Drink a brew with history at Cxffeeblack
Bartholomew Jones is recontextualizing coffee’s past and redefining its future
Entrepreneurship and ownership have been key values in Bartholomew Jones’ family history. h As family legend goes, Jones’ great-grandfather, Alexander Henderson, was able to avoid work as a sharecropper by accumulating wealth and land until he was chased out of Arkansas, relocating his family to Memphis. h “My grandfather owned a cleaning business and was really trying to maintain ownership over that,” said Jones, who was born and raised in Whitehaven. “Growing up, my dad was teaching me the same thing about ownership.”
Now, Jones — whose given name is Alexander Henderson, after his great-grandfather — has continued that theme of entrepreneurship and ownership with his business, Cxffeeblack.
Founded in 2018, Cxffeeblack is more than a lifestyle brand. It’s an entrepreneurial venture to reclaim the Black history of coffee and retain its Black future. In addition to coffee, music, apparel, events and consultations are part of the concept. Funds generated from the brand are used to provide opportunities for Black people to create and generate inspiring work.
Connecting coffee’s past and future
When Renata Henderson, 33, Jones’ wife and Cxffeeblack’s roaster, got him a Nespresso machine as a gift, Jones’ curiosity for coffee began to brew. After a decade working as middle school teachers, Henderson and Jones decided to lean into their passion for coffee.
“When I got into coffee, I thought it was cool, but I thought I was experiencing kind of somebody else’s culture, like I thought we were experiencing like an Italian or French culture,” Jones,
30, said.
Upon conducting some research about coffee’s Ethiopian origins, “I was like, ‘Oh, this is ours.’”
Coffee beans originated in the Guji Zone of Oromia in Ethiopia and were stolen by traders from European countries in 1616. Today, coffee is a multibillion-dollar industry with very little representation of its origins.
“It just made me feel like God has put us in a position to be able to help Black people reclaim our stolen destiny, coffee and potential for growth that was taken away from Black people,” Jones said.
In 2019, Jones opened the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club at 761 National Blvd. Although Jones and his small team of baristas brew coffee, it is not a coffee shop. New coffee shops in neighborhoods have earned reputations as signals of gentrification in a neighborhood, according to a 2018 Harvard Business School study. However, the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club rejects that notion and instead uses its establishment to explore how the profits, aesthetic, job opportunities, empowerment and environment of a “coffee shop” can be tools to strengthen a relationship with people in a community rather than displace them.
Anti Gentrification Coffee Club’s space features posters from the brand (with designs that read “Love Black People Like You Love Blxck Cxffee” and “Make Cxffee Black Again”). It’s an inviting space with couches ready for anyone to pick up a book or hip hop vinyl off a shelf to explore and discuss.
Also a rapper, Jones said hip hop is an essential element in his career and perspective, drawing many parallels between hip hop and his work in coffee. His reworking elements of history into present-day is just like sampling in hip hop, he said.
At the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club, Jones often hosts cyphers over coffee, bringing in local musicians and artists to create and share their work. Similarly, in hip-hop tradition, cyphers are dance and musical freestyles.
A reimagining of coffee culture
Jones said coffee culture in Ethiopia places Black women at the center, as they facilitate, roast, prepare and serve coffee at coffee ceremonies and special occasions.
As a practice that is passed down from generation to generation, Henderson said roasting has empowered her to appreciate and honor her lineage as a Black woman.
“My first roast was very spiritual, I was very excited after I got through because I felt very connected to something that I had never been connected to before or that existed,” she said. “But just to know, the value as a Black woman that I felt in doing something that seems so simple, but with it just carries so much weight historically.”
Jones said that history is the reason why his wife is the coffee roaster.
“It shows how far the colonization of coffee has taken coffee culture, because currently, it’s set to the point where a Black woman in my wife is the first Black female roaster in the city,” he said.
Jones said he learned that “coffee is a way to connect to your heritage, to God and to everything.”
“And so that perspective to me really was transformative,” he said. “What would it look like for us to have a perspective on coffee?”
On the growing presence of Blackowned coffee shops over the last five years, Jones thinks there is a collective reimagining of coffee culture.
“I just think that there is a renaissance happening across the diaspora right now. That’s a mirror image to what my great-grandfather was going through, where Black people are fighting to reclaim what we’ve lost,” he said. “Everybody doesn’t necessarily know that history about coffee. But I think inherently there’s a kind of a spiritual connection to this thing.
“At the heart of it, you see so much of the things that we enjoy: You see the intersection of creativity, entrepreneurship, and heart and community, crafts, cuisine and agriculture, all happening in coffee.”
On a mission to educate
In October, Jones took a trip to Ethiopia to explore his new all-black supply chain for Cxffeeblack’s line of coffee beans, Guji Mane. Guji Mane beans are grown and exported by Black farmers and community leaders in Ethiopia. He plans to make a documentary about his experience.
Ultimately, Jones’ mission is to not only decolonize coffee but to continue to educate others of the lost history and culture that came as a result.
Kedarius “KD” Davis, a barista at the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club, said he’s found a new appreciation and respect for coffee.
“Bart taught me about the industry of coffee,” he said. “I got involved in Cxffeeblack because of how interesting it is... I didn’t even know African Americans were so tied into coffee, I didn’t know about that. And also it was really cool getting to teach someone else.”
With the documentary he’s producing with his colleagues from his time in Ethiopia, Jones hopes to not only distribute it on streaming platforms but also create and build a multimedia curriculum that can teach anyone from knowing nothing about coffee to learning everything they need to know to start their own coffee brand.
“With everything that we do, my wife and I are teachers. So we want to create something that people can walk away with and be empowered to reclaim their own destiny through this thing called coffee.”
Astrid Kayembe can be reached at astrid.kayembe@commercialappeal .com or (901) 304-7929.