Rise & Grind.com

Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove to former slaves, Owen and Minerva Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana on December 23, 1867.  Breedlove became an orphan at age 7 when her parents died.  Three years later ten year old Sarah and her sister moved across to river to Vicksburg, Mississippi to work as maids.  By her  [ Read More ]

A child of the early post- reconstruction south, Oscar DePriest was born in Florence, Alabama on March 9, 1871.  In 1878 his family moved to Salina, Kansas. Sometime in the late 1880s DePriest moved to Chicago where he found work as a house painter and decorator.  DePriest created his own contracting business and became active  [ Read More ]

Stephen Smith was born into slavery in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. At 21 he purchased his freedom for $50 and soon afterwards began to ally with the abolitionist cause that he would support through most of his adult life.   In 1830 Smith became the chairman of the African American abolitionist organization in Columbia, Pennsylvania while developing  [ Read More ]

Please play the Video first….. < Now I’m proud of the brother for doing his thing and really being a creative cat in the first place. But, let’s analyze something didn’t he invent the super soaker and it sold over 1 billion and yet he still needs millions to back his billion dollar idea AGAIN!  [ Read More ]

A successful business owner and real estate investor, Charles Owens became one of the most prominent African Americans in Los Angeles by the end of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery in Texas, Charles’s father, Robert Owens, purchased his family’s freedom and migrated to Los Angeles, California in 1850. Taking advantage of the opportunity to  [ Read More ]

Robert Reed Church, Sr., was a millionaire business leader and philanthropist in Memphis, Tennessee.  Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on June 18, 1839, he was the product of an interracial union. His father was a steamboat captain, Charles B. Church, and his mother, Emmeline, was an enslaved seamstress who died when Robert was twelve years  [ Read More ]

John T. King was born in Girard (now Phenix City), Alabama in 1846. He was the son of covered bridge designer and builder Horace King.  John King carried on the family business by designing and building bridges, houses, and commercial buildings in Georgia and Alabama. The King family did much to develop West Georgia and  [ Read More ]

Until his retirement from day-to-day management in 1997, Herman Jerome Russell was the driving force behind his highly successful H. J. Russell and Company, a conglomerate that includes construction, property management, real estate development, airport concessions, and communications. With a work force that numbers over 1,500 in offices in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina,  [ Read More ]

Born in Washington D.C. on January 16, 1819, James Wormley was the son of free-born citizens Lynch and Mary Wormley. As a young boy, Wormley’s first job was working with his family’s hackney carriage business. This job would help Wormley gain skills and an appreciation for hard work involved in business ownership which he put  [ Read More ]

The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as “The World’s Greatest Weekly.” The newspaper was the nation’s most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago. Abbott began his  [ Read More ]