Our Black Year

by Maggie Anderson

  But like I’ve said, we were hoping The Empowerment Experiment would reach those most in need of help. Supporting Black-owned businesses in gentrifying places like Hyde Park and Bronzeville funnels dollars to those businesses that, in effect, would expedite the displacement of the most vulnerable folks. By no means were the African American entrepreneurs of the South Side’s Bronzeville any less or more courageous and committed to the community than those on the West Side’s Austin, Lawndale, or Garfield Park, and neither one was more deserving of our support than the other. But for every leg up the owners in gentrifying areas received, in effect, the West Side lost something. Blacks from the South Side and West Side have a long-standing disregard for one another that boils down to class distinction. But both were once at least united in the struggle—win or lose. Gentrification was eroding that, and fast.

  I wanted to shop on the West Side but just couldn’t. At the moment our objective to reach brothers and sisters who most needed a hand was looking increasingly improbable, which brings me back to a variation of the question I posed earlier: Where does gentrification leave places like the West Side? Who is going to rescue the children there?

  Gentrification is not designed to preserve a neighborhood’s racial and socioeconomic demographics, which is why I’m highly suspicious of it. Virtually everything I’ve read indicates that it works to drive out the economically distressed, not empower them, so that they won’t impede the economic development that’ll elevate property values. It’s a calculated, even heartless scheme. At worst, it is a modernized form of racist economic exploitation.

  I can no more be a proponent of gentrification than I can be for giving tax cuts to the richest 1 percent as a way to build small businesses, infuse more money into the economy, and counter unemployment. Gentrification resembles the false promise of trickle-down economics: It just doesn’t work. The wealthy folks, politicians, and groups that back these tax cuts are adamant, as if our very liberty and democracy were at stake. But when it comes to the trickling part, folks seem to just sort of wait and hope, and the trickle turns out to be more like a single drop. I’m all for waiting and hoping as long as we eventually ride the river of prosperity.

  One of my biggest fears is that in promoting gentrification as a means to rescue underserved Black areas, its shortcomings would become acceptable. We’d expend all this energy and celebrate the benefits of the “urban pioneers”—the arrival of locally owned businesses, stable home ownership, a general cleaning up of the neighborhoods—but somehow ignore the needs of the residents who were there to begin with. That’s unacceptable in my book.

  I don’t want to minimize the impact gentrification can have on the residents of these areas, but I can’t get on board because it does not respect the people living there nor does it acknowledge the potential of these communities. These locales aren’t being valued for what they are but only as a “blank canvas” on which the developers, businesses, and corporations can build.

  However, if gentrification can be used to improve the welfare of those who would be displaced, then I think it can help achieve glorious things. If more Black people—young professionals, grad students, and even older, middle-class Blacks—take charge of the gentrification process with that overall goal in mind, this would fit The Empowerment Experiment’s ideals and the essence of Du Bois’s Talented Tenth doctrine. This is possible, but it will take a lot of sophisticated thinking, hard work, and, maybe most difficult of all, trust. If gentrification can’t accomplish economic development in distressed areas via empowering “indigenous” residents and businesses—especially the least powerful—then it contradicts what we stand for.

  In thinking through these issues I’ve found it useful to keep in mind the words of Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Columbia University. In a 2007 piece for the Boston Globe, he wrote, “What is the responsible position of the black middle class? . . . The question goes back at least to the 1890s, when W. E. B. Du Bois wrote his seminal study of urban development, ‘The Philadelphia Negro.’ Du Bois wrote that the indigenous and more cosmopolitan Black middle class will forever oppose the newly arriving Southern migrant, unless the two recognize their conflicts only serve to strengthen the whites in power.”

  Chapter 11

  A Rewired Family

  ALMOST EXACTLY 177 YEARS AFTER MARIA STEWART GAVE her landmark but largely forgotten speech in Boston, I stood, possibly just as pissed off, in front of 350 members of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Black Alumni Club, of which John is an active member. As guest speaker at a November evening reception thrown in our honor and dubbed “An Evening with the Andersons,” I was trying to convey all the frustration and fatigue we’d experienced during the past months so the audience could understand my pain and anger. In a sense, that indignation, mostly due to Karriem’s store closing and the herculean task of simply trying to find food, was pushing us toward the finish line.

  The Empowerment Experiment had gained a certain amount of clout—or maybe it was notoriety—mainly on the Black speakers’ circuit. In mid-September I was the opening speaker at the Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce Annual Conference in Chicago. A week later I was in Washington, DC, addressing the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Conference, where, predictably, I got a “you go, girl” and little else from Illinois US senator Roland Burris.

  A couple of weeks after that I lectured at Georgia State University. It was my first speech to a crowd that was mostly White, and I was a little nervous about how I’d be received, but it went well. In fact, a faculty member said that the “students have been fundamentally transformed by their brief exposure to her project. She definitely made an impact.”

  A few days later the United American Progress Association honored John and I with their Man and Woman of the Year award at their annual awards banquet, which turned out to be even more uplifting than it sounds, mostly because of one brief comment from a ninety-two-year-old man, Dr. Webb Evans, UAPA founder, who had marched with Rev. King. During my acceptance speech to five hundred community activists, I saw him weeping. Later he uttered the one sentence that seemed to make all the hassle, heartache, and anger of the year dissolve: “Maggie,” Dr. Evans said, “you are his [King’s] dream come true.”

  November was bananas. I was giving speeches every week. Jim Clingman, who was featured in the March Chicago Tribune article about us, arranged my first visit to Ohio. I spoke at the University of Cincinnati, hosted by its chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, and to the Cincinnati/Greater Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce.

  Then came the Kellogg event, followed by my speech at the University of Chicago’s African American MBA Association’s annual conference. Close to Thanksgiving, I gave a big speech in Beaumont, Texas, at the annual “We Are One Power” Conference, presented by one of the most successful Black businesses in America, Compro Tax, our version of H & R Block. Two weeks after that we helped coordinate the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Alliance of Market Developers’ annual three-day buy-Black holiday shopping event, where I was the keynote speaker. Norm Bond, one of our advisers, was the NAMD national president.

  In mid-December I was on two of the most famous Black radio shows, The Steve Harvey Morning Show and The Eagle with Joe Madison, talking about buying Black for the holiday season, and we did the wine-tasting event at Mell Monroe’s in Bronzeville. We stuffed hundreds of Chicago’s Black business elite into his elegant home and the tent outside. Guests made reservations to stay at Mell’s new B & B, Welcome Inn Manor, when it opened in February, and they bought Selena Cuffe’s Heritage Link Brands wines. It was all very energizing.

  At all these events I gave some variation of my basic speech, in which I discussed how this experiment had transformed a sweet soccer mom into a somewhat bitter warrior on a rampage. Sure, I wanted to inspire people to give back, but I also wanted folks to know that they were the problem. I told them that our generation had gotten
lazy, accepting as status quo an unacceptable situation. How can we can have a Black man in the White House, but I can’t shop at a full-service Black-owned grocery store? After exhorting the audience to take action, I concluded my talk with the following words: “Just care about justice. Just yearn to be part of something. Just know and believe we have all the talent, smarts, and resources we need to put our community back on track and pass on a greater story and legacy to future generations. Just realize that our kids won’t do better unless they actually see better.”

  As I spoke I sometimes felt as if I was conjuring the ghosts of African American economic empowerment, from Maria Stewart and Marcus Garvey to Rosa Parks and Dr. King. I guess the ghosts were working their magic during my talks—especially at the end of the year—because I’d receive thunderous applause and move folks to tears. Then came the standing ovations, after which I’d be mobbed and would receive two or three more invitations to speak.

  Back on the ground, in the real world, we were running low on produce. Like I said, by this time the Black farmers markets were gone. Our only option for buying produce in the entire Chicago region was Woods Grocery, on the near South Side close to Bronzeville, in a basket near a washing machine. That’s right, a washing machine. Sometimes that basket had apples, bananas, or oranges in it, and sometimes it didn’t.

  We were stuck. We really didn’t know what to do.

  That’s how, one freezing, late November morning, I found myself in the parking lot of Fair Share Super Market, a Hispanic-owned grocery store a few blocks from our house. We could have gone to a Jewel, the popular Chicago-area chain, I guess, or anywhere else with produce. But Fair Share was smaller, more of a fresh mart than a full-fledged grocery store. We were restricting ourselves to buying non-Black only for what we absolutely couldn’t find—produce—and Fair Share was the closest thing to a farm stand in our area.

  How insane is it that we couldn’t find a Black-owned store in all of Chicagoland with a consistent supply of fruits and vegetables? In some ways I still can’t believe it. I felt terrible about shopping at a non-Black-owned store like Fair Share, but we just couldn’t go the final weeks without produce, especially with young kids. Dressing my daughters in weird, ill-fitting outfits was one thing; risking their health was altogether different.

  John helped me through it. He said this was no different from paying the ComEd utility bill or buying a ticket on American Airlines. We had no choice.

  “You know, Mag,” he told me one night while I was agitating about what to do, “this is not just about taking a stand. You’ve got to get away from that mind-set. This is an exercise too, an experiment, like we’ve been saying all along.”

  The project, he reminded me, was supposed to bring forth greater understanding. That’s why we were keeping notes on the experiences, whatever they might be.

  “If we can’t find produce in the Black community, we can’t find it,” John said. “So we’ll document it. It doesn’t mean you have to go without everything. This is also about a study and our study revealed this: After exhausting all of our options for produce, we had to buy it at mainstream stores. It’s that simple.”

  He brushed his palms together. Then he looked at me hard and held my shoulders.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Maggie, it doesn’t mean you’re a sellout, okay? It doesn’t mean you’re a hypocrite. We’ve been at this for eleven months. That hardly suggests you’re weak. It means we can’t get produce from Black-owned stores in Chicago. That’s a very important piece of data, but that’s all it is.”

  Lord, I’m glad I married that man.

  Still, sitting in the car in that parking lot was tough—after everything we’d done to stay true to this cause, to live our commitment. What propelled me out of the seat was the vision of coming home empty-handed. I knew that John and the girls were waiting for some fresh fruits and vegetables. I’d promised them, and I couldn’t bear the disappointment—even anger—that I’d face.

  When I stepped into the store, it was like walking into a fruit and vegetable Mecca, a Broadway musical of earthly delights. Aisles and aisles—or was it miles and miles?—of fresh, colorful, bountiful lettuce; green, red, orange, and yellow peppers; onions, carrots, tomatoes, asparagus, strawberries, plumbs, mangoes, oranges, apples, bananas. I felt overwhelmed.

  Of course I went crazy. I Probably spent $80 to $100 on produce. The experience was intoxicating. And when I got home, the girls were jumping up and down at the sight of plums and oranges and mangoes and all that good stuff. That response helped a lot. I was hero-mom. For once in a long time I didn’t have to deny my family something. It felt wonderful. But for the rest of the year, whenever we went to a mainstream grocery store, we never—ever—bought anything other than produce, much as the girls wanted Goldfish crackers or Oreos, and John would have loved a piece of salmon.

  Fair Share was a tough place to be in other ways, apart from feeling a little sting of betrayal and the temptation to buy whole-grain cereal or chicken breasts. The place made me angry. That feeling had nothing to do with the fact that it was Mexican-owned—and everything to do with it.

  Statistics show that although Hispanics fare only slightly better than Blacks in terms of social and economic progress, they still possess enough resourcefulness to open many grocery stores. Hard numbers are tough to find, but Fyple, an online business directory of more than one million companies, lists 309 “Mexican Grocery Stores” in the United States, six of which are in Chicago. In Colorado, one of several states experiencing dynamic Hispanic business growth, eleven large, Hispanic-themed grocery stores opened between 2003 and 2010. Dozens more are open for business in the southwestern United States and other areas of the country with large numbers of Hispanics. Maybe not all those are Hispanic-owned, but I’d wager that the vast majority are.

  Though the main clientele at Fair Share was Hispanic, people of all colors shopped there. Every employee was Hispanic, and the store boasted a wide array of Hispanic-themed products from Hispanic producers and distributors, stuff you wouldn’t find in a White-owned mart. With all those Hispanic customers, Fair Share was able to give valuable shelf space to products that wouldn’t be given that amount of space in a mainstream store. That shelf space strengthened those Hispanic businesses so they could hire more Hispanics and expand their reach—a beautiful example of self-help economics. Every time I went in, the place was buzzing. Seeing this was inspirational and joyous, yet it filled me with sadness—and envy.

  I kept asking myself, Why can’t we have something like this—a nice Black-owned grocery store right here in Oak Park? Given what I’ve learned about the relative success of other ethnic groups in this country, the family who owned Fair Share likely only arrived in this country a few years earlier and, with the help of a relative or friend, started their business. African Americans have been here four hundred years, and we still don’t have anything like this to show for it. These immigrants, not so different from my parents, seem able to set up shop soon after they land here and become successful. We can’t even make it work much longer than a year, as in Karriem’s case.

  Fair Share is just a grocery store. But in the context of The Empowerment Experiment, it is a tangible representation of everything we’re fighting for and of our failures as a people. In twenty-first-century America, don’t you think the Black community should also have at least a few successful grocery stores?

  About the same time as our Black-supplied produce was running out, Mima’s pain and nausea increased dramatically and her weight dropped quickly. After many inconclusive tests, doctors finally determined that the cancer was back and had spread throughout her body, so much so that in bone scans it was impossible to distinguish cancer cells from healthy ones. This time, doctors told us, she had weeks, maybe a couple of months, to live. One thing was sure: She was still fighting.

  On our Facebook page I dedicated my Christmas message to her. I wrote about how we almost lost Mima last Thanksgiving but that she was n
ot giving up. If she could wage her fight, we—all of us who wanted to help lift up our community—could use her example as inspiration.

  While doing your holiday shopping on Black Friday, I urged our readers, just buy one item on your Christmas list from a Black-owned business. Don’t run to the mall like everyone else. I even gave tips on how to do something for the community—like buying books from Black-owned bookstores written by Black authors; gift certificates for Black-owned restaurants, beauty salons, and spas; gift cards from Black-owned franchises like McDonald’s or Burger King—and I also listed a bunch of websites with decent Black-owned business directories. A lot of this information can be found in the appendix of this book.

  I received dozens of notes from supporters who said how touched they were and that they did support Black businesses on Black Friday. This was one of my favorites:Nov. 26

  God Bless You Maggie! I thank him for keeping Mima alive as a testimony of his faithfulness. God will never put on us more than we can bare [sic]. He knew how much strength you draw from Mima. I promise to buy black this season and going forward as a lifestyle! God Bless you! Thank you for your passion.

  Your Sister in Christ:)

  LaTissha Kandrell Moore

  Amid all the hectic flutter of EE, we had to start making our own Christmas plans. My holiday shopping normally starts in the second week of December, and most of it occurs online. I can’t stand the malls, and going on those adventures with the girls is so difficult. This Christmas was completely different. We were so worried about Mima, first and foremost, that the holiday spirit was in short supply at our house. Plus, I was still touring, making speeches, appearing on radio shows, and participating in various community events. It was more than a full-time job. And I still had to be a dutiful daughter, spouse, and mom. That left me with almost no time to shop, but I had to, and not just because that’s how the holiday is celebrated. We wanted to prove that it could be done the EE way, that we could have a wonderful family holiday while supporting our community.