Don H Barden

Don H. Barden, who rose from poverty to build one of the nation’s largest black-owned businesses through casinos and cable television, died on Thursday in Detroit. He was 67. Mr. Barden’s business empire started with a record store in Lorain, Ohio, that he opened at 21 with $500 in savings. Last year, the magazine Black Enterprise ranked Barden Companies as the 10th-highest-grossing black-owned company, with $405 million in revenue. Mr. Barden was the founder of Barden Cablevision, which built the cable television system serving Detroit and several suburbs. Comcast bought the system for more than $100 million in 1994, and Mr. Barden used the proceeds to open the Majestic Star, a riverboat casino in Gary, Ind. In 2001, Mr. Barden became the first black owner of a Las Vegas casino with his purchase of Fitzgeralds. Donald Hamilton Barden was born on Dec. 20, 1943, in Inkster, Mich., a mostly black suburb of Detroit. The ninth of 13 children, he grew up sharing a bed with three brothers and left for college in the hope of becoming a business owner rather than an autoworker like his parents and an older brother. Mr. Barden began developing real estate in Ohio before turning his focus to cable television in the 1980s, when he returned to Detroit and won the contract to install a system throughout the city. Besides his wife, Mr. Barden is survived by a son, Don Jr., and a daughter, Alana M. Barden.