100 years after the massacre on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, the head of Philly’s African American Chamber of Commerce calls on all of us to ensure Black businesses—and their communities—thrive
It’s been 100 years since the massacre that decimated the entirety of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In those 100 years, we have seen steps towards equality, the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and a wave of protests in support of Black lives.
But in the 100 years since those thriving businesses in Tulsa were destroyed by violent white mobs, can we say that we have seen the same progress or push for equality for our Black-owned businesses today?
It’s true that African Americans in this country have made leaps and bounds of progress, but there are still ways to go in ensuring that the racial wealth gap is closed and our Black-owned businesses can thrive in today’s economy.
The Black community in the Greenwood section of Tulsa patronized Black Wall Street exclusively, not by choice, but bound by the racist Jim Crow-era laws. This made for a thriving Black-owned business community, and for the Black dollar to circulate inside the Black community for much longer than it does today. Residents of Greenwood, both Black and white, could step out their front doors and patronize a whole block of Black-owned businesses out of sheer convenience.
Today, people looking to shop at Black-owned businesses must actively seek out goods and services by looking online or through word of mouth. Even more importantly, Black-owned businesses are competing with big box stores and Amazon for customers, which only gets harder as they expand quickly across the country.
African Americans own just 9.5 percent or about 2.6 million of all U.S. businesses. A Black Star Project study found that a “dollar circulates six hours in the Black community,” meaning that less than a day after money is spent at a Black-owned business, it is out into the general economy, not reinvested in other Black-owned businesses. In addition, African Americans are estimated to have an annual $1.3 trillion gross national income, but only two percent of that is recirculated in Black-owned business.
Read the complete article at: The Philadelphia Citizen
