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African American Entrepreneurship: Narratives Of Fresno County, California, African American Entrepreneurs, Felix Shielim-Nwaeke Enunwa

Doctoral Dissertations

The entrepreneurial spirit of African American has been misunderstood. This dissertation used the voices of 15 African American entrepreneurs in Fresno County to reconstruct the historical development and performance of African American entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship developed from the necessity to survive; it was the outcome of deprivation, exclusion, and legal and political alienation. For African Americans, historical development and experience in entrepreneurship has been turbulent; understanding of African American entrepreneurship has been distorted with flawed theoretical constructs based on false premises of a lack of a tradition of business establishment and inadequate support for capitalism in African American communities.

Despite many …