Famous Entrepreneurs

Maggie Walker
Cathy Hughes
Earl Graves
Marcus Garvey
Madame C.J.Walker
Reginald F. Lewis
J. Bruce Llewellyn
Ken Bridges
Mannie Jackson
C. Diane Howell, Ph.D
Jay Z
Robert Johnson
Russell Simmons
Earvin "Magic" Johnson
Tyler Perry
Joe Dudley
Michele Hoskins
Farrah Gray
Marcus Griffith
Comer Cottrell
Herbert & Sylvia Woods
Oprah Winfrey
George Fraser
Karl Kani
Juanita Britton
William Alexander Leidesdorff
Leon Isaac Kennedy
Jerry Roebuck
Susan L. Taylor
Sheila Johnson
Dave Bing
Daymond John
John H. Johnson
Valerie Daniels-Carter
Vinnie Johnson
Eartha White
A.G. Gaston
Reggie Fowler
 

Eartha White

Eartha Mary Magdalene White was born on this date in 1876. She was an African-American vocalist, educator, administrator and humanitarian.
 
From Jacksonville, Florida raised by her adoptive, altruistic mother, Clara English White. Her adoptive father, Lafayette died in 1881 when she was five. In 1893 White graduated from Stanton School and moved to New York City. She attended the Madam Hall Beauty School and the National Conservatory of Music eventually working with the Oriental American Opera Company. A lyric soprano, she sang under the direction of J. Rosamond Johnson performed on Broadway and with her ensemble traveled throughout the United States and Europe.
 
Returning to Florida in 1896, she graduated from Florida Baptist Academy and taught for sixteen years in Bayard, Florida and at Stanton School in Jacksonville. In the 1920s White worked with the Republican Party and formed the Colored Citizens Protective League in Jacksonville. In 1941, she and A. Philip Randolph protested job discrimination, and she became an influential force in Jacksonville’s social welfare. White also focused on prison inmates and the establishment of an orphanage for African-American children.
 
She created a home for unwed mothers, a nursery for children of working mothers, a tuberculosis rest home, and (in 1902) a nursing home for elderly African-Americans. She organized the Boys' Improvement Club in 1904 and the Clara White Mission for the Indigent (1928). A major achievement and fulfillment of a lifelong dream was the dedication of the Eartha M. M. White Nursing Home in 1967 to replace the Mercy Hospital for the Aged. In 1970, at the age of ninety-four, she received national recognition by being named the recipient of the 1970 Lane Bryant Award for Volunteer Service.
 
In 1971, White was appointed to the President's National Center for Voluntary Action. Eartha White died of heart failure at age ninety-seven on January 18, 1974.