Meet Six African Americans who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires
Picture THIS: It’s the 1800s, and you are living in a world where your humanity is always in question. A world where your own existence isn’t even in your control.
This was the reality for all 19th century African Americans stretching back over 250 years prior. While slavery was “abolished”, the idea continued to live in other modernized forms of hatred.
But within these stories of atrocities towards African Americans, lies a story of triumph that often goes “unsung”
Meet the first six African Americans to become millionaires upon escaping slavery:
William Alexander Leidesdorff
(October 23, 1810 — May 18, 1848) was one of the earliest biracial-black U.S. citizens in California and one of the founders of the city that became San Francisco. A highly successful, enterprising businessman, he was a West Indian immigrant of African Cuban, possibly Carib, Danish and Jewish ancestry. Leidesdorff had a stake in several businesses including a general store, a lumberyard, and even the first hotel built in San Francisco. When he unexpectedly died in 1848, his estate was worth $1.4 million dollars which, in today’s money, is the equivalent of $38 million.
Mary Ellen Pleasant
(19 August 1814–4 January 1904) was one of America’s first known African American entrepreneurs, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist. The treatment that Pleasant endured and the theft of Leidesdorff’s wealth shows a common theme in black wealth. Although these people were able to reach levels of success only few did at the time, their race always came into play in some negative way or another. She also worked on the Underground Railroad and helped bring it to California during the Gold Rush era. She was a lover, friend and financial supporter of John Brown and well known in abolitionist circles. After the Civil War, she won several civil rights victories, one of which was cited and upheld in the 1980s and resulted in her being called “The Mother of Human Rights in California,” though other legal battles had mixed results.
Hannah Elias
(1865? -?) was an American sex worker and landlord who became one of the richest Black women in the world during her lifetime. Elias went on to build a real estate empire in Harlem but initially had to live practically housebound and wear a veil when going out so her white neighbors wouldn’t know she was black. In 1906 Elias evicted white tenants from several apartment buildings on West 135th street with a note reading, “in the future none but respectable colored families were to occupy the flats”. In 1915, she left for Europe never to be seen again.
Robert Reed Church
(June 18, 1839 — August 29, 1912) once considered one of the largest landowners in Tennessee, was hated by white citizens in the city of Memphis and endured a race riot and abuse by cops. Yet he was the first to use money from his businesses to save the city from a yellow fever outbreak on several occasions and rebuild a whole district lost to a fire. He was the first African American millionaire in the south.
Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone
(August 9, 1877 or 1869 — May 10, 1957) was an African American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist. She is thought to be one of the first African American women to become a millionaire. In a 30-year span with self-taught chemistry, she developed what would become a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered on cosmetics for African-American women. St. Louis has an annual Annie Malone parade in support of children’s charities.
O.W. Gurley
was a schoolteacher who yearned for a safe community for himself and other black families, and built it in Tulsa, OK. Specifically the Greenwood District which would later become known as “Black Wall Street.” In 1906, Gurley moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma where he purchased 40 acres of land which was “only to be sold to colored.” In 1914, Gurley’s net worth was reported to be $150,000 (about $3 million in 2018 dollars). And he was made a sheriff’s deputy by the city of Tulsa to police Greenwood’s residents, which resulted in some viewing him with suspicion. By 1921, Gurley owned more than one hundred properties in Greenwood and had an estimated net worth between $500,000 and $1 million (between $6.8 million and $13.6 million in 2018 dollars). Gurley’s prominence and wealth were short lived, and his position as a sheriff’s deputy did not protect during the race massacre.
In Summary: What do all of these individuals have in common? They were all African American with no formal training in their fields. Though faced with adversity throughout the courses of their lifetimes, they managed to knock down barriers and revolutionize “Black Wealth”. These marvelous historical figures have inspired hundreds of thousands, and many more to come.
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