GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Working to lift up Black business owners, modern-day Black Wall Streets in West Michigan are offering training sessions, curating business directories and developing Black business districts.
AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK WALL STREET
The original Black Wall Street was a thriving neighborhood with a robust business district, schools and homes in Oklahoma in the early 1900s.
Black Americans had acquired the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa in 1905, according to Britannica, quickly attracting Black-owned businesses. Grocery shops, barbershops, real estate agents and other businesses lined the streets, alongside a newspaper and schools. The neighborhood also included housing for most of the city’s 10,000 African American residents, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
For 16 years it remained a prosperous business district until the deadly Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Originally spurred by a false report that a Black man had tried to sexually assault a white woman, a white lynch mob turned its baseless fury toward the Greenwood neighborhood.
While its residents tried to protect their homes and businesses, they were outnumbered. By the end of the fighting, somewhere between 50 to 300 had been killed and most of Black Wall Street had been destroyed and burned to the ground, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
No members of the deadly white mob ever saw prison time.
The U.S. Justice department reviewed the massacre for the first time a century later. In January of this year, its report said it had found “no avenue” for a criminal attack, as “the perpetrators are long dead,” the Associated Press reports.
In the aftermath, thousands of Greenwood residents found themselves homeless, with many living in tents that winter. Eventually, the neighborhood was rebuilt, but ultimately dispersed following desegregation.
‘GENERATIONAL WEALTH TAKES ACTION’
Several communities across the country have worked to continue the legacy of the Greenwood neighborhood with modern-day Black Wall Street organizations. In Muskegon, Lashae Simmons II was inspired to start one while working with Black-owned businesses as a financial advisor.
“I really wanted to help the Black and brown community when it comes to being financially secure and stable and creating generational wealth,” she said. “We talk about it all the time, but what it actually takes to implement generational wealth is action, and we don’t always know what those action steps or items are.”
Simmons said she noticed that many Black entrepreneurs were starting businesses “out of necessity.”
“When you do that, that means you’re generally starting out underwater,” she said. “When you start out underwater, it’s hard to think about investing in yourself.”
Both in her work as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual and through her work as the founder of Black Wall Street Muskegon, she has tried to help give Black business owners the tools they need for success; whether that’s learning how to pitch and market their ideas or making sure they are prepared for emergencies.
“What happens if you pass away?” she offered as an example. “Are you passing your children, spouse or family member an asset? Or a liability?”
She also wants to keep money circulating among the African American community longer, something that is also part of Black Wall Street Kalamazoo’s mission. Nicole Rochè Triplett, Black Wall Street Kalamazoo founder and the owner of the Rochè Collection and Twine Urban Winery, connected that mission to the goal of building generation wealth.
“Increasing the lifespan of the dollar within the African American community is important because that is the pillar to building generational wealth,” Rochè Triplett said. “Building generational wealth means that people will be able to take care of their families beyond them being alive. They will be able to provide the next generation with stepping stones, so they’re not starting right from the beginning. These are the ways to pass on generational wealth, to build our way into helping level the playing field.”
‘FROM WORST TO FIRST’
In 2015, Forbes published an article ranking U.S. cities on where African Americans were doing the best economically, using homeownership, entrepreneurship and median household income as its factors. Grand Rapids came in second as the worst city for Black people economically, with only Milwaukee getting a worse ranking.
Black Wallstreet Grand Rapids was created as a “direct solution to that, to rectify that crisis,” president and co-founder Preston Sain said.
Since it was founded in 2020, it has made slow progress to address the Forbes ranking and transform Grand Rapids from “worst to first,” Sain said.
“We’re very optimistic about what we can head in the future, that we can turn this thing around and go from worst to first,” he said. “We’re very big on collaborative effort. Working with the city, working with the private sector and just making sure that we work together as a city and as a community to make this a world class city and to make sure the Third Ward is not left out.”
NETWORKING EVENTS AND A PITCH COMPETITION
While the three Black Wall Street organizations are all working to support Black businesses in their areas and support Black communities economically, they’ve taken different approaches.
Black Wall Street Muskegon hosts events like the Black Business Expo around Juneteenth and a Women of Color Brunch during women’s month. It provides networking opportunities, publishes a magazine and offers a marketing platform for its members.
One business that has benefited from Black Wall Street Muskegon is Mitten Mobile Bar, which offers private, mobile bartending services throughout West Michigan. Justice Porter started it a year ago, shortly after graduating college.
“I really thought it was a cool idea,” she said, explaining she saw something like it on social media. “I was like, ‘Oh, I can do that.’”
At the time, she was struggling to find a corporate job related to her business degree. She was an experienced bartender, as bartending put her through college.
“After being denied and denied and rejected … I decided to go out and start my own business and do what I have experience in and what I love to do,” she said.
Simmons with Black Wall Street Muskegon helped her with starting and promoting the business, Porter said.
“She’s invited me to multiple events, including the Business Woman of Color Brunch that’s going to be in March and then also the Black Business Expo that’s in June,” she said. “We are very excited to be able to network with other Black businesses around the area and promote what we do.”
Black Wall Street Muskegon also hosts the Mind Your Black Owned Business pitch competition. Participants go through an eight-work series of training first. Then during the competition, they present their pitch in front of an audience for a chance to win funding. Previous winners have included Tey’s Tutor Time and Training with Rish.
While the program was paused last year so that organizers could focus on redeveloping it, it will be back again this year.
“We’re coming bigger and better,” Simmons said.
Black Wall Street Muskegon also offers a directory of area Black-owned businesses to make it easier for the community to support them. Black Wall Street Kalamazoo has a similar directory; the city of Grand Rapids has a directory through Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses.
‘BETA’ AND A FUTURE INCUBATOR SPACE
The main program for Black Wall Street Kalamazoo is its Black Entrepreneur Training Academy. The academy provides mentorships, business development training and real-world opportunities, Rochè Triplett said. She said more than 50 businesses have gone through the program so far and the organization has given out a total of $270,000 in grant funding.
BETA has helped businesses like Papa’s Brittle, which went from a developing business to a brand that has placement in Meijer stores all over the state. The next BETA cohort is set to begin in April.
Black Wall Street Kalamazoo has also recently purchased a building. Once open, the center will host classes, business meetups and markets. It will also serve as an incubator for small local businesses, giving them a space to work out of while they get set up for success.
“They will be able to use this building until they’re able to move to the next step,” Rochè Triplett said. “That gives them a chance to actually build some equity, actually be able to take their profit and use it in other ways so that they’ll set themselves up for even greater success as we support them along the way.”
EIGHT GRAND RAPIDS DISTRICTS
In Grand Rapids, Sain and his team are focused on developing physical Black Wall Streets. They are working to develop eight districts throughout the city — seven in the Third Ward and one in the First Ward — into booming districts with several Black-owned businesses.
Its flagship district and first priority is located near the Eastern Avenue and Burton Street intersection.
“We’re looking to make this a robust, thriving business district of Black business owners and property owners, adding a cultural contribution and the cultural tourism contribution to our city, to make a world-class city,” Sain said.
Sain pointed to Alger Heights as “the epitome of a thriving business district,” adding that’s what he hopes the Eastern Avenue and Burton Street district will turn into. The goal is to eventually bring in more Black-owned coffee shops, clothing stores, bookstores, restaurants and others.
“Just a mosaic pot of beautiful, Black-owned businesses, minority contributions, just adding that piece to the city that we feel is missing,” Sain said.
There are already about 10 Black-owned businesses along that stretch, Sain said, including Chicken Coop, Burton Village BBQ and Magic Touch. It also has Grand Rapids Times, which has served the community since 1957.
There’s also some non-Black businesses in the district, like The Silver Derby and Harvest Health Foods. Sain said those businesses add to the history and diversity of the area and he hopes they stay.
While there are several businesses up and down Eastern Avenue in that area, it used to be more vibrant.
“When I was in high school in the early 2000s, my barber shop was over here and it was more of a Black business district, and it was vibrant, too. But decades before that, there were a lot of white businesses over here, so they have near and dear memories over here as well,” he said. “The last 10, 15 years, you’ve seen it more vacant and more distressed looking, the way it is now. And we (are) looking to bring that back.”
Part of the efforts include plans to acquire a vacant building and turn it into mixed-use development with retail and housing. There are other efforts in that area to add housing, too, like a project to turn the former Ivy K. Gillespie Memorial Chapel into housing and an ICCF project that will add apartments into a mostly-vacant building that houses a post office. Just down the road, Dwelling Place is building single-family homes on a land trust.
“We’re optimistic about what we can do in the future,” Sain said.
Organizers of the Black Wallstreet Grand Rapids project have laid out a 16-year timeline — though Sain said it is well ahead of that time frame — to pay homage to the 16 years of prosperity the original Black Wall Street enjoyed prior to the Tulsa Race Massacre.
“The Black Wall Street project in particular is actually a 16-year development,” Sain said. “Because we wanted to align it with the history of the original Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Tulsa, which was from 1905 to 1921.”
