"Black Power Inc. tells, for the first time, the history of corporate America's efforts to co-opt, contain, and change the trajectory of Black radical politicsand the Black activists, entrepreneurs, and opportunists who helped them along the way. Levy brilliantly tracks the turn in black politics from 'Black power' to 'Black empowerment' and shows how it both exemplified and influenced the broader neoliberal turn in American politics since the 1960s. An essential book for understanding the politics of race and persistence of racial inequality in our time." - Andrew Kahrl, author of The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America
"Shattering our facile notions of Black Power as only a left-wing movement, Levy reveals that it had two ideological poles, the anti-imperialist politics of people like Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, and the pro-capitalist 'Black empowerment politics' of organizers like Rev. Leon Sullivan and the South African businessman Samuel Motsuenyane. Faced with this broad and ideologically diverse movement, U.S. state and corporate actors repressed the former and cultivated the latter. Using an impressive diversity of activist and corporate records, Black Power, Inc., shows us how this process took place in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa." - George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital
"Jessica Levy's outstanding Black Power, Inc. richly explores transnational campaigns by African American and Black South African entrepreneurs to challenge Jim Crow and apartheid racisms through capitalist means. Levy powerfully demonstrates how Black businessmen allied with US corporations and policymakers to advance Black 'empowerment' agendas for a transition away from apartheid while maintaining market dominance. Bridging Philadelphia and Johannesburg, Coca-Cola and the African National Congress, this book is exemplary transnational scholarship, with revelations and insights about the United States, South Africa, and the asymmetric ties that bind them." - Paul Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines