By James Williams

In 2023, Black-owned businesses in the United States generated over $206 billion in annual revenue, supporting more than 3.5 million jobs. At the same time, Black consumers held a staggering $1.7 trillion in spending power—a number that continues to grow each year. These figures underscore a truth often overlooked in national economic conversations: Black America is a major economic force.

Yet, despite this massive potential, only a fraction of this wealth remains circulating within the Black community. Studies show that Black dollars often leave the community within hours, compared to weeks in Asian and Jewish communities. While exact figures vary, the underlying reality remains clear: wealth is not being retained or reinvested within Black America at the level it should be.

To understand the power of the Black dollar today, we must also understand its origin. The financial impact of Black people on America did not begin in the 20th century—it began on the auction block. During slavery, enslaved Africans were the backbone of the American economy. Their forced labor built the foundation for America’s rise as a global power.

By 1860, enslaved Black people generated the labor that fueled the most profitable industry in the U.S.: cotton. The United States was producing 75 percent of the world’s cotton, and nearly all of it was picked by hand—by enslaved people. Cotton quickly became America’s top export, and its profits didn’t just enrich Southern plantations; they funded Northern banks, insurance firms, railroads, and industrial expansion. Slavery was not a regional enterprise—it was a national engine.

Enslaved people themselves were treated as financial assets. By the eve of the Civil War, the estimated value of enslaved Black people reached $3 to $4 billion—more than the combined value of all factories, railroads, and banks in the country. In today’s dollars, historians estimate that over $100 trillion in wealth was extracted from enslaved laborers in the form of unpaid wages, denied inheritance, and economic exclusion.

Wall Street and major financial institutions directly benefited from slavery. Insurance companies like Aetna and New York Life wrote policies on enslaved bodies. Early American banks issued loans to slaveholders, backed by enslaved people as collateral. The financial institutions that dominate today’s landscape—including JPMorgan Chase—have publicly acknowledged their historical ties to slavery.

Historian Edward Baptist estimates that in 1836, nearly half of the U.S. gross domestic product was tied to slavery and its related industries. Slavery wasn’t just a moral stain—it was the engine of national wealth, and the stolen labor of Black Americans made the United States rich.

That history is not disconnected from today. The very system that denied Black people economic independence continues to echo through the racial wealth gap, lack of capital access, and the structural undervaluing of Black labor and Black-owned businesses.

Fast forward to 2025, and the legacy of that wealth gap persists—even amid incredible achievement. There are 14 Black billionaires in the United States today, with a combined net worth of over $50 billion. Names like Robert F. Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and Jay-Z are proof of what’s possible when talent and access converge. But Black Americans still make up less than two percent of the country’s billionaires, despite being 13 percent of the population.

If Black America were a standalone economy, its $1.7 trillion in consumer spending would make it the 16th or 17th largest economy in the world—larger than Mexico, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and every country in Africa. That would also make Black America the most powerful economic force in the African diaspora, ahead of Brazil, South Africa, the UK, and the entire Caribbean region.

As entrepreneur and financial activist John Hope Bryant put it, “Black folks here in America and in Africa are the only people I know of in the world who created a political power base before we created an economic one. The process was backwards.” More than a century earlier, Booker T. Washington declared, “At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race, as for all races, economic independence.”

Their messages remain urgent. Political rights must be paired with financial power. Freedom means ownership—land, capital, business, and industry.

That message is at the heart of why we launched The Uptown Standard. We didn’t just want to tell stories—we wanted to circulate our dollars, uplift Black-owned businesses, and remind our readers that wealth is grown from within. We believe media has a responsibility not just to report, but to reinvest. One of our core missions is to encourage Black residents to shop local, support their neighbors, and help keep our money moving through our own neighborhoods. Rebuilding economic power starts on our own blocks.

Today, the challenge isn’t whether Black wealth is possible. The challenge is whether it will be distributed, supported, and reinvested. If Black America is to shift from being a high-consumption community to a high-ownership one, then intentional investment must begin—at every level. Financial literacy must be prioritized. Black entrepreneurs must be funded. Black institutions must be preserved.

The Black dollar built America. That’s not poetic—it’s economic fact.

The question now isn’t whether we have power.

The question is: Will we use it like we own it?