Our Black Year (10 page)

As our spending power was growing, we experienced the hard-fought triumphs of integration and inclusion. At the same time, our economic strength was, in effect, being stolen out from under us. Opportunity and freedom in the 1960s feel like racist exploitation in the 1990s and 2000s.

As Professor Weems points out,

What we found on Madison Street and much of the West Side conformed to this analysis. As discouraging as it was, reading those words made me realize all the more how important Karriem's store—and our little adventure—was.

Chapter 4

L
OOKING BACK OVER OUR BLACK YEAR, WE LEARNED valuable if painful lessons, including the dismal state of African American businesses in the Chicago-land area—not to mention the rest of the country. Other lessons underscored how naive we had been when we began this venture. But in our defense, the exuberant reactions we received even before we began our experiment had fueled our dreams. No wonder our expectations were so over-the-top.

It started back in July of 2008, when we met with
Ebony
magazine's Adrienne Samuels, the cousin of our friend Nat. She was so enthusiastic that she even gave us pointers on how to make my abstract—the written articulation of our vision for The Ebony Experiment—more appealing to the higher-ups at Johnson Publications. Her response was encouraging. It indicated that we would probably receive decent coverage from one of the oldest, most respected Black media companies in the country.

But we also knew we were going to need some PBFs—Prominent Black Folks—to lend The Ebony Experiment credibility. With assistance from some celebrity endorsers, a couple high-profile academics, and the Black media, a campaign could take shape and keep growing. Inspired individuals would make and honor their pledges to “buy Black,” and The Ebony Experiment would track the cumulative spending and monitor how that money was having an impact in underserved areas and on our
overall economic empowerment. We thought EE would be a great way to show that Black people of all backgrounds could unite to rescue our community.

We had our plan, but it wouldn't work without celebrity endorsers and commitments from Black media to keep the movement in the public eye. If those friendly folks would open their checkbooks to fund the project, things would move along faster. Our strategy to find the PBFs was fairly simple. We made two lists: one consisting of people we knew or had access to, and a second, generated in large part by the first, of prominent players who might be fired up enough to throw some support, financial or otherwise, behind The Ebony Experiment. When we finalized our lists six months before we launched the experiment, we had about thirty names.

At the top of our list was Professor Steven Rogers, executive director of the Levy Institute for Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. John was a former student in his Entrepreneurial Finance class. Students rated him the most popular professor for ten-plus years. John had told me how impressive and demanding Rogers was in class. Kellogg is one of the top business schools in the world, and Rogers, at the top of its entrepreneurial department, is an icon. A member of the Minority Business Hall of Fame and the only Black person on the board of directors for eminent businesses like SC Johnson Wax and SuperValu, he used his influence to be an advocate for Black business. The principle of self-help economics in the Black community—that Black people cannot make it until their businesses do—was one of his core beliefs.

I'd sent him our abstract of the project and arranged a meeting at his office. Maybe his early review of the material eased his mind. Maybe he saw from the outset the value in what we were planning. Whatever it was, he didn't give me the anticipated third degree when we met. Instead, he asked about my family, my upbringing and goals, my politics, how I met John. He told me about his life growing up on the South Side and spoke lovingly about his parents. The conversation was warm and engaging. And then he asked me a question that gave me pause.

“Maggie, are you free?” he said, in almost a whisper. He waited, letting the question sink in. “Because most people who come in here are not. I'm free. Cornel West is free because he criticized President Obama the other day. He is committed to truth, not ambitions.”

He paused again and looked at me hard, but he was grinning.

“I think you are free,” he said.

At that moment I knew we were kindred spirits, or something close to that. I think he understood how difficult following through on our pledge to buy Black would be and that making that pledge took guts and a certain liberation from the fears most of us have about shaking up the status quo.

Without making any promises, Rogers let me know that he was there for us. He instructed me to convert the abstract to a business document and PowerPoint presentation, to make it a more concise read for the busy VIPs we were trying to recruit, and to include a budget and sponsorship request. He said, with all sincerity, that I could call him when I needed something. I gave him a few names of people on our wish list, and he promised to contact them. He also warned me that although the academic community might find this experiment intriguing, the business world might feel threatened by it. That turned out to be prophetic.

With Rogers in our camp, we had street cred. But as much of an inspiration and confidence boost as it was to have him on our side, I also wanted to get Michael Eric Dyson involved. A professor of sociology at Georgetown University, he is the most prolific, eloquent, outspoken public intellectual and commentator on Black culture in the United States. He also happens to be my personal hero. I used to joke with John that I wanted to be Professor Dyson when I grew up.

We first met in 2002 when he was a professor at DePaul University and a columnist for the
Chicago Sun-Times
, and we became e-mail buddies. When Michael left Chicago for a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania, we kept in touch. Now he was in DC, and I was in Chicago with the abstract on this project that people were getting fired up about. How to get Michael Eric Dyson—The Heroic Michael Eric Dyson—on Team Double E?

John and I took three hours to write a three-paragraph e-mail. The focus was primarily on the personal, although I did share our idea for The Ebony Experiment with Michael. In September of 2008 we talked more about it when we met at a café in Washington, DC, where John and I were attending the National Black MBA Convention. After I finished my spiel, Michael was speechless for about three seconds, which was something of a rarity in itself. Then he went off: about how Soledad O'Brien and Oprah would interview us; about the mainstream marketability (he was the first to see that) of the young, highly educated, suburban couple with the two adorable daughters—and how crucial such media exposure would be; about wanting to place the issues facing Black neighborhoods and our youth into the national dialogue. He was on a roll, and once Michael Dyson gets on a roll, there is no stopping him.

“You don't fit the militant, activist profile,” he said. “It's perfect. You'll be media darlings. They're gonna' fall in love with you. And if they love you, they'll listen. Aaaw man, Mag, that American Dream stuff—that your parents and big brothers came here with nothing, became hardworking, productive American citizens. That's gold, man. That's just beautiful. John with those glasses, the girls with that frizzy hair all over the place, and you with that kind of ambiguous racial makeup thing going on. You guys are so cute and disarming. They just
might
listen. And that's all you need. Everything else is backed up by facts, history, and science. If you get them to actually
want
to talk about this, everything can change. This is
beautiful
.”

We were surprised that our little project so excited someone of Michael's stature. That reaction strengthened our confidence. We started thinking we were onto something bigger than we had ever imagined. He warned me how busy he was going to be—he was working on a book about Barack Obama—but said that we could depend on him. And, like Rogers, he stayed true to his word. For the next few months I would text his assistant asking for small favors like calling VIPs in Black media. He always did what we asked. Both he and Steven Rogers agreed to be our executive advisers.

The inspirational encounter with Michael led us to think more about the “movement” component of our project. I started channeling my energies into a presentation we were going to make to solicit the assistance of a group of the most powerful, wealthiest Black corporate executives in Chicago—the Big Dogs of Black business and finance. Rogers knew the president and many of the members. I wanted to convey to them what Rogers felt—that The Ebony Experiment was going to be transformative: It would be the next phase of the civil rights movement—not just another street march, after-school program, or community meeting to stamp out violence. It was going to be a game changer because it was coming from within the community. It would show what we could do—
finally
.

Rogers had called the president on our behalf. A few weeks later, during a brief conversation in late October, the president asked how much we needed, and I told him our budget was $300,000. He said that was quite doable and, with the holidays looming, put us on the agenda for the organization's meeting in early January 2009. Just like that. John and I were stunned. We had Adrienne and
Ebony
magazine's presumed coverage, which would get Black people talking about the lack of Black businesses and self-help economics as a way to solve our problems. We had Rogers for credibility, overall executive advice, and help in finding sponsors. We had Michael Dyson, the leading Black scholar in America, poised to do anything for us, and we had a group of wealthy Black business owners willing to give us a few hundred thousand bucks without even hearing our pitch.

Next, we needed a competent researcher or, more likely, a team, to study in detail what we did that year—including how we would spend our money, where we would spend it, and what we could and couldn't find from Black-owned businesses. Just as critical was the extrapolation of that spending—what sort of impact would occur if Black folks spent “X” amount with African American–owned businesses. We could passionately articulate the issues we hoped the study would uncover, but we had no idea how to create, fund, or execute such an undertaking, which in our view was a key component of the project. Such a study would
demonstrate through scientific analysis and actual data that buying Black was not a form of racism but rather was absolutely necessary and promoted a greater good.

We knew that major foundations, like the Ford Foundation or the Gates Foundation, spent millions conducting social research, so we figured the process was complicated. But we were sure it started with a couple of brilliant and committed academics. We had those in our friends Walidah and Michael Bennett. Walidah is a sociology professor; Michael is an economist and an expert in urban planning, development, and financing. Early on, they'd explained the basic steps: Create a research design and then shop it to corporations, universities, and foundations for funding. According to the Bennetts, with the right team those first steps could be done rather easily. And we had an awesome team.

These were the giddy days, when almost everyone we talked to about EE acted like we had just shown them the business plan for Google. Their reactions made us feel as if we were creating the next NAACP or setting in motion Barack Obama's presidential campaign. People were honored to help in exchange for the privilege of being part of the inner circle.

Then we met with the Bennetts to discuss the project. The soaring, nonstop jet to Black Nirvana started hitting turbulence. In retrospect, that was a healthy thing.

They were supportive and, as African Americans and academics, understood the need. But they were also realistic. First, they expressed concern about how the study would play out. Among other things, they asked us what we were going to prove—a question that, I'm embarrassed to say, somewhat stumped me at the time. I remember Walidah stating, “One family does not a study make.”

Then Michael said one of the most discouraging things we'd heard since we'd started the planning process—and perhaps one of the most valuable statements as well.

“There is no way you are going to do this,” he said, adding that never before had such a study on the potential economic impact of buying Black been tried. “This is going to be much harder than you think.”

In the end Michael agreed to help us with the research design at no cost, which was very reassuring. Leading the study, however, would understandably come with a fee. We were grateful for the assistance. But I also remember feeling a little irritated, almost as if our friends lacked the vision to see how this endeavor was going to take on a life of its own. Now I know the reason I felt that irritation: The truth hurts.

About this time, in September and October 2008, we started sharing our idea with a wider circle of relatives and friends. It was easy to get people stirred up about the potential for large-scale economic empowerment, recycling our wealth, enhancing our neighborhoods, demanding more respect from big business for our consumer dollars, and reclaiming our community from folks who take our money and treat us with disrespect. It was much harder to inspire excitement about actually going into poor Black communities and patronizing struggling businesses. Our friends were far more enthusiastic about those larger, nobler concepts than about doing the grunt work to make them a reality. Some of them voiced a complaint that we would hear ad nauseam throughout the next year:
We've tried patronizing Black-owned businesses and they are awful.
We let that one go.