Harvard Business School (HBS) is an interesting place; situated in the snowy wasteland that many people refer to as Beantown- the institution is often called the "West Point of Capitalism"¹. Yet, recently its rhetoric has slowly morphed to reflect a more conscientious form of capitalism. One in which shareholder supremacy cedes consideration to the many stakeholders impacted by the decisions that firms make.

If you've ever skimmed an HBS brochure, stumbled across a page on their website, or had the (mis)fortune of speaking with an alumni (👋🏿) you've encountered an untold number of references to the vaunted "case method". And undoubtedly the fact that over the course of a two year MBA, students will read 500 cases.. cases that are designed to walk them through unique strategic scenarios, test their critical thinking, and simulate being a decision maker at critical junctures in a business' lifecycle.

The Case Method | MBA

Have you ever worked with a group of people trying to solve a problem? There are different opinions, different considerations, and each person’s perspective pro

Harvard Business School

Although the rhetoric surrounding the aims of an HBS education is changing, the cases used to educate students are almost always missing context or references to the ways in which the case's events impacted, or in some cases, were made possible by Black people.

So does HBS just not care about what they say they do? Discerning what an institution really cares about can be tricky. And, I think that in general we spend too much time thinking about whether or not institution X or organization Y cares about one cause or another.²

So instead of focusing on whether Harvard cares about highlighting the impact and outcomes for Black people as they relate to the cases that form the bedrock of the curriculum - we will be presenting...

Black Case Facts - Things We May Have Missed

The Black Stuff ^TM

Many historians note that FDR’s popularity, sweeping New Deal legislation, and the relief it provided for many Black Americans in working class jobs is what laid the groundwork for the eventual change in allegiance of Black voters from the Republican to the Democratic party.

One large reason for Roosevelt’s popularity among Black Americans was the inclusion of ‘The Black Cabinet’, a group of prominent Black people who advised him on policies and the impact the potential impact they might have on the community. A few names of note:

• Mary McLeod Bethune; The only woman in the cabinet & also the founder of the HBCU Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
• Robert C. Weaver; Economist who received a BA, MA, and PhD from Harvard University.
• Eugene K. Jones, one of the founders of the oldest (& coldest) Black intercollegiate fraternity in the world.

While the New Deal was generally seen as a successful piece of legislation it could not escape the racist origins of the country. Some provisions, such as the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers (read: minorities in 1933), were included as concessions to Southern Democrats to get the bill passed in Congress.

The Black Stuff ^TM

In 1947 the President of Pepsi hired Edward F. Boyd, a graduate of UCLA 🐻, who led an all-Black sales and marketing team. The team created the advertisement pictured below- one of the first without the offensive caricatures often employed in popular media that depicted Black consumers. The team's visits to cities with large Black populations like Chicago and Cleveland are credited with creating the first markets in which Pepsi overtook Coke.

In 1965, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, one of the first Black graduates of Harvard Business School & the namesake of AASU's yearly conference, was hired by Pepsi as a VP of Marketing. He worked to establish the case for targeted marketing towards African-American buyers as a lucrative mass market and is often credited with being one of the first executives to perfect the segmented marketing approach in corporate America.

🚨In 2020 Nielsen cited that Black buying power topped $1 trillion (USD)! In the book referenced above, Dr. Jared Ball makes the argument that "Black Buying Power" was a concept fabricated by media companies (yes, Black ones³) to attract advertisers. The argument is that the concept of Black Buying Power was a label used to neatly package the Black consumer as they were served up to the highest bidding corporations in the pursuit of capturing advertising dollars. The pernicious impact of the propagation of that idea however, isn't that Black media companies attracted advertising dollars... it is the continued conflation of Buying Power with Political Power. They are simply put, not the same thing. Perhaps more harmful, is the tendency for the term to compel individuals to "buy Black" in an effort to effect change instead of engaging in the always-critical actions of political and community organizing.

Podcast Snippet w/ Jared Ball & Mehrsa Baradaran Discussing Buying Power

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I don't have the qualifications, depth, or range to do this topic justice, so here is a short excerpt from a much longer podcast episode in which Jared Ball interviews Mehrsa Baradaran who wrote The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. So for just 3 minutes of your time you can hear a much better articulated synopsis of what I'm trying to say.

The Black Stuff ^TM

The media has always played an important role in conveying important events and analysis to the public to keep every day people informed. However, for Black people in America there is a long tradition of also having distinct sources of information created primarily to report on issues of specific relevance. The very first Black periodical was called Freedom’s Journal and was founded in 1827, almost 25 years before the New York Times (WAIT, DID I TELL YALL WE GOT A CEASE AND DESIST FROM THEM?!?⁴). Other significant newspapers were The North Star, founded in 1847 by Frederick Douglass, and the Chicago Defender- which played a huge role in facilitating and encouraging the mass movement of Black Americans from the South to major cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles in a movement referred to as the Great Migration.

In more recent times, many of these historically Black newspapers have unfortunately gone out of business, sometimes for lack of ability to attract advertising dollars. (See above discussion about Black Buying Power! Its nuanced!)

Others have persisted as largely digital publications and many others such as Black Voice News, The Root, and The Grio have emerged in more recent years.

The Black Stuff ^TM

18 years prior to Cumulus Media’s founding, Catherine Hughes, an African-American woman, purchased a Washington D.C based radio station for just under $1 million dollars financed mostly through debt with some portions having an interest rate of over 15%.

The difficulty of paying back the loans forced Cathy to eventually start living out of the radio station after having her house repossessed.

The content on her station was catered towards Black audiences, with a controversial talk show- which she hosted herself- and the “Quiet Storm” format she pioneered with Melvin Lindsey while first working at Howard University’s WHUR radio station.

In 1997 her son, who attended UCLA and Wharton took over as CEO and began a rapid expansion enabled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The playbook was to purchase underperforming stations and revamp the programming to focus on African-American listeners. In 1999 Radio One went public on the NASDAQ, making Catherine Hughes the first Black woman to chair a public company. Today Radio One is one of the ten largest Black owned businesses in America and owns a number of cable stations, over 50 radio stations, and a number of digital media assets.

The Black Stuff ^TM

A number of artists from Frank Ocean, to TLC, to Prince have alleged that record labels have for years engaged in egregiously exploitative contracts that entitle them to a disproportionate share of the revenue generated from musicians and long-term ownership of the music itself (in a near-future article, we are going to look at some of the hidden value in their music as it relates to branding).

Some important success stories of independent artist securing unusually attractive deals include Percy Miller (Master P)- who started No Limit Records and signed a distribution deal that allowed him to keep 80% of music revenue and 100% control of the music masters. Master P eventually expanded into a number of adjacent businesses including clothing, real estate, and sports management.

Another important success story can be found in South Central LA, home of the late great Nipsey Hussle. Nipsey spent almost a decade as an independent artist mastering creative marketing campaigns like #Proud2Pay in which he sold limited edition copies of his Crenshaw mixtape for $100 a piece, netting him $100,000 in 24 hours. With clear evidence of his sustained cultural relevance he was able to sign a deal with Atlantic Records in which he retained control of his music’s masters. His record label and expansive business ventures continue to inspire artists today.

The Black Stuff ^TM

While we learned all about brewing beer and competitive dynamics during this simulation- what we didn't talk about was the story of the United State’s first Black Master Distiller, Nathan “Nearest” Green. Born enslaved in Tennessee and freed with the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation, Nearest was hired by a distiller who employed a young Jack Daniels. The distiller knew of Nearest’s skills and instructed him to teach the younger Jack Daniels all he knew about distillation. When Jack Daniels opened his distillery years later his first hires were Nearest Green’s two sons, Eli and George.

In 2017, Fawn Weaver an African-American woman and author of a New York Times bestseller, founded the Nearest Green Foundation which honors the legacy of Green with a museum in Lynchburg Tennessee, a national park, and a whiskey line- Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey- which has since become the bestselling African-American owned and founded spirit brand of all time and was the most-awarded American whiskey in 2019 and 2020.

Alright, since both of these cases are about business on the continent, they are already kind of about Black stuff, so:

The Black Stuff We Didn't Talk About^TM

In the Jumia Nigeria case we talked about the difficulty of building a business in a country that lacked many of the institutions and infrastructure that exist in more “developed” countries. In "Angola Starts Now", the case deeply understates the role that colonialism played in slowing the development of GDP growth.

In 1972, Walter Rodney, a Guyanese historian and academic, published “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” in which he analyzed the causes of the continent’s underdevelopment. In it he touches on the impact of depopulation by the European slave trade which removed critical labor from the economic growth equation. The impact of European monopolies on technology and innovation, which curtailed the opportunities for the development of internal and local trade. The difference in prices that were fetched for raw material exported from colonies in Africa when compared to raw materials sold from developed countries- he contends that this differential was forced upon colonies via political and military supremacy. Lastly, the imposition of education with the primary purpose to “… instill a sense of deference towards all that was European and capitalist...education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment”.

(finally something about computers 😅)

Corey Thomas, who is now the CEO of Rapid7 is Black, so once again:

The Black Stuff We Didn't Talk About^TM

In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware- targeting computers running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows OS, spread across the world to over 200,000 computers in 150 countries. The ransomware (allegedly originating from North Korea) used an exploit developed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) that was stolen and leaked by an anonymous group of hackers.

After less than a week of spread and anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in damages the attack was stopped by the discovery of a kill switch by the then 22-year old Marcus Hutchins- a Black British computer security researcher. He was later arrested by the FBI while in Las Vegas in connection with malware that he helped to create as a teenager that was designed for use in a number of bank fraud applications. Thankfully, the judge in his case was lenient as a result of his historical contribution in single-handedly stopping one of the worst cyber attacks in modern history and sentenced him to time served and a year of supervised release.

As always thanks for reading!

• There were a few other cases with The Black Stuff ^TM but the article was getting a bit long. Feel free to reach out if interested in seeing more.
• We have comments on the blog now, please leave some, say something if this was interesting!
• Smash the subscribe button if you haven't yet or please share with someone who you think might enjoy‼️
• Stay tuned.. a lot of these topics, specifically around music, business, economic power, and the interplay between them all are the focus of the next article ✍🏿

Footnotes

1. I've never known if "West Point of Capitalism" was a tongue-in-cheek slight at the school or meant as a compliment? The investment, rigor, and discipline America applies to its defense (== imperialism?) but redirected squarely at perfecting capitalism.. 🤔 doesn't feel like a compliment, but I guess that depends who you ask 😅
2. My take is that 10 times out of 9, institutions don't care about any externalities- but they will definitely contort their external presentation to fit the eddies and currents of their time & place.
3. In 1954, Johnson Publishing Company, the owner of Ebony magazine financed the production of the 20 min film titled "The Secret to Selling the Negro" with that exact intent: attracting advertising dollars into their media assets that serviced Black audiences.

4. Okay, okay, i just went back through my email to find the exact letter I got and it turns out it was a DMCA takedown notice. But it was for having the open-sourced code to the Black Wordle we made! article here. Mind you, I literally just cloned someone elses project and changed some words and added a couple features, but they sent it to all the people who forked from the original repository lol 👎🏿