Financial Literacy & Ownership, from conception this book was meant to facilitate delivery of a singular, but broad message. My message is that of Financial Literacy and Ownership; ownership of assets, real property, commodities, businesses, and intellectual property. I wish to convey to the Black community an urgency regarding this message to say that Financial Literacy and Ownership are surely lacking in the Black community and this fact is, has been, and shall continue to stymie the growth and the evolution of the Black community until we infuse a paradigm shift in our communal thinking. Accept that as Black Americans we do not live in a world of our own making, but we can now more than ever, be the designers of our own true Legacy. We may not have made the world we live in, but we are certainly of the world we live in. Being of a world which we did not construct limits us as a people. It confines us to the limitations, borders, and restrictions set for us, not by us. Why would a determined people limit themselves? I believe they would not. White society, the dominant society has never limited itself as a whole. Think about the glass ceilings Blacks have had to burst through throughout history. Blacks have been bursting through the constraint of such barriers and limitations for centuries now. In the last sixty years in America others who have come before you have laid much broken glass at the feet of Black America. Yet, who placed the barriers; who at first constrained us in the boxes with the glass ceilings? Certainly it was not us. We live in a world not of our own making. I want so very much for my Black community, but not that which can be given, nor granted. No, what I want mostly for my Black community must be taken, it must be acquired through express and diligent intent. It can only be birthed through aggressive and intelligent design; whereas, you must commit your life-time to craft it, to engineer your acquisition and construction of it. You must want it with the utmost zeal, and once acquired you must value it as your most prized possession. What I want most for my Black community is true Legacy.