Who Built America?


Who Built America?

The Power of Innovation, Labor, and the Individuals Who Dared to Create

I was recently at an event in Harlem where the host declared, “Immigrants built America.” The room nodded in agreement.

Enslaved Africans didn’t just help build America—we were the labor and the capital.
They built the foundation, brick by brick, crop by crop, under force and cruelty, with no choice, no pay, and no freedom. That makes their contribution profoundly different from that of immigrants or entrepreneurs.

To truly understand who built America, we must widen the lens. We must tell the whole story.

Enslaved Africans: The Original Capital

Before steel tycoons and tech billionaires, the wealth of America was built on land stolen from Native peoples and worked by enslaved Africans.

We cleared the land, harvested the cotton that fed the textile industries of the North and Europe, built roads, railroads, and entire cities. Their unpaid labor generated vast fortunes for plantation owners, banks, insurers, and Northern factories.

But even more than labor, enslaved people were counted as capital assets—bought, sold, traded, inherited. The enslaved body became the very wealth that powered early capitalism.

Their forced contributions are not a side note—they are the structural beams of the American economy.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Individuals Who Imagined More

Alongside this brutal foundation, others helped build the country through invention and vision.

Inventors like Eli Whitney (ironically, the cotton gin intensified slavery), Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell changed the rhythm of life. Entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller built vast industries and cities, shaping the infrastructure of modern America.

While their stories often celebrated, we must realize the fact that many early entrepreneurs profited directly or indirectly from slavery.

From Enslavement to Entrepreneurship: The Story of Resilience

After slavery, African Americans were not given reparations. Instead, they faced systemic racism, violence, and exclusion. And yet, they built again.

Madam C.J. Walker, born to formerly enslaved parents, became one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire. Black farmers, teachers, preachers, inventors, and business owners laid the groundwork for communities across the country—despite the odds.

Their story is one of forced labor turned into fierce resilience.

 The Builders 

But the story of America’s creation must always start with the enslaved Africans whose bodies and labor were used to generate the first wealth of this nation.

Innovation matters. Imagination matters. But without truth, the story is incomplete.

 

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