← B.E. 40th ANNIVERSARY COVER GALLERY

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By Alfred Edmond, Jr. | Published August 8, 2010 | Full size is 501 × 320 pixels

Considered “The First Lady of Wall Street,” Ernesta Procope was the face of black female business success when she was featured on this August 1974 cover. As CEO of E.G. Bowman Co., Inc., she owns and operates nation’s largest black-owned insurance brokerage to this day. The issue devoted much of its content to “Black Women in Business and Public Life." The centerpiece was a roundtable focused on the status of black women in corporate America. Said one panelist: “We’re constantly playing catch up – expending the extra amount of energy, time, discipline – to find out what happened in [an] organization 15 years ago when no blacks were there.”

Considered “The First Lady of Wall Street,” Ernesta Procope was the face of black female…