Making history on Wall Street. (Publisher's Page).

Wall Street has long been recognized as the capital of free-market America and the seat of global financial power. For Africa Americans, The Street is also a powerful symbol of our complex history and continuing struggle for full and equal access to economic power. As detailed by Gregory S. Bell in Black Enterprise in The Black: A History of African Americans On Wall Street (John Wiley & Sons, $24.95), four centuries ago, our enslaved ancestors literally built the streets and structures, including the landmark Trinity Church, which comprise much of today's Wall Street. The discovery of a "Negro burial ground" by construction workers in 1991 brought global attention to the fact that black people labored, lived, died, and were bought and sold in the area of lower Manhattan now known as Wall Street.

That is why the significance of the executives and entrepreneurs on our latest listing of top African Americans on Wall Street cannot be overstated. Our 2002 list of the BLACK ENTERPRISE Wall Street All-Stars has expanded to 50 people, up from the 25 featured in our 1992 and 1996 lists. As recently as 20 years ago, it would have been easy to publish this list on a single page in this magazine. Today, despite the intense pressures, high turnover rates, and brutal performance standards of the finance industry, African Americans are continuing to move forward, shattering barriers to advancement, and raising the bar of excellence. Two of the executives on this year's list, Fannie Mae's Franklin D. Raines and American Express Kenneth I. Chenault, are CEOs of multinational corporations with serious impact on the markets. A third, E. Stanley O'Neal, will take over as CEO of Merrill Lynch in December, making him the first African American to lead a major Wall Street firm.

The BE Wall Street All-Stars are of critical importance to the future of African American participation on The Street and in the global markets. In fact, several of the standouts on this year's list, including Morgan Stanley's Melissa James and Rice Financial Products' J. Donald Rice, were cited as rising stars in our 1996 report. In an industry where only the best and the brightest are recruited as analysts and junior-level executives only to have the vast majority wash Out within a decade, African Americans in the pipeline will need experienced role models and mentors to help build and bolster the networks necessary to survive and thrive. Today's top performers on The Street must open the door and help prepare the next generation of all-stars. Within the next 10 years, we will measure their results by how difficult--or easy--it is for us to produce a list of 100 African American Wall Street standouts.

Today's achievements mean nothing if they do not lay the foundation for the next generation to exceed them. That's why, beginning with this issue, we've made Black Enterprise's Teenpreneur available as a special editorial section to every BE reader and subscriber. I urge you to make every effort to get your copy into the hands of a young person, even if there are no teens in your household. Many of these young African Americans are the Don Rices, Melissa Jameses, and Stan O'Neals of tomorrow. It is our job to prepare them for their future, so that we can continue to make history on Wall Street--and beyond.