Business savvy Archives

Stephanie St. Clair: Harlem Renaissance by the Numbers

From the Slums of Martinique to the Top of Harlem’s Numbers Rackets

The vibrant streets of Harlem in the 1920s — Queen of the numbers rackets during Harlem’s Renaissance, Stephanie St. Clair was an outlaw as well as an entrepreneur and Civil Rights Advocate.

The Harlem Renaissance of the ‘20s and ‘30s was a hotbed of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, politics, and scholarship. It gave us luminaries like Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, W.E.B. DuBois and Jessie Redmon Fauset. But for many, when it came to Black identity, community and the everyday experience of Black people, a woman named Stephanie St. Clair loomed large.

Vanilla Beane: The Beloved “Hat Lady” of Washington, D.C.

She was Still Making Internationally Acclaimed Hats When She was 100

Vanilla Beane in her shop with a display of her hats — Vanilla Beane, who ran Bené Millinery & Bridal Supplies, was a beloved figure in Washington, D.C., and her hat creations were internationally famous.

She was a fashion icon, successful entrepreneur, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother — and a centenarian businesswoman with a name so charming you can’t help but smile.

Mildred Blount: Milliner to the Stars

A Black Hatter Whose Work Became the Buzz of Hollywood Studios

Mildred Blount with Vivien Leigh — Mildred Blount in her workroom creating the hats for the 1939 movie “Gone With The Wind,” and Vivien Leigh wearing one of them in her Scarlett O’Hara role in the film.

When Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry was published in 2000, it honored a tradition deeply rooted in African American culture. One that poet Maya Angelou simply called, in her foreword to that book, THE HAT. And for Mildred Blount, THE HAT was always about more than just headwear.

Nila Mack – The Fairy Godmother of Depression-Era Radio

How a Childless Widow Who Didn’t Like Kids Became a Star of Children’s Radio

Nila Mack at a CBS Radio microphone and a picture of a little girl listening to the radio in 1940 — A turn-of-the-century vaudeville performer, movie actress, and screenwriter, Nila Mack got involved in radio in the 1930s, was hired to oversee a children’s show, and turned that show — “Let’s Pretend” — into a national hit that ran for 20 years.

Once upon a time, a “large, plump, hard-boiled, shrewd” woman named Nila Mack was asked by Columbia Broadcasting System to reinvent a Saturday morning children’s radio show called “The Adventures of Helen and Mary.” Her first reaction? “Really? You want the childless widow to save your kids’ show? I don’t even like kids.”

Josephine Garis Cochrane — Mother of the Modern Dishwasher

From Kitchen Tinkerer to Acclaimed Inventor at the 1893 World’s Fair

Josephine Garis Cochrane with one of her dishwasher patents — In the late 19th-century world that offered little encouragement to female inventors, Josephine Garis Cochrane, against all odds, invented a machine that was a major hit at the 1893 World’s Fair — the first commercially viable mechanical dishwasher. It was the only device out of 10,000 displayed at that World Exposition invented by a woman, and it launched her corporate success.

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” These were words Josephine Garis Cochrane lived by … except when it came to doing the dishes. Why had nobody invented a machine that could clean stacks of dirty dishes without chipping them? After all, it was the 19th century, when there were machines that sewed clothes and cut grass, so how hard could it be?

How Monopoly Inventor Elizabeth Magie Lost Her Game

A Story of Corporate Greed, Misogyny, and Patent Office Incompetence

The original, patented Monopoly game was created by Elizabeth Magie — Elizabeth Magie invented and patented the Monopoly game in 1903. It was bamboozled from her by an Atlantic City shyster and a greedy corporation, both of which generated millions of dollars of revenue from her creation at the same time they erased her from history.

You know the rules. Landlords get rich at the expense of tenants. Travel means shelling out for a railroad ticket. You can have utilities, but they’ll cost you. Run afoul of the landlord and go directly to jail — forget about passing GO and collecting $200. It’s the board game Monopoly, invented by a feisty, progressive feminist whose invention was stolen in the 1930s by a man named Charles Darrow.