Our Black Year

That’s what the middle of the year felt like, even though we were getting attention from some of the largest Black and mainstream media outlets. We appeared on CNN (twice), MSNBC, and Fox News, and we were featured in comprehensive segments for Time magazine and BET News. Tom Joyner and Roland Martin, the two most venerated Black media personalities, interviewed us. We’d been on the front page of the Chicago Tribune and received coverage in the Los Angeles Times. People often told us that we’d brought more media attention to the plight of Black businesses than any previous effort. Our Facebook group, “Fans of The Empowerment Experiment,” earned over three thousand members between April and June—we hadn’t passed the five or six hundred–membership mark in the first couple months of the group’s existence. The overwhelming majority of daily e-mails I received came from supporters. We were working hard, and the results were energizing. But even with all that, there was huge anchor weighing down our high spirits.

One of our inspirations was Karriem Beyah. By this time he and his store were the spiritual and geographic center of our commitment—primarily because he was such a terrific guy and his wonderful place was on the South Side, near several other stores where we’d shop. Jordan’s Closets was on 47th Street, just a mile and a half east of Farmers Best. A born “mompreneur,” Joslyn and her mother, Jera, were equal partners in Jordan’s Closets and Jordan’s Mom’s Closets, upscale resale-clothing boutiques in a still-dicey part of Bronzeville. They began planning their business in 2001 while they were working their day jobs, but they were unable to secure a bank loan—no surprise. After Joslyn’s grandmother and an aunt and uncle offered financial assistance, the two women opened their first store in 2006. They named it after Joslyn’s daughter, who was about five years old at the time.

“We wanted to be in a place where we could help our community,” Joslyn, who was born and raised on the South Side, told me. “I didn’t necessarily think I was going to get rich by running Jordan’s Closets, but I wanted to give something to the community. Children around here already have a lot stacked against them.”

She offered lovely, clean, low-priced clothes, but she had to educate potential customers about a resale-clothing boutique, which many people had never heard of. The community patronized the store, but the store was also burglarized three times—twice in one night—in the first couple years of its existence. Still, the business made a powerful statement: Counting Joslyn’s daughter, Jordan, who helped out around the place, three generations of African American women were running a retail establishment. I wanted to support them.

As long as I was in the neighborhood, I’d drop in and visit with Milton Latrell at the swanky Agriculture Crop of Clothing. Right next door was my new favorite coffee shop, Bronzeville Coffee, which was also where I bought bagels, as I still hadn’t found a Black bakery that sold them. If I had some time, I’d run four blocks east to see Nicole Jones at Sensual Steps Shoe Salon, whether or not I was in the market for shoes. She was the center of Bronzeville’s small Black business community, and something interesting was always going on at her store.

Although it was five miles southeast and in an area that felt much more like the West Side, I might swing by God First God Last God Always, our household goods supplier. Like Farmers Best for groceries, it was my only option for household and personal basics. David and Michelle Powell, the quintessential mom-and-pop owners, knew their customers’ names and hugged many of them—not just me—as they entered the store. Native South Siders, they were almost inconsolable over how the once-vibrant area around 71st Street had lost virtually all of its quality, locally owned businesses.

All of these entrepreneurs, my new close friends, were just two miles from Hyde Park and the University of Chicago, where only a few years earlier I’d lived for four years with John while in graduate school. I’m sure these people and places, or people and places like them, were there all the while. I never saw them back then—or even looked.

Now I was there at least once or twice a week. My trips to Farmers Best became so frequent, in fact, that Karriem set aside space in his office for me where I could conduct EE business. Stationing myself there was much less about convenience and much more about strengthening the relationship between EE and Farmers Best. We wanted everyone to meet Karriem, as he exemplified the potential of self-help economics. When the publisher of Chicago’s Black Pages, the most reputable directory of local Black businesses, said he wanted to place our family on the cover of the 2010 edition and have me speak at their quarterly networking function for advertisers, I set up a meeting at the store. If the media outlets we spoke with wanted to see EE in action to help understand why we had undertaken the project, I’d tell them they needed to come to Farmers Best to meet Karriem Beyah. Nearly all of them did.

“KB” was everything we were fighting for. He sensed our respect for him very quickly, just as quickly as he perceived how serious our commitment was. He responded in kind, joining our four-member board of directors of The Empowerment Experiment Foundation, Inc. A 501(c)(3) we’d created in anticipation of funding from that group of wealthy Black corporate executives—which seems almost laughable now—the foundation was a way of assuring donors that we were going to use their contributions for research and social service–oriented projects after our yearlong experiment. We hired an attorney who specialized in establishing nonprofits, and we created the board, which consisted of John and me; a powerful attorney friend of Eduardo’s; John’s aunt, a highly respected public school administrator and community leader in Detroit; and now Karriem.

Sprung from a philosophical synchronicity, our relationship with Karriem was profound and deep. But at the same time, odd as it sounds, it was fraught with anxiety about our beloved Farmers Best. Odder still is that we rarely addressed it directly.

The truth was that Farmers Best was on unsteady footing from the outset and not because of anything Karriem did or failed to do. The plight of Black-owned grocery stores is similar to that of other Black-owned retailers. To top it off, the economy went into free fall about the time Farmers Best opened its doors in the summer of 2008. Not long after our very first visit to the store, we realized that we were going to have to do more to help Karriem increase traffic, and that meant devoting extra time and resources to Farmers Best.

This was a troubling prospect, mostly because financially we were floundering too. The business and marketing professionals in us were very nervous because almost none of the assistance the PBFs promised materialized. There were supporters, of course, like Cheryle Jackson of the Chicago Urban League, who had us on her TV show a couple times. Nonetheless, we felt as if almost everyone in Chicago who was supposed to shower us with love, praise, and aid was treating us like the Jehovah’s Witness who rings the doorbell early on a Saturday morning.

But we had to save Karriem. So starting in April, I dove right in. Almost every day I’d ask him about his sales, what was going on with his suppliers, how much he spent on the produce run that morning. I started studying the grocery industry and became something of an informal consultant to Karriem. I begged my friends to go to his store, sending out e-blasts every week asking them to join his mailing list and trying to arrange carpools for shopping trips. The first promotional carpool e-blast said, “Did you know Chicago has a new Black-owned full-service grocery store? I’ll show you AND give you a ride there!” I sent it to my EE database as well as those for a number of large Black churches, like St. Sabina, Apostolic Church of God, Salem House of Hope, and my church, Trinity United Church of Christ. My favorite e-blast was entitled “New Whole Foods Store on 47th Street. The freshest produce on the South Side!” When someone opened the e-mail, they’d find a flyer I created for Farmers Best, with pictures of all the great produce. Then right under it: “Well it’s not Whole Foods, but you get the same fresh, top-quality products, and at a greater value to your wallet and your soul. Support this first-class Black business today! Click here for a ride.”

We were trying so hard, fully leveraging our own networks to get more customers to give Farmers Best a chance. Nothing was working. We felt as if there was some unholy power conspiring against Karriem’s enterprise and, by extension, EE. There were days when I would be the sole customer in the store.

Because Farmers Best was in a strip mall, it shared the parking lot with other stores, including a Little Caesar’s pizza parlor. One afternoon in May I saw a vision in a toga-clad, sandals-wearing foam mascot: the Little Caesar’s guy.

I had this “aha” moment. Farmers Best was clean, well stocked, efficient, and had competitively priced products. The reason it was struggling was simple: It lacked effective marketing. We needed to get serious about it.

Karriem fully embraced the idea and, in fact, had already planned to purchase prime-time radio spots and a full-page ad in the local Black Pages directory. I sat with him in meetings with various ad reps for the two major Black-themed—but not Black-owned—radio stations and helped decide which ads to buy. We’d advertise weekly sales and promote community events at the store with the theme “Farmers Best Springtime Series” as well as a tagline I created: “Live Your Best Life at Farmers Best.” We devised promotions and gave out coupons at the store and online. I wrote the radio ads and press releases, and our PR firm sent them to media outlets. Almost every Friday and Saturday in May and June Karriem set up a tent and decorations, played music, and grilled premium meats and veggies in the parking lot.

We weren’t leaving anything to chance, and Karriem was really grateful. The harder we worked, the closer our family grew to KB. He started delivering food to the house and including extra fruit and meat that was about to be tossed. We’d barbecue together. He and John would linger over drinks and cigars. Still, anxiety intruded, even in those moments away from the store when we reveled in our friendship.

“Uncle Karriem is here! Mommy, can I open the door?”

Cara peered out of the living room window and saw KB’s behemoth Excursion pulling up. She was almost four years old now, and it seemed like every hour she came up with a new “big girl” responsibility she wanted to assume.

“He’s early,” I shouted. “I still have to tidy up downstairs. Girls, go with your dad. John, just keep him up here. Okay?”

Cara and Cori looked adorable. I’d just fixed their hair, and they were wearing pink tops and denim Capri pants—ensembles I’d purchased at Jordan’s Closets.

“Yes. Cara, you can open the door,” I said, “but you have to do it with a grown-up. Okay? Never alone. Now go with Daddy!”

John was looking out the window.

“Don’t worry, Mag,” he said. “It’ll be a minute. He’s on the phone in the car. You know he lives on that phone. We probably have another hour!” John broke into his impersonation of KB. Impersonations are one of John’s fortes. I swear it’s one of the main reasons I fell in love with him.

“Now you make sure you get those carts out of the parking lot,” John said in Karriem’s deep, scruffy voice. “If a cart is missing you’re paying for it! And get rid of those bruised mangoes. No bruises. You hear me?”

The girls were laughing while John paced up and down the foyer imitating KB’s hulking gait and pretending to hold a phone.

Even I was laughing now, and that’s exactly what John wanted. His anxious wife had been stressing about a guest’s early arrival, and he had to ease that condition. He came over, hugged my waist, and whispered. “You can’t blame the man for being early, right Mag? Would you want to hang around an empty grocery store in which you’d invested everything? Be nice, baby. I know you’re going to yell at him for not calling first, but please don’t. Give the po’ brutha a break.”

They’d made plans to watch the NBA conference finals. The game started at six, and it was 5:30. I zoomed downstairs to the TV room, still giggling and shaking my head.

When I came back up a few minutes later, four boxes of fruit, a couple cases of fruit punch, maybe ten pineapples, and three huge watermelons crowded my previously neat kitchen counter. KB was swinging Cori by her wrists, and Cara was examining the booty. John was bending over the liquor drawer, about to make drinks. I wanted them to see me with my hands on my hips, eyebrows scrunched.

“Hey, Momma!” KB said, still swinging Cori. “I brought you the Mexican mangoes you love.”

“Don’t give me that ‘Momma’ crap, KB,” I said. “What’s all this? Look at my kitchen. Does my house look like a Farmers Best warehouse to you?”

He smiled.

“Come here, man,” I told him. He stepped toward me and I kissed him. “You crazy. You know that?”

We sliced up a couple of mangoes, put everything else away, and then sat on the deck for drinks. The basketball game was still a few minutes from tip-off. The girls were flitting around, blowing bubbles.

“So how was business today?” John asked. “Gotta be busy. Memorial Day barbecues and stuff.”

I squeezed his leg under the table and didn’t let Karriem answer.

“KB, did you talk to that reporter from Time magazine?” I asked. John kicked me back. “They going to do that follow-up story on you and the food desert stuff?”

“Oh, yeah,” KB said. “I gotta call him back.”

He didn’t answer John’s question. There was no need. We all knew that no one was coming to Farmers Best, even though we’d created radio ads, flyers, and sent out e-mails about tremendous sales on grill meats and produce, announcing free barbecue in the parking lot. It was perplexing and infuriating—but we just sipped our margaritas and ate the succulent mangoes that no one would buy.

A few days later when I was at the store, Karriem said, “Mag, I don’t know what to do about this. Yvette Moyo’s called like three times now, but I have never seen her in the store. Why should I call her back?”

Moyo was the founder of Real Men Cook, a national organization promoting positive Black male role models for at-risk youth. Through a series of fund-raising events, Real Men Cook raises tens of millions of dollars to provide various charities with resources for mentoring, tutoring, counseling, and scholarships. The events culminate in Father’s Day picnics in twelve cities across the country, where Black men cook all day for the community. The Real Men Cook Chicago picnic is a huge affair, drawing major media attention as well as business, community, and political leaders. The mayor and governor show up every year. More county fair than picnic, the event features rides, a petting zoo, live entertainment, and several themed pavilions offering community services and sponsors’ products, including those of State Farm, US Cellular, and Nielsen.

“Real Men Cook?” I said. “Calling us? This could be it! I’ll see what she wants. You know Barack was a Real Man for, like, the past five years.”

Yvette Moyo called Karriem because one of Real Men Cook’s sponsors, Jewel, the largest grocery chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, backed out at the last minute, and she wanted Farmers Best to be the official grocery sponsor and, in effect, rescue the event.

I made the call to the organization and then Karriem received a sponsorship proposal, which included donations of cash, produce, drinks, and meats to stock several pavilions. After I negotiated to ensure his marketing benefits—a mention and the store’s logo in all advertising and on their website, prime advertising real estate at the picnic, a speaking opportunity on the day of the event, and space in the health pavilion for folks to sample Farmers Best produce—Karriem agreed to be the grocery sponsor for the annual Father’s Day picnic held at Kennedy-King College, located in an underserved neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

Karriem became the hero of the day, and Yvette used every opportunity to publicly thank him for bailing her out. Karriem’s Farmers Best banner was the centerpiece of the main stage. At his tent he gave out coupons and fruit cups and received much-needed exposure.

According to a jubilant Karriem, store traffic picked up over the next couple weekends. We were experiencing one of those “big possibility” moments for Karriem, and I couldn’t think of a guy who deserved it more. He was the owner of a high-quality business—the only Black, full-service grocer in Illinois—a noble, courageous community leader, and role model for kids. On top of all that, the guy was working three times harder than I could have imagined. Maybe, I thought, just maybe he’d catch a break. Karriem Beyah and Farmers Best could provide the foundation on which we could build our movement.

For all the hurdles we encountered while working with Karriem, the middle of the year had its promising moments—one of the most inspiring of the whole year, in fact. That came in June, in the grandest venue I’d spoken at thus far: Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. Its leader, Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes, is another hero of mine. A frequent guest speaker at our church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he was somewhat of an adopted, favorite son to our parish and our senior pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. What so many of us loved about Dr. Haynes was that he, like Rev. Wright, is known for presenting powerful speeches that feel like riveting university lectures, which makes sense because he has a master’s of divinity, a doctorate of ministry, and studied at Oxford University. He was engaging, intimidating, and committed to the life of the community. In other words, Dr. Haynes talked EE before EE existed. We were grateful when he agreed to join our roster of executive advisers, a team of high-profile academics who were known for speaking out for economic empowerment in the Black community. The executive advisers, a separate entity from the board of directors for the EE Foundation, now consisted of Steven Rogers, Dr. Michael Dyson, University of Cincinnati’s Jim Clingman, and University of Texas’s Dr. Juliet Walker—the latter two both acclaimed intellectuals, authors, and activists. Dr. Haynes was the first community leader to join our advisory team, but with his academic credentials, he fit right in. These advisers helped us increase the project’s visibility and establish its credibility as a true academic exercise; assist with research, data, and interviews; and make connections with other scholars and leaders aligned with EE’s mission.

Friendship-West is what you’d call a megachurch. It has more than twelve thousand members and forty-five ministries, including the “adoption” of a church in Zimbabwe for which Friendship-West is building an auditorium, day care center, and school. The church also created a program to feed a minimum of 150 families in that community.

Its motto, “Equipping Changed People to Change the World,” doesn’t only apply to spiritual change. Located in an overwhelmingly Black and economically bleak part of town, Friendship-West has committed to being a major employer of local residents. Among other services, the church offers a business directory and career resources. It’s building a co-op and community garden, and it led an effort to bring the first Black-owned grocery store to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

As you can imagine, when Rev. Haynes invited me to speak, appear on his popular radio show, and meet with local community and business leaders, John and I were thrilled—and scared.

At any given Sunday service more than three thousand people gather in the church’s cavernous auditorium. I’d never given a talk to such a large crowd. In fact, aside from presentations in business and law school, I hadn’t really given a speech since high school. This had the potential to make a critical difference in the life of The Empowerment Experiment—and not just because of the size of the audience. I’d be speaking to folks—several thousand of them—ready to hear and act on what I said. And unlike the standard media interviews we’d done, I’d get to present a message of some length and depth to a captive audience.

After getting a late start writing my speech, it came quickly. Right out of college I’d been a speechwriter for the mayor of Atlanta. Later I’d done the same for McDonald’s corporate executives. I flashed back to those times, which helped my confidence, and I just told myself to tell our story. I wrote about how it all started with our anniversary dinner, our feelings of doing too little, making the commitment, and preparing for the launch. I talked about the media attention and the very mixed public response. I wrote about Mima. It was redemptive, enlightening—and forty-five pages long. Over the next two sleepless nights I managed to cut it down to fifteen, but the night before I was going to speak, I got a call from Dr. Haynes’s assistant while I was rehearsing in my Dallas hotel room. I had eight minutes at the most for my presentation. Eight minutes? The video I wanted to show was nine minutes. I hung up, cried, called John, and, by 3 a.m., had a ten-minute speech. I woke up at 5 a.m. to rehearse and left at 7:30 a.m. I was pleased with the speech but dead tired and angry with myself for wasting so much time.

Normally, I’m a capable driver-seat makeup artist. In fact, I’ve made it something of a commuter performance art. But this morning the broiling Dallas heat had transformed my hair moisturizer into warm oil. When I squeezed the container, I squirted a six-inch stream across my ivory pants. By the time I arrived at Friendship-West, I had grease slathered on my outfit. I was pissed off and slightly delirious. A beneficent church greeter directed me to the restroom, where I found an empty stall. Next thing I knew, a familiar voice called out.

“Maggie? Girl, is that you?”

It was Gisele Marcus, a friend and former Trinitarian who’d relocated to Dallas and was now a member at Friendship. She hugged me and I told her I was freaking out. Right there in the restroom, she coaxed me into prayer. Then I wiped my face and composed myself. After a few moments Gisele walked me to an office, where an associate pastor welcomed me with a hug—I must have been eminently huggable that morning—and pulled us together in another prayer circle. Before we could finish I ran to the pastor’s bathroom and threw up. It was humiliating, but afterward I felt renewed.

I could hear Rev. Haynes leading the flock in singing and clapping. The place was jumping. By the time I was led to my seat in the second row, I was ready—wrapped up in the Spirit. I felt like one of those boxers in the ring moments before the bell sounds, anxious to get after it.

And get after it I did.

“Last year, my life was great,” I told the audience. “Great family, career . . . healthy, financially blessed. But my blessings and my purpose were encompassed in what I had, not what I did. My life’s deeds were reckless and improvised, without purpose or commitment. And then my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was given a month to live. All that was before The Empowerment Experiment.”

Just thinking about Mima gave me the strength I needed. A couple minutes into it I was in preacher mode, bouncing around the stage, exhorting and inspiring the audience, pausing for the applause. Folks in the pews were completely engaged. The band even started chiming in at the appropriate times. I couldn’t believe it was me. It was weird, it was cool—it was the speech of my life. It worked, I think, because I finally felt comfortable telling our story. As I actually said the words I’d written, it hit me that this really was a movement. Until then we kept using the word “movement,” but that was more to convince ourselves.

When I finished, applause seemed to cascade upon me, and then I was mobbed. One of the first in line was a tearful woman. “You have favor,” she said, meaning God’s favor, and before I could get my bearings, she enveloped me in her arms and squeezed. I felt some of the air push from me. “You know that?”

“Yes,” I said, inhaling, discreetly trying to pull away. “Thank you. What’s your name, sister?” A high school friend, Antoine Pierre, was a member of Friendship. He started acting like a bodyguard and subtly forcing folks to form a line. He gave me the “watch her, she’s crazy” look.

She told me her name and said her father was a tailor and also owned a farm equipment repair and resale business in addition to his men’s clothing store.

“The White man took his tractor business away and the Black man just let the other business die so they can go to Dillard’s,” she said, a reference to one of the White South’s retail institutions.

“I always wonder why we just don’t love each other anymore,” the hugger said, nodding. Maybe she wasn’t so crazy after all. “I remember a day when we cared about each other and talked to each other.” She paused and stared at me a moment, smiling.

“You so young, child,” she said. “But if you were around back then, we’d be fighting over who got the chance to die for you.”

“Oohhh, honey,” I said, really touched. “That’s so sweet. Please make sure you go to the website and tell your friends too. I don’t need people to die for me. I just want them to help our businesses so we can have some economic power again.”

That kind of thing went on for another twenty minutes. Strangers were crying and telling me stories about a failed business or humiliating treatment they received from non-Black shop owners in their neighborhood. Some asked how they could help. Some just wanted to say thanks.

During the rest of the Dallas visit I felt like I was living the EE dream. At a private breakfast with Dr. Haynes and his staff, everyone treated me like royalty. I spoke to a near-capacity crowd at the second service and hit another home run. That evening I was a guest on Dr. Haynes’s radio show and then went to an event thrown in my honor at a Black-owned restaurant and jazz spot, Brooklyn Jazz. I was flattered. Dallas and Fort Worth had a few sophisticated Black-owned restaurants, but Brooklyn Jazz—a successful, elegant, Black-owned restaurant and nightclub located downtown—was a rarity.

All of the people we met were so excited that EE was coming to town solely because it represented the sentiments—love and unity—that had faded or been sold to Dillard’s.

That’s what our work was all about. That’s why thousands in two services at Friendship-West gave standing ovations. That’s why the hugger, bless her heart, wept. That’s why all these strangers, from the streets to the suites, came to welcome me. I couldn’t help thinking about how pointless fretting over the name of our project had been. Hell, most folks were getting it wrong anyway, but that didn’t matter. Everyone understood our intention.

The Empowerment Experiment was sailing like a glorious flagship, and I was guiding it, slicing through the teal blue water. Cap’n Maggie, leader of the good ship Double-E.

While I was entertaining visions of steering our mighty cutter, the media exposure started picking up again. We were on Tom Joyner’s popular radio show in June, the next month Chicago Public TV featured our story, and we spent nearly six minutes on CBS News’s Early Show. But as with our previous media appearances, the results were mixed. We had a spike in interested visitors to our website, where they would write messages about how inspiring we were and add their names to the list of people pledging to buy Black. That, of course, juiced our engines. However, the media exposure also brought out the troglodytes from their caves, like Scott from Indiana who had this to say in an e-mail: “Ok you fuck. Buy black if that works for you. . . . This is America—one for all and all for one, but hey if you think your stupid shit is going to work. Then advertise in Nairobi because the sooner you are out of here the better our country will be.... Greedy Shit bags.”

Richard and Mary Beth also sent an e-mail about the same time that asked a familiar question: “Why not go all the way, Andersons, and move the hell back to Africa. Take your daughters with you. This country has done everything it can in the last 50 years to give blacks the opportunity to succeed. Even at the expense of more qualified whites and other minorities. Has it worked? NO. Don’t let the door hit you in your asses. Please leave.”

Another sophisticate created a webpage, headlined, “The Empowerment Experiment Team NIGGERS,” depicting a smiling white man urinating on my name, John’s name, and the names of other supporters of The Empowerment Experiment. At the bottom was “BULLSHIT. FUCK YOU ASSHOLES!!!!” and a call to boycott the project.

That’s just a smattering of what we received. Frankly, I don’t know what else was written because after a while I stopped looking at the uglier sentiments. We did receive a few encouraging e-mails from Whites too, like the teacher in south central LA telling us to “keep it up,” or the director of a leadership institute who said we “were so right on in many ways.” I even got an offer of free help from a faith-based philanthropy and social-investing expert who called our initiative “inspiring.”

But lots of otherwise sane people simply refused to set aside their anger and listen, even just for a moment. This visceral hostility became increasingly frustrating. Even we weren’t naive enough to believe that White folks would “get it” from the start, and we understood that a certain percentage of folks would never get it. But I thought the kind of anger we were seeing had faded as our country’s racial and ethnic mix broadened and the nation became more tolerant. I couldn’t comprehend why it was okay for White-owned businesses to tailor ad campaigns to minorities while John and I were being vilified as racists for trying to raise African Americans’ awareness to buy from competent, Black-owned businesses.

All of this made me think that, despite all the progress we’ve made toward racial tolerance in this country, maybe a lot of it is just superficial. Was that why White folks couldn’t accept that Black economic empowerment was a healthy thing for everyone? And by the way, we aren’t saying that all Blacks should spend all their money exclusively on Black-owned businesses. Believe me, we know it’s impossible. We’re simply trying to get some African Americans to spend some of their money in high-quality Black businesses. Perhaps John and I are dreamers, but we also have a pragmatic understanding of life, rooted in our marketing, business, finance, and law training. Some may even consider that pragmatism conservative, God forbid. (Note to the GOP: Make those checks payable to The Empowerment Experiment Foundation.) Either way, we viewed our project as a moderate, well-reasoned form of self-help economics, something that people across the political spectrum could support. After all, experts of every stripe agree that the problems in America’s impoverished neighborhoods—Black, Hispanic, Hmong, or rural White—are fundamentally economic.

So why were we being tagged as racists?

“That’s not an unreasonable response from people who are otherwise well-meaning and decent White people,” said Clarence B. Jones, Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and King’s confidant and attorney. “And that’s because they haven’t taken the time to carefully consider the difference . . . between the general economic conditions of the White community and the Black community.”

“In good faith,” he added, “their judgment is clouded by an illusion . . . that there is a level playing field, that there is no significant economic disparity between the capital assets in the African American community and the capital assets in the White community.”

This is a false assumption, according to Jones. The roots of that disparity date back to 1863, when four million slaves were freed—at least officially—by the Emancipation Proclamation. Two years later the “40 Acres and a Mule” order—giving freed slave families land and a barnyard animal—was established. Historians debate the scope of that specific order, but that dispute doesn’t change the overall impact of slavery.

“The principal economic consequence of slavery on the African American community is the failure of them to have any generational transfer of wealth,” Jones said, which reminded me of what Steven Rogers had highlighted regarding the lack of Black retailers. “Having no capital assets to transfer from generation to generation meant that you had successive generations of African Americans who were always economically disadvantaged,” Jones said.

In explaining the factual and historical basis for his position, Jones pointed to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1965 commencement address at Howard University, “To Fulfill These Rights.”

freedom is not enough.... You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result. For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities—physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.

I think we would all agree that hasn’t happened.

In search of a contemporary perspective, I sought out two people I met in the trenches: Tracye Dee, the African American owner of WineStyles in Chicago’s South Loop, and Joslyn Slaughter of Jordan’s Closets. I was curious about what they thought was behind the animosity toward our buying-Black effort.

Tracye told me she thought folks are fearful of a unified effort by African Americans, a group that many see—accurately—as deeply divided. “People are so afraid of something different,” she said. “I think they worry that we’d take away from their patrons and their family businesses. I feel like telling them, just give it a chance. You’d find that you may even benefit from it.”

Joslyn Slaughter said much the same thing. “We’re not used to seeing something like this from African Americans,” Joslyn said of EE. “But if we had the presence of mind . . . to bring all our talent to bear, we would be a lot further along. We’re a minority, yes, but we’re a big minority. We could move mountains, and I think that scares some White people.”

Fear can be a powerful force. Why do you think everyone from politicians to insurance sales reps to real estate agents use it? It’s effective, easy, and serves their immediate needs, but it also kills progress and opens the door to much worse. Yet the fear endures.

African Americans were brought here centuries ago as slaves, a circumstance that created an assortment of enduring emotional and psychological scars. These have been inflamed, transformed, and passed along from one generation to the next. The media basically continues the fearmongering by portraying us as dumb, loud, shiftless, predatory, and immoral, in stereotypes ranging from the obese welfare mom and the vulgar rapper to the ignorant athlete.

Fear is what prompted the “white flight,” mostly in the 1960s, that occurred in the panicked home selling in Chicago and other cities. As a result, the once “good” Irish, Italian, or Jewish neighborhoods, like on Chicago’s West Side, have become almost all Black and all feral.

A half century later those neighborhoods remain lost. Folks who once lived there look back with sorrow and anger at what their communities have become, and just about anybody—Black or White—who has to drive down those streets does so with the windows raised and the doors locked. Add to that the African American riots on Chicago’s West Side and in many urban areas after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Black Power movement, and the armed insurrection the Black Panthers advocated, and the fear seems justified. When some folks think about Blacks getting more powerful, they may flash on those images as well as more recent ones and think: Those jackasses are going to be in charge? We can’t let that happen. It’ll be anarchy.

There’s a logical progression from fear to resentment to hate, which is, of course, much more destructive. Images of the vulgar rapper or the welfare mom quickly become what some White folks, or Asians, or Cuban Americans want—no, love—to see so they can justify and fuel the fear and anger that leads to outrage. These stereotypes become the only images those folks will let in.

The Empowerment Experiment got caught in all that quicksand. As much as John and I tried to extricate the conversation from the mud and refocus it on self-help economics and inclusion, we kept getting stuck. This emotional morass was hindering the movement we were trying to build, and it was poisoning our souls.