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Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Description: The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers are well-known, countless African Americans also left the South to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and viewed business as key to Black liberation. Detroit's status as a mecca for Black entrepreneurship illuminates this overlooked aspect of the Great Migration story. In Freedom Enterprise, Kendra D. Boyd uses "migrant entrepreneurship" as a lens through which to understand the entwined histories of Black-owned business, racial capitalism, and urban space.
Freedom Enterprise follows Black Southerners' journeys to Detroit during the ini...