“Entrepreneurship, Ethnicity, and the Story of Wichita”

Sue Abdinnour from the Barton School of Business and Robert E. Weems, Jr. and Jay M. Price from the Department of History are trying to understand the variety of ethnic entrepreneurs in this city.  For Weems, Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, this project builds on a significant oral history project involving African American business leaders.  Abdinnour and Price have worked on a number of local entrepreneur history projects including a study of Lebanese business families, a mapping study of ethnic businesses on North Broadway, and the history of Pizza Hut for the exhibit to be located in the original Pizza Hut on Wichita State University’s campus. Currently, they are in the middle of an oral history project to collect the stories of Wichita’s ethnic entrepreneurs as part of the Stories For All digital humanities project.