Our Black Year

by Maggie Anderson

  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. W
e 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.