A “Body of Business Makers”: The Detroit Housewives League, Black Women Entrepreneurs, and the Rise of Detroit’s African American Business Community
研究1930-40年代底特律主妇联盟（DHL）成员作为企业家的行动，揭示她们通过商业研究、社区网络和创办商业学院，对黑人商业社区和女性企业家的关键作用，呼吁重新评估黑人女性在创业和商业领导中的贡献。
This article examines the Detroit Housewives League (DHL) in the 1930s and 1940s, concentrating on DHL members’ actions as businesswomen. Past narratives have framed the DHL as an extension of the black women’s club movement or as part of the women-driven consumer movements of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly highlighting the organization’s philosophies on black women’s purchasing power. I argue that entrepreneurial DHL women brought prior business knowledge to their organizing and were significant business experts and leaders. By conducting business research, forging community networks, and, significantly, establishing commercial colleges and other forms of business education in the city, DHL members’ work was vital for the black business community as a whole and for women entrepreneurs in particular. In reframing the DHL as an organization established by black entrepreneurial women, I suggest scholars should reevaluate black women’s contributions to other forms of activism in order to recover additional histories of black women’s entrepreneurship and business leadership.