“It’s not like we delivered “the memo” and poor, working class and middle class folks flubbed it and failed the test. We were simply never given the memo.”

~John Hope Bryant


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, spoke of the Declaration of Independence as a promissory note “to which every American was to fall heir.”

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He went on to say that “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.” And he sought to address that through getting legislation like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enacted, which was partially successful in recovering some of those funds (and has since been partially dismantled). But that is not what I’m her today to discuss.

Before he was so senselessly taken from us, Dr. King turned his focus to issues of economic inequality and launched a Poor People’s Campaign that sought to help all Americans in poverty—black, brown, white alike. In that tradition, and in the same vein as King spoke of a promissory note defaulted upon, John Hope Bryant writes and speaks of a “memo” that the poor were never given:

The poor and the underserved have never gotten a memo, a manual, or any education in free enterprise and responsible capitalism. Poor neighborhoods and communities simply make the rules up as they go. It’s not surprising that these communities have fallen behind; the amazing part is that they have done a pretty impressive job of this thing with no help, almost no guidance, and zero role modeling of real wealth creation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these economic shortcuts implode in time.

Speaking of himself, he writes:

When I was growing up in the inner cities of South Central Los Angeles and Compton, I didn’t have a clue about free enterprise or capitalism. How did it work? How were its winners and losers picked, and who did the picking? Most important, how could I participate? Forget about it. There was no manual for poor people. We never got the memo.

Well, he eventually became passionate about entrepreneurship and went out and got a glimpse of that memo and an education in free enterprise for himself. And now he’s passing it along in the work he does and in his new book, How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class . I recently asked him for some his thoughts on business and business books, and here is what he had to say.

Q&A with John Hope Bryant, author of How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class, on business, books, and business books

Read, comment and share the the original article at 800CEOREAD.

Get The new book, How The Poor Can Save Capitalism, here.

Watch the 4-minute movie on How The Poor Can Save Capitalism here.

Listen to the first national interview for How The Poor Can Save Capitalism, on the Steve Harvey Morning Show here.

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