Our Black Year

by Maggie Anderson

  “Oh well,” Eduardo said. “Their loss. We’ll show them. One day, they’re gonna need us, and not the other way around. That’s how big EE is gonna be.”

  Despite that one huge disappointment, in other ways we were getting a little bigger. Our efforts to garner attention from the mainstream media began paying dividends. In February Cheryle Jackson featured a lengthy segment about EE on her Next TV show, which prompted me to create a Facebook group so that folks could watch the video. On March 9 the Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story about The Ebony Experiment under the headline, “Oak Park Couple Travel Far and Wide on a Mission to Spend Their Money Only at Black-Owned Businesses.” Up to that point we’d received a lot of media attention, but most of the mainstream press focused narrowly on our personal story without going into why we made the commitment. The Tribune piece—which ran on the front page of its sister paper, the Los Angeles Times, a day later—offered a balanced perspective and put our actions into a greater context. It included an interview with James Clingman, a University of Cincinnati instructor on Black entrepreneurship and a prolific writer on Black economics who also served as an EE executive adviser.

  “Unfortunately,” Clingman said in the piece, “many black people abandoned their own businesses and supported others, thinking that politics was the way out. Politics still will not get you anywhere unless you have an economic base. Quite frankly, I’d rather have more black businesses than black politicians.”

  The placement of the piece in a major newspaper helped draw other national mainstream media, like CNN and MSNBC, who called shortly after the Tribune story ran. The reporter who wrote the story—a White guy from the suburbs—made an impression on us, which is why, ultimately, his name ended up on the cover of this book.

  What the piece didn’t do was ease the ongoing charges of racism leveled against us. More than twenty-one hundred comments were posted to the Tribune’s online version of the story, and an additional one hundred–plus e-mails were sent directly to the paper. The vast majority was critical, contending that we were engaging in racism:

  “How about a white business owner that has decided to hire whites only?” one man wrote. “These people should have their butts kicked instead of being written up as saints on a mission to fix the world. I’ll see if I can’t get some balance here by going to white owned stores only.”

  “If these nitwits want to remain divided by race for the remainder of their lives, fine,” wrote another.

  A third respondent stated, “Consider the next step in racial polarization—should the white plumber decide not to fix the Andersons’ sink because they are African-American?”

  We were getting used to these kinds of comments, though we were dumbfounded that a guy in Oregon started a Facebook group opposing The Ebony Experiment.

  The silver lining here was that the number of comments posted to our website increased, which meant more people were learning about The Ebony Experiment. We started feeling that intoxicating momentum again.

  In addition to all the turmoil our project stirred up, I was dealing with another commitment I’d made: overseeing Mima’s care from six hundred miles away. At this point in March she was home on hospice care, about four months after doctors in the ICU had given her ninety days to live. We were feeling blessed that, technically, she was cancer-free, but we knew it could reemerge at any time. My dad, who had been totally dependent on Mima for domestic duties throughout their marriage, now, at age seventy-seven, had to become a full-time nurse, maid, and cook, and he gave it his most sincere effort.

  He and I talked every day, sometimes more than that. If he felt like crying or talking, he called me. When Mima felt a little hot, Papa picked up the phone. When she cried, he called me. He’d tell me what she ate that day, the time and date of her next doctor’s appointment, or what she mentioned in her most recent depression-induced rant. I kept track of every test, screened any potential caregivers, and conducted extensive research on pancreatic cancer. I’d make phone calls to nurses for different medications and to doctors’ offices to make appointments or to complain about lengthy delays on X-ray results. I was spending at least twenty hours a week on tasks related to Mima’s care. If there was pressing EE business, it would have to wait.

  Then something strange and wondrous occurred: Mima started recovering. The hospice folks took the wheelchair back, then the hospital bed and then the walker. The nurses stopped coming. Feeling less depressed, she started eating solid food and gaining weight, and she was able to get herself to the bathroom. The doctors finally took her off hospice. She was sick but not dying. It was a joyous time.

  I felt guilty that The Ebony Experiment took me away from my family, but it had a therapeutic effect, too. I needed a break, and everyone needed a break from me. Plus, I knew how proud it made Mima.

  Nonetheless, I didn’t talk directly about EE with the doctors and nurses I encountered. It was hard not to notice, though, that primarily White or Asian doctors cared for Mima. About a quarter of her care providers—aside from registered and advanced practice nurses and doctors—were Black, like the lab or x-ray techs, physical therapists, medical assistants, pain management administrators, and many of the clerical, housekeeping, and food-service staff as well as the folks who cleaned and fed her. Of the roughly twenty-five physicians who tended to her over the course of her battle with pancreatic cancer, three were Black—a gastrointestinal surgeon, a respiratory doctor, and an internist. But that was it—and this was in Atlanta, the Black capital of the United States.

  Mima’s fight made me think about what would happen if John or the girls got really sick during our year. Cara and Cori had a Black pediatrician already, but if one of them needed to go to a hospital, very little if any of the money we’d spend there would make its way to the Black community.

  The idiot with the online name “annie84” came to mind, the one who’d suggested in a comment to the Sun-Times that we’d deny our daughters medical care if their doctors were not Black. Just to be clear, I’d never deny any loved one medical treatment based on the race of the health care provider. Besides, one of the points of this exercise was to document what products and services we could and could not find. For example, we didn’t think we would find a Black-owned health insurance company, but we were not about to forgo health insurance for the year; it just meant we would look for a competent Black health insurance broker and then note the futile search in our study records.

  Our experience with Mima’s health care team prompted me to investigate the role Blacks play in the health care industry. I wasn’t very surprised with what I discovered. For example, a study published in 2007 in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that African American doctors suffer from “racial fatigue” stemming from stress related to a promotion that didn’t happen, the meager patient referrals they receive, or other kinds of racism—however nuanced—they experience. In general, Black physicians feel isolated, lack mentors, and are held to higher standards than White ones. This drives Black physicians from the profession.

  The National Medical Association, which promotes “the collective interests of physicians and patients of African descent,” published raw numbers of physicians by race and ethnicity from 2006. The total number of physicians in the United States was nearly 922,000. Of this number, only 32,452 were Black. That’s less than one-third the number of Asian American physicians, and 13,000 below the number of Hispanic physicians. In its September 2007 edition The Journal of the National Medical Association discussed what would be an appropriate ratio of African American physicians to the overall population: 218 African American doctors per 100,000 people. According to the article, the current ratio is 73 per 100,000 people.

  In a related finding, the Duke University School of Medicine’s Sullivan Commission—a group of sixteen leaders in health, education, law, and business chaired by former US Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Louis W. Sullivan—in 2004 reported minority representation lagging below acceptable levels thro
ughout the health care industry.

  “Together, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and American Indians make up more than 25 percent of the U.S. population,” the report states, “but only 9 percent of the nation’s nurses, 6 percent of its physicians, and 5 percent of dentists.” In addition, “minorities make up less than 10 percent of baccalaureate nursing faculties, 8.6 percent of dental school faculties, and only 4.2 percent of medical school faculties.”

  The impact of these disparities is clear: Minorities, specifically African Americans, receive much poorer health care in this country. Study after study confirms it, but perhaps none is more comprehensive than the annual National Healthcare Disparities Report, produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2009, which showed that Blacks received worse care than Whites and had less access to health care, the quality of which is not improving.

  Poorer health care results in productivity loss, absenteeism, higher health care costs, and, of course, death. Former US Surgeon General David Satcher’s research suggests that access to quality health care for Blacks is key to saving the lives of more than eighty-three thousand African Americans every year.

  Now, I understand that “buying Black” is not the answer to creating more Black doctors—the issues are too complex and too entrenched in centuries of racism for that to work. Still, I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that buying Black would help open the doors of the medical profession to more African American students. Spending your dollars in the Black community leads to strengthening lives, families, schools, and neighborhoods. Stabilizing those entities would create a ripple effect, helping to keep more kids in school and giving them hope for brighter futures.

  But all that takes a lot of work. Although we’d been at it for only a quarter of a year, it felt like a hell of a lot longer. The truth is that we were the latest in a long line of folks trying to make a difference in this way. Our predecessors didn’t have an easy time, either.

  Chapter 5

  “A Mighty Economic Power”

  THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, AND PARTICULARLY IN THE first six months, we’d get excited after hearing that a particular store was Black-owned. Then I’d follow up with a call and receive the disappointing news that our information had been wrong. One Saturday in February, when I tracked down a lead for a dollar store in Maywood, I got a pleasant surprise: The person answering the phone said an African American owned the place.

  Armed with a huge list of items we needed, I put Cara into her car seat and the two of us drove off. A few minutes later we pulled up to a large store. As we walked its aisles, I noticed that all the employees had a professional demeanor—and were Black. Cara and I had fun, just a couple of girls on a shopping expedition. We found so many little things for her and Cori—coloring books, bath toys, candy, Dora the Explorer cups and plates, arts and crafts supplies—that we filled our cart.

  But I couldn’t quell my skepticism—the place looked too nice. It was so orderly and clean. Moreover, I felt that if an African American owned a general store this well stocked and large, we would have heard about it by now or finding it would have been easier for us. I hated myself for thinking that the store couldn’t be Black-owned, but the idea wouldn’t go away. I asked the cashier if I could speak to a manager.

  “Keep your fingers crossed, honey,” I muttered to Cara. She looked confused.

  The manager, who was Black, came over and I asked whether the place was Black-owned.

  He shook his head, and I felt that familiar sorrow seep into my stomach.

  “No,” he said. “I’m the manager. I run this place, but a White family owns it.”

  I explained that I’d called earlier and an employee told me the store was Black-owned. He looked a little perplexed and called over the employee who’d given me the wrong information. She apologized, saying she didn’t think I was asking whether a Black person actually owned the store.

  “It’s a silly question anyway,” she said.

  Now I had a tough choice: Cheat and make it easy for us or honor our commitment and create an awkward scene in which my daughter would come unglued. I looked down at the full shopping cart and then over at Cara, who had this slightly hopeful, slightly uncertain expression on her face. And then I swung the cart back toward the aisles.

  “We’ve got to put it all back, sweetie,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “But mommy,” Cara protested, “I like the Dora stuff. Mommy, please . . . ”

  She was tugging on the side of the cart.

  “No, Cara,” I said, and I started to explain but then stopped because doing so only would have confused and riled her more.

  “Sweetie, mommy left her money at home,” I lied. “I’m so silly. I can’t believe it. I’m sorry, honey. I just don’t have any money right now. Maybe we’ll come back later.”

  That didn’t help much. I did what I had to do—returned the items to their shelves and countered the whining with a mix of apologizing and stern talk.

  After that episode and a few others, we gave up on the West Side and accepted that we were going to spend the bulk of our dollars at establishments in the South Loop, Bronzeville, and Hyde Park, three gentrifying, predominantly Black neighborhoods that celebrate their diversity. We had been spending a great deal of shopping time there anyway because Farmers Best and God First God Last were both on the South Side. But the fact that we lived so close to several struggling Black neighborhoods and had to bypass them to shop on the South Side was irksome. However, it made sense for Black entrepreneurs to set up shop there, as the areas almost buzzed with disposable income. Many of the Black-owned businesses were high-quality establishments run by proud, intelligent owners who wanted to employ Black people and show local kids a better path.

  But, inevitably, people misconstrued our patronage of those Black-owned businesses as racist, which continued to confound us. Obviously, these name-callers didn’t know their history. Like almost every other ethnic group does for its own, Blacks have a long tradition of advocating for their compatriots to support their community by buying Black.

  The concept of buying Black might trace its formal introduction to the last day of summer, 1832, when Maria Stewart stood in front of an audience of Blacks and at least a few Whites—men and women—in Boston’s Franklin Hall and confronted them about the already touchy issues of race and gender. In the process, that brave lady became something of a great-great-auntie to The Ebony Experiment.

  “Daughters of Africa, awake!” she exhorted. “It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads.... Let us make a mighty effort and arise . . . and let us raise a fund ourselves. Do you ask, what can we do? Unite and build a store of your own. Fill one side with drygoods and the other with groceries. Do you ask, where is the money? We have spent more than enough for nonsense to do what building we should want.”

  Stewart, a woman whose life would make a great movie—are you reading this, Oprah?—was quite possibly the first African American, male or female, to call publicly, if somewhat indirectly, on Blacks to support each other in business.

  Now lost to the pages of history, this feisty woman, whom historian William Andrew called “the first Black feminist-abolitionist in America,” was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803 and orphaned at the age of five. She worked as a domestic, and at twenty-three she married “independent shipping agent” James Stewart. A veteran of the War of 1812, he was then forty-seven. The couple regularly attended the African Baptist Church on the north side of Beacon Hill, where their circle of friends included the activist David Walker, who became Maria’s mentor.

  Three devastating events would light the fire of righteousness in Maria. First was the death of her husband of three years from heart disease. While reeling from the loss, Stewart suffered another setback: Her husband’s White business associates robbed her of his estate. Nine months later David Walker was found dead near the entrance to his business, likely a victim of consumption, although whispers of somet
hing more diabolical persisted.

  Instead of crumbling in the aftermath of such trauma, Stewart got angry and inspired, writing opinion pieces, speaking publicly, and calling on Blacks to lift themselves up from their spiritual, educational, and economic depths—nearly a decade before “The Great Abolitionist” Frederick Douglass started public outcries against racial injustice. In fact, Stewart was the originator of themes that Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Frances Harper, and even W. E. B. Du Bois later gave broader exposure.

  For her trouble, she was run out of Boston—partly by her own people—and spent the rest of her life teaching at the Williamsburg Colored School in New York, then later in Baltimore and Washington, DC. She died in 1879.

  “It would take deep faith to find hope for African Americans in the political landscape of 1830s America,” writes Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp, professor of communications at Lynchburg College, in her 2006 piece for the journal Voices of Democracy. “Stewart found signs pointing to the secular redemption of black America in the sacred text of the Bible and provided them as a guide for what she knew would be a perilous journey.” Her faith “served a black nationalist vision of unity, struggle, and progress.” She was, Jorgensen-Earp writes, a woman with a “distinctive voice and prescient vision.”

  Stewart may have been the first formal promoter of African American self-help economics, but the concept got its start well before she stepped up to the podium at Franklin Hall. In the early years of enslavement in North America, African slaves created secret burial societies—about which they kept quiet out of concern that their owners would perceive them as conspiracies—to help them accumulate money for an opulent funeral, which they believed would guarantee a successful afterlife. Those secret organizations led to the establishment of mutual aid societies, the first Black economic empowerment networks in the United States. These included the African Union Society, begun in 1780 in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Free African Society, founded in 1787 in Philadelphia.