Jessica Levy (she/her) is a historian of the modern United States and the world, capitalism, as well as (anti-)apartheid and (anti-)colonial politics. My first book, Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026) traces Black empowerment’s rise in American politics—from early twentieth-century influences including Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey to the cities of postwar America into corporate boardrooms and government offices—and across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. Civil rights leaders, Black entrepreneurs, white corporate executives, and government officials all championed Black empowerment as a means to address multiple crises in US cities and to blunt some of the more radical aspects of the Black Power movement. Black empowerment politics likewise found application overseas in various Cold War efforts to promote American-style free enterprise in Africa. This was especially the case in South Africa, where US corporate executives and government officials wielded Black empowerment politics to oppose apartheid and divestment. By tracing Black empowerment politics’ evolution, Black Power, Inc. explains its popularity, championed by leaders from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela, while also revealing its role in expanding US corporate power, locally and globally.
Building on my first book, I am increasingly interested in the intersections between capitalism and US power, including corporate power, at local, national, and international scales. This includes a co-edited volume (with B. Alex Beasley), Capitalism & the American Century: Towards a Global History of Postwar America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026). I am currently working on a new project, a global history of General Motors, industrial restructuring, and post-colonial world-making in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
My research and writing have been supported and recognized by the Library of Congress Kluge Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Business History Conference, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the Hagley Library, the German Historical Institute, and other organizations.
My writing has also appeared in various scholarly and popular venues, including Enterprise & Society, the Journal of Urban History, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Washington Post, Public Seminar, and Black Perspectives. I co-host and produce, with Dylan Gottlieb, WhoMakesCents? A History of Capitalism Podcast.