LAFAYETTE TODAY
Martha Osier ’06 and other students have assisted Howard Bodenhorn, professor of economics and business, in his study of the economic status of free African Americans in the antebellum South.
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Entrepreneurial Drive
Howard Bodenhorn, professor of economics and business, received a grant from Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to support a study of black entrepreneurship in the 19th century. It provides a research opportunity for a Lafayette student, who will help him analyze data in original source material from the mid-1800s.
“Entrepreneurs are thought of as the big, rich guys, but small business entrepreneurship is just as important as large entrepreneurship,” says Bodenhorn. “In the middle of the 19th century, with the exception of banks, canal companies, and railroads —and by modern standards even they were small—the U.S. economy was driven by small businesses.”
While African Americans were necessarily limited in their business opportunities and thus cannot be compared to the standard held for whites, Bodenhorn sees impressive examples of their entrepreneurship.
Some blacks exhibited their entrepreneurial spirit in service and retail industries and became business successes; some were able to purchase freedom for themselves and their families.
“I want to find out what business opportunities were available to those who had the entrepreneurial drive,” Bodenhorn says.
“While previous studies have provided an overview of black business ownership, I intend to
focus on changing patterns of ownership and entrepreneurship in
the antebellum era. A detailed study of Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, and Petersburg, Va., will provide more information about the dynamic nature of black entrepreneurship in early America,” he says.
The work is part of Bodenhorn’s examination of the economic status of free African Americans in the antebellum South. He has also received support from the National Science Foundation and the Community of Scholars program funded by the Mellon Foundation and Lafayette, which supports research collaborations conducted in groups of one or more professors and multiple students.
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