Month: August 2025

• The Gilded Age was a period marked by rapid economic growth and prosperity.
• Soon after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Gilded Age ushered in a Black aristocracy.
• Many of the Black elite during the time owned retail and grocery stores and pharmacies.

In a letter published in the April 22, 1852, issue of the Frederick Douglass Papers, someone known only by the pen name “Ethiop” observed: “Quite a combination of enterprising Blacks are beginning to appear.”

“They begin to take their places in every pursuit about town and country; and as their thoughts and sympathies partake of their varied and independent occupations, they naturally form an active and efficient business class. I call it an ARISTOCRACY,” Ethiop said.

The observation signaled the emergence of a new Black elite in New York City, which bloomed during the Gilded Age, a period toward the end of the 19th century marked by rapid economic growth and prosperity, as well as economic inequality.

The HBO show “The Gilded Age,” which wraps up its third season on August 10, captures the clash between Manhattan’s old and new money. It also gives viewers a glimpse into the world of wealthy Black Americans previously overlooked in history.

Here’s a closer look at what it was like for Black New Yorkers during the Gilded Age.

Season three of “The Gilded Age” has continued to explore what it was like for wealthy Black Americans in the late 1800s in New York City.

One main storyline in “The Gilded Age” follows Peggy Scott (played by Denée Benton), an author, journalist, and daughter of a formerly enslaved man, Arthur Scott, who is a successful pharmacist and business owner in Brooklyn. Her mother, Dorothy Scott, is an accomplished piano player.

Peggy’s character was inspired by a few real-life women, including Julia C. Collins, the first Black female author to publish a novel.

“The Black elite of the Gilded Age signaled that we, too, have taste. We too have education. We are like other citizens,” Carla Peterson, historian and author of “Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City,” told Business Insider.

After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the Gilded Age ushered in a Black aristocracy.

The new class was made up of Black Americans who managed to amass wealth they’d previously been barred from.

Industrialization and the railroad boom opened up business opportunities across the US. Many of the Black elite were made up of the “shopkeeping aristocracy” who owned retail and grocery stores and pharmacies, according to Peterson.

“After the Civil War, there was an incredible explosion of modern industry, technology, and science, which fueled the money that makes the Gilded Age,” Peterson said. “Black families of wealth emerged in this context.”

For example, Thomas Downing became one of the wealthiest people in NYC and was known as the”New York Oyster King.”

Thomas Downing, the son of formerly enslaved parents, moved to New York City and became a savvy businessman who popularized oysters, which had once been considered common food.

In 1825, he opened the upscale Thomas Downing Oyster House, a restaurant so popular that Downing was nicknamed “the “New York Oyster King.”

Downing was one of the wealthiest people in New York City at the time of his death in 1866 — a millionaire in today’s money, per The Virginian-Pilot. Still, he was prohibited from acquiring US citizenship until the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed, just one day before he died.

Or maybe you’ve heard of Pierre Toussaint.

Toussaint was born into slavery in Haiti and was eventually freed in New York City. He became a highly sought-after hairdresser among the society’s upper crust, and used his new wealth to support orphans and immigrants to gain education and employment.

Women also became more independent and wealthy, such as Mary Ellen Pleasant.

Mary Ellen Pleasant became a self-made millionaire after she moved to San Francisco, following the glimmer of the California Gold Rush. While she worked as domestic help, she listened to the wealthy men she served as they exchanged information on making proper investments and managing money.

Pleasant used that knowledge to buy up boarding houses, laundromats, restaurants, and Wells Fargo shares, becoming a famous figure in San Francisco in the second half of the 19th century.

Some estimates by historians put her wealth around $30 million, which would be almost a billion in today’s money.

Gaining access to education was one of the ways Black New Yorkers achieved upward mobility.

Money alone didn’t grant access to the upper echelons of Black society. In addition to having “character” and “respectability,” the Black elite emphasized both education and hard work as core values, according to Peterson.

“Since Blacks came to this country, education has always been number one,” Peterson told Business Insider. “There is a belief that if you had ambition, you could do anything you wanted. And ambition started with education.”

On February 25, 1837, Quaker philanthropist Richard Humphreys founded the first HBCU in the country, the African Institute — now Cheyney University — in Pennsylvania. The majority of HBCUs originated from 1865 to 1900, the period following the Emancipation Proclamation.

Education was key to unlocking the skills to become a doctor or pharmacist, and also led to a flourishing of interests in humanities and the arts, according to Peterson. Scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois advocated for the need for an educated class.

“The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” Du Bois wrote in his essay, ‘Talented Tenth.”

But as the name “Gilded Age” implies, not everyone was raking in wealth.

Not everyone lived lavish lifestyles. The Gilded Age was also notorious for having the most significant wealth inequality in American history. The vast majority of workers, especially Black Americans and immigrants, faced extreme poverty and harsh working conditions in factories.

“Chattel slavery is dead, but industrial slavery remains,” economist and New York mayoral candidate Henry George said in 1886.

And racism prevented even the most successful people of color from becoming fully integrated.

Even those who did manage to gain wealth faced pervasive systemic inequities. White society largely viewed Black Americans as “a homogenous mass of degraded people,” according to historian Willard B. Gatewood in his book, “Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite.”

“Even exceptional Blacks were considered inferior to whites,” Gatewood wrote.

There was, however, a “certain amount of cooperation and interracial alliances between Blacks and whites,” Peterson said.

Peterson described how professional relationships enabled Black Americans to climb the ranks within businesses. She also pointed to the King’s Daughters, a nationwide charity organization where white and Black women worked together to help those in need.

Friendships between characters like Peggy and Marian, a white woman, in “The Gilded Age” were not unheard of.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a professor of history at Rutgers University, told The Los Angeles Times about “the letters of white suffragists, women who had deep relationships with Black women, from the era of abolition up through the early 20th century.”

Activism of the 20th century would not have been possible without these men and women.

Peterson said the emergence of the Black elite is inextricably tied to the burgeoning political and social activism in the 20th century, as exemplified by the 1909 founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the political magazine The Crisis, and the Harlem Renaissance.

“None of this could have happened without having had the 19th century Black elite,” Peterson said.

• Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported a 4% drop in operating profits last quarter.
• Berkshire was hit by currency-exchange losses and lower insurance profits.
• The company was a net seller of stocks for the 11th quarter in a row.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway posted a 4% drop in operating earnings to $11.2 billion in its first earnings report since the legendary investor revealed he plans to step down as CEO.

Second-quarter earnings fell as slimmer insurance underwriting profits offset higher income from BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and the manufacturing, service, and retailing division.

Another key driver of the decline was an $877 million foreign currency exchange loss tied to non-dollar debt — a sharp swing from a $446 million gain in the same period last year.

Berkshire sold a net $3 billion of stocks last quarter, purchasing $3.9 billion of shares but selling $6.9 billion worth. The disposals marked the 11th quarter in a row that the company has been a net seller of stocks.

Berkshire is now sitting on a $344 billion cash pile, the filings show. That sum is larger than the market capitalization of companies like Coca-Cola and Bank of America.

Buffett, who turns 95 this month, refrained from repurchasing any Berkshire shares last quarter. The company wrote down its 27% stake in Kraft Heinz by about $5 billion, reducing its carrying value to $8.4 billion.

The billionaire bargain hunter and his team have been thwarted by high valuations for public stocks, private companies, and Berkshire’s own shares in recent years.

The lack of buying opportunities — and Berkshire paring key stock bets including Apple and Bank of America last year — have boosted its cash pile to all-time highs.

Berkshire stock was trouncing the benchmark S&P going into the annual meeting in May, when Buffett announced his planned successor, Greg Abel, would take over as CEO in the new year.

But while the index has surged over the last three months, Berkshire stock has slumped, which some gurus have attributed to the loss of a “Buffett premium.”

• Two recent airline incidents drew attention to key things passengers can do to stay safe.
• 25 people were injured when a Delta flight hit turbulence, while American passengers evacuated with their bags.
• Keeping your seatbelt on and leaving your bag behind in an emergency are simple, effective safety measures.

Passenger behavior can be key to preventing injuries, as two recent airline incidents have shown.

To be specific, always wear a seatbelt in case of sudden turbulence, and leave your bags behind in an emergency evacuation.

On Wednesday, 25 people were injured after a Delta Air Lines plane encountered “significant” turbulence while flying over Wyoming, the airline said.

Flight 56 diverted to Minnesota and landed safely, but over two dozen people were taken to nearby hospitals.

Turbulence can appear suddenly and isn’t always detected by onboard radar systems, so there may not be time for the pilots to put on the seatbelt sign.

“It’s essentially like taking a box with something in it and starting to shake the box up and down,” Guy Gratton, an associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University, previously told Business Insider.

“If you’re the person who’s inside the box, then you get thrown around inside the box, and that’s where injuries happen.”

“Passengers are told to keep their seatbelts done up because if you’re tied to the box, you’re much less likely to get injured,” he added.

Plus, turbulence is getting more common as a result of the climate crisis

Warmer temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold more moisture, increasing the likelihood and intensity of thunderstorms.

Clear-air turbulence, which occurs near jet streams, is also becoming stronger and more frequent due to changes in the atmosphere.

In 2023, researchers at the University of Reading in the UK found that severe air turbulence had increased 55% over a typical point in the North Atlantic Ocean between 1979 and 2020.

Leave your bags behind in an evacuation

Last Saturday, an American Airlines flight was evacuated at Denver International Airport when a landing gear caught fire before takeoff.

The airline said that all 173 passengers and six crew members on board were safely evacuated from the aircraft, while one person was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

However, a video of the incident showed passengers carrying their luggage as they went down the emergency slides.

The Federal Aviation Administration warns on its website that “retrieving personal items may impede the safe evacuation of passengers.”

Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas previously told BI how this can cause bottlenecks on board, slowing down the evacuation.

“You’ve got to get all the passengers out in 90 seconds,” he said. “Now, we’re seeing evacuations taking six and seven minutes because passengers insist on taking their bags.”

When a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 caught fire after colliding with another plane last January, all 379 people on board survived after evacuating in time.

Under safety rules, planemakers have to show that an aircraft can be evacuated in only 90 seconds with only half the exits available.

“Bear in mind that such tests do not take place in a high-stress environment,” Graham Braithwaite, an expert on flight safety at Cranfield University, told BI at the time.

The airline’s in-flight safety video was also praised for its clear evacuation instructions, and reminding passengers to leave their bags behind.

Not all fires end the same way.

In 2019, an Aeroflot plane caught fire after an emergency landing in Moscow, and 41 of the 78 people on board died.

Experts criticized passengers who evacuated with their carry-on luggage, suggesting it may have contributed to the death count.

While there were no fatalities in the American Airlines and Delta Air Lines incidents over the past week, both are stark reminders of how things can go wrong if safety rules aren’t followed.