884, is the oldest oldest continually running African-American newspaper, being created
in 1884

Edwin C. Berry

This cook’s apprentice-turned-hotel owner was praised upon his death as “the leading and best Afro-American businessman in the
last quarter of a century.” (1854-1931), he spent his life perfecting the art of hospitality. Berry is
credited with being the first hotel owner to furnish his guests’ rooms with amenities and toiletries. What was commonplace now was
a novelty then, each room stocked not with individual-sized shampoos and lotions, but with a needle and thread, buttons and
cologne.

William Leidesdorff

Born in 1810, he is one of the first Black American millionaires. He established himself as a maritime business man of amazing acumen and has the distinction of launching the first steamboat to sail on San Francisco Bay.