“Okay rooting for blacks is one thing, celebrating a black thief is another, more so one who wasn't even playing Robin hood. We can't say Jeremiah Hamilton fed the poor with all that money. So why are we glorifying a thief grandma?”,May inquired. Child, there’s a reason Madam C. J Walker said, “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” See, in the mid-1800s, Wall Street was only dominated by whites so for one to get in, one had to employ some kind of skill. Granted, the methods used like selling counterfeit money at age twenty in 1828, are questionable, but it got Hamilton to being the first black millionaire. Yes, he’s the same person that over-insured ships and then destroyed them. I hear myself and see I'm not making a solid argument for Hamilton, but hear me out. This man had white men sending him gifts begging to do business with him such as the pool he created where he invested money for people in the 1860s. We celebrate Hamilton because he came with some kind of gall. The man was advising white men that bribed him with gifts to, “send him a basket of champagne and a box of segars”. To top it all off, he said he only wanted the best!! And all this at a time when lynchings and racial attacks were rampant. Can you believe when two white men had him arrested at night so he couldn't be bailed out, Hamilton retaliated by having them arrested before dawn and ensuring they couldn't leave the cell before paying a hefty sum as surety. He sued tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and earned a reputation as “ the only man who ever fought the Commodore”. One can see why he was called the “Prince of Darkness and also “Nigger Hamilton”. In 1875 when Hamilton died, the newspapers reported him as being the richest non-white man with an estate worth $2 million about $250 million today. No wonder his contemporaries noted that he “assumed the privileges of a white man” and we can see why they'd think that for he purchased a mansion in New Jersey, married and had children with a white woman together with owning stock in railways and yet access to those was denied to black men. So yes, we celebrate Hamilton not just for being the first black millionaire, but for being one that found a way to enter rooms like he not only belonged but was the boss. Next week I'll tell you about black jockeys in the Kentucky Derby.