The lasting importance of the Greenwood Initiative
Based on the last two Democratic presidential debates, it is not clear if former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg will make it to the convention, even with his billion-dollar advertising budget. But Mayor Mike has floated an idea that should be adopted by the eventual nominee. That idea is what he calls the Greenwood Initiative.
The Greenwood Initiative’s name is based on the African-American section of Tulsa, Okla., that was also known as Black Wall Street. Mayor Mike’s Greenwood Initiative calls for the creation of 100,000 new African-American-owned businesses, 1 million new African-American homeowners and a $70 billion investment in communities with high percentages of black and Hispanic residents. The historical importance of Greenwood is an American story that is relevant in today’s Connecticut.
For 15 years, I led the Connecticut Minority Supplier Development Council that later grew to become the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council, known as GNEMSDC. It was a corporate membership organization whose mission was to assist those corporate members contract with certified minority business enterprises. The GNEMSDC’s multiracial, multi-ethnic focus included African-American-owned enterprises. What I witnessed over my 15 years as CEO of the GNEMSDC was that African American businesses in the state struggled to gain scale and profitability compared to other minority-owned businesses. The question that occupied a significant amount of my time during my tenure was: Why?
The answer to this question is highly relevant in Connecticut and around the country given Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative to create 100,000 new African-American-owned enterprises. Ironically the answer points to Greenwood.
Greenwood became a destination for ex-slaves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These former slaves and children of slaves were attempting to escape from the suffocating conditions of post-Reconstruction America and the rise of Jim Crow in the former Confederacy. Many former slaves and their families moved north to urban centers like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Bridgeport. But a significant number of African-Americans moved west in what noted sociologist Isabel Wilkerson writes about in her classic book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.” Some of the internal migrants landed in Tulsa.
Because of Jim Crow, African Americans were not allowed to eat in white-owned restaurants, sit anywhere they wanted in movie houses, sit where they wanted to sit on trolleys, attend public schools with whites, drink from the same water fountains, live in the same neighborhoods as whites, or even be buried in cemeteries next to whites. Jim Crow followed you even beyond death. This is well documented by another great sociologist, C. Vann Woodward in “The Strange Career of Jim Crow.” But despite these restrictions, African Americans still needed food, entertainment, education, transportation, housing and funeral services. As a result, blacks in Tulsa and in other segregated communities across the country facing similar discriminatory conditions created their own businesses to serve black consumers. In Tulsa, the black business community grew into a vibrant and sustainable ecosystem that created black wealth and highly profitable enterprises at a time when Jim Crow was the law of the land. Black success in Greenwood, Harlem and other enclaves of African Americans flew in the face of the myth of white superiority.
Starting on May 31, 1921, whites from Tulsa attacked Greenwood. By the next day, 39 people, 26 black and 13 white, had lost their lives in this pogrom. As tragic as the loss of lives was, there was also an important psychological message that was sent to the residents of Greenwood and blacks across the country. That message was — do not be an entrepreneur, because if you do, you will be subject to white terror. It was the destruction of successful black businesses that threatened white establishments in Tulsa and the contradiction of black success relative to whites that was attacked in 1921. The damage of this attack had a lasting impact on black entrepreneurship even to this day.
Times have changed since the Greenwood “race riot” in 1921. Over the course of the last 100 years, black entrepreneurs slowly but surely started to regain their footing. The current generation of black entrepreneurs is different from those entrepreneurs that came to Greenwood to escape the worst of Jim Crow. Today’s black entrepreneurs look similar to other entrepreneurs of all races: They are talented, driven, technologically savvy, unafraid and in every conceivable industry.
Black businesses in Connecticut face many challenges. They still suffer from access to capital, which restricts their growth — just 1 percent of venture capital dollars go to black founders. They are concentrated in low-margin businesses. They operate in industries that are globally competitive. And unlike Tulsa in 1921, large corporations have a disproportionate share of the estimated $6 billion in spending by blacks in Connecticut. Hopefully, the Greenwood Initiative will survive the Democratic primary and it will help African-American businesses in Connecticut earn a larger share of the state’s business.
Black success in Greenwood, Harlem and other enclaves of African Americans flew in the face of the myth of white superiority.