Ed Smith Quotes

There was a different, visionary team commitment that guided the black community at the beginning of the 20th century, best envisioned by educator, entrepreneur, and founder of Tuskegee University Booker T. Washington.

As people of color, it took a whole generation in many ways to get us out of the kitchen, and it's gonna take us the same whole generation to get us back into the kitchen and have ownership of restaurants, hotels and stuff like that.

I will begin a new program to get private enterprise into the ghetto and the ghetto into private enterprise. I call it “Black Capitalism.” More black ownership of business and land and homes can be the multiplier of pride that will end our racial strife.

From 1865 to 1965, my race, the black race, was one of the most competitive, entrepreneurial, Christian, moral races in our country. We had the highest percentage of entrepreneurs in the country, the highest percentage of marriage in the country.

No community values entrepreneurship and small business more than the Hispanic community.

There are too many African-Americans with too much money for us to have to go to anybody else for anything in terms of schools, in terms of scholarships, in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of moving us along as a group to that place where we should be as a people.

I sat down in 1989 and I made up my mind at that point that I was going to spend the rest of my life assisting women and youth to gain social and political empowerment through business and education. I convinced myself economic empowerment of women was going to be key, especially in a country like this where most women didn't go to school.

America isn't Congress. America isn't Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.

What America is thirsting for now is a battalion of strong, down-to-earth 'doers' - managers, frontline activists, business and social entrepreneurs engaged in tackling America's manifold problems of unemployment, education, and competitive slouch.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.

If you live in a ghetto and really want not to just change your life and your family's life but change your ghetto's life, make your ghetto a good neighbourhood, learn science; try to be like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Booker T. Washington was a very vindictive man…. Staff would have to get his permission before they married.

It was not a business with which the Federal Government had properly anything to do; but it was very properly taken up by the Freedman’s Bureau.

The growth of entrepreneurial classes throughout the world is an asset in the promotion of human rights and individual liberty …

No, Islam did not lift American blacks out of poverty; capitalism did that.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same.

Booker Washington was branded an accommodationist by many of the people who criticized him.

Booker Washington was essentially the head Republican boss in the South. He was a power broker.

W. E. B Dubois used the NAACP platform for two decades to discredit the character, reputation, and fund-raising efforts of capitalist and Tuskegee University founder, Booker T. Washington.

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women's history and entrepreneurship.

My dad's entire business and enterprises have been about helping the African-American community.

I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.

I read "Up From Slavery" and then my dream - if I may so call it - of being a race leader dawned.