There is a concerted effort to obscure the awe-inspiring history of Black survival and ingeniously enterprising initiative throughout the period of slavery and afterwards. There is simply too much to get into here, but it is worth mentioning that there were over 2,000 Black-owned businesses in the South in the years leading up to the Civil War. In Louisiana alone, free Blacks in 1860 owned $3.5 million worth of property-land, slaves, livestock, and machinery.