The kings called it pride. He called it arithmetic.
Chicago, 1946. The policy kings run the richest Black-owned business in America, and the Outfit wants forty percent of it. The kings who refuse start dying: one in his Cadillac, one at his counting table, one at Sunday dinner with grace still on his lips. Barnabas Warfield reads the handwriting on the wall long before the others can see it, and he does what no king has done. He walks out of Chicago alive, with a fortune in his hands.
He carries it home to Chillicothe, Ohio, a river town with deep Black roots and nowhere safe to keep its money. With Adele, his praying wife, beside him, Barnabas builds a bank the white banks can't match, a music hall for the church-choir voices that would otherwise leave, and a hospital where Black doctors can practice. Each one costs more than the last. The businessmen who want what the Warfields have don't need hatred to come after it. They only need opportunity.
Seven children grow up inside what he built: a concert violinist, an opera singer, twin lawyers, a son with an eye for talent, a son who handles business with his hands, and a daughter who inherited her father's gift for numbers. When a promoter starts robbing the family's performers, the Warfields stop arguing over contracts and build a label of their own.
Seventh Avenue Records.
Survive. Strive. Thrive. EXPOSURE: SEVENTH AVENUE is the story of a criminal fortune turned into something good, and of a mother's prayer that her family would rise together and stay risen.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Chicago, 1946. The policy kings run the richest Black-owned business in America, and the Outfit wants forty percent of it. The kings who refuse start dying: one in his Cadillac, one at his counting table, one at Sunday dinner with grace still on his lips. Barnabas Warfield reads the handwriting on the wall long before the others can see it, and he does what no king has done. He walks out of Chicago alive, with a fortune in his hands.
He carries it home to Chillicothe, Ohio, a river town with deep Black roots and nowhere safe to keep its money. With Adele, his praying wife, beside him, Barnabas builds a bank the white banks can't match, a music hall for the church-choir voices that would otherwise leave, and a hospital where Black doctors can practice. Each one costs more than the last. The businessmen who want what the Warfields have don't need hatred to come after it. They only need opportunity.
Seven children grow up inside what he built: a concert violinist, an opera singer, twin lawyers, a son with an eye for talent, a son who handles business with his hands, and a daughter who inherited her father's gift for numbers. When a promoter starts robbing the family's performers, the Warfields stop arguing over contracts and build a label of their own.
Seventh Avenue Records.
Survive. Strive. Thrive. EXPOSURE: SEVENTH AVENUE is the story of a criminal fortune turned into something good, and of a mother's prayer that her family would rise together and stay risen.
Genre: Literary Fiction