In Pursuit of Black Wealth: A Panel Discussion

Watch Conversation HERE

About the panelists:

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard,

Author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic  Thought and Practice (2014), and 2016 inductee into the U.S. Cooperative Hall of Fame,  Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Ph.D., is Professor of Community Justice and Social  Economic Development, in the Department of Africana Studies, John Jay College, City  University of NY. Dr. Gordon-Nembhard is an internationally recognized and widely  published political economist specializing in cooperative economics, community  economic development and community-based asset building, racial wealth inequality,  solidarity economics, Black Political Economy, and community-based approaches to  justice. She is co-editor, for example, with Ngina Chiteji of Wealth Accumulation and  Communities of Color (University of Michigan Press 2006). Recipient of numerous  awards in social economics and cooperative studies, she is a member of the Cooperative  Economics Council of NCBA/CLUSA; the International Co-operative Alliance Committee  on Co-operative Research; a Faculty Fellow and Mentor with the Institute for the Study  of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University School of Management  and Labor Relations; an affiliate scholar with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives  (University of Saskatchewan, Canada); and guest lecturer with the International Centre  for Co-operative Management, Sobey School of Business, St. Mary’s University (Halifax,  NS, Canada). Gordon-Nembhard is also a past board member of the Association of  Cooperative Educators; a past fellow with the Center on Race and Wealth at Howard  University; and a member and past president of the National Economic Association. She  is the proud mother of Stephen and Susan, and the grandmother of Stephon, Hugo,  Ismaél and Gisèle Nembhard.

David W. Fontaine

During these unprecedented times, it's more important than ever to have a financial plan to protect our families and our businesses.

With over 25 years of experience in helping minority communities with their financial success, book critics, authors and bloggers are all applauding the instructions of David Fontaine's teachings.

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You too can experience the unique perspective from a man who has witnessed the great wealth gap in the black community and how he has built a career on helping those just like you!

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David Fontaine has worked for 35 years as a business owner, financial representative, insurance agent, and real estate investor. As the owner of a financial and insurance agency, he grew it into one of the largest in Superior California. During his years in business, he observed the wealth gap and the need for financial literacy education within minority communities.

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After selling his agency, he started the Minority Financial Literacy Center to address this need. As the CEO, he developed the eleven principles for building individual, family, and community wealth. His book offers financial literacy education and wealth building solutions.

Mr. Fontaine received his B.A. in Economics from Gonzaga University. He also served as an online financial writer for the Sacramento Observer newspaper and was elected school board member. Mr. Fontaine is easily noted as an expert in the financial literacy arena and his book, The Financial Literacy & Wealth Building Bible seeks to educate the masses on wealth-building topics.

Jillian Hishaw is a well-known expert in the field of agricultural law and policy. Author of “Don’t Bet the Farm on Medicaid” a manual that educates land and homeowners about state tax exemptions regarding outstanding debt owed to long-term care facilities. Hishaw’s latest “Systematic Land Theft” is a textbook that documents the history of Black and Indigenous land theft in the US and the ways laws and policies continue to support the present day taking of land.

About their books:

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois's 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes' Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing.

To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops' articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history.

The Black Financial Literacy and Wealth Building Bible

It has been predicted (based on current financial data) that by the year 2053, the median income for Black Americans will be zero. This means that half of Black Americans will own nothing. Building generational wealth is how to ensure that you and your family are protected from poverty. Our financial empowerment will only become a realty when we become sellers rather than buyers, producers rather than consumers and owners versus renters. This book lays out the mindset, financial knowledge and skills Black Americans must acquire to build long lasting wealth. This book teaches you to always live below your means; how to budget and stick to it; how to maintain a high credit score; how to Invest as a group; how to buy a home and invest in real estate; how to invest in the stock market; how to pay yourself first; why you must spend your money at businesses that reflect your values and hire your children; how to support and encourage entrepreneurship with family and friends; black church investing; how to protect and grow your wealth; and the benefits of giving back to your community. The author David W. Fontaine owned and operated an Allstate Insurance Agency that generated over 50 million dollars in revenue. He has over 30 years of financial, management, business investment, public policy and political consulting experience. He served on the Board of Directors for the Redevelopment and Revenue Sharing Commission, the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce and the Allstate Insurance Foundation. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Gonzaga University and studied at McGeorge School of Law.

In Systematic Land Theft, each chapter captures how land has been lost in Black and Indigenous communities. Hishaw, uses her family's experience of land loss as a case study, throughout the book to affirm how bias policies dispossess Blacks and Tribal groups of their land. The reality is Whites presently own over 95% of the farmland in the United States, due to the misappropriation of tribal lands and the exploitation of enslaved African labor. As Europeans strategically immigrated and implemented English common law into U.S. governance, property ownership was created. The physical division of tribal land resulted in statehood, thus replacing indigenous beliefs of communal living. Adopting European religious beliefs and customs in the U.S., influenced the Five Civilized Tribes' ownership of enslaved Africans. U.S. property laws were implemented to equip settlers with tribal land and afford Europeans' protection, while disenfranchising non-Whites.

Systematic Land Theft explores the history of European settlements in the Plains States as a replica for other U.S. regions and the present-day land loss of both Black and Tribal communities. Hishaw provides insight regarding ethnic identification, land valuation, legislation, and compensation for land loss. The book is a detailed synopsis of how stolen tribal land was used by White settlers and the federal government, to leverage land as collateral to become economically superior over all demographic groups. Ways land wealth has been distributed as it relates to the legal process and tax credits are discussed. Systematic Land Theft is a well-researched, thought-provoking book that makes the reader think about the history of land tenure in the U.S., while utilizing case studies, interviews with farmers, legal, and economic analyses as proof. Due to this history of land theft, the Black community loses 30,000 acres of ownership per year.