Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Why do valuable communities get forgotten? Because they are rural? Because they are minority? Because they are very small businesses? Well, watch out, World! Remember the Mouse That Roared. In two years of stepping back and taking stock, we are starting to see more people refuse to be sidelined.

Kirk Siegler has a report at National Public Radio (NPR) one one example: Black businesses in rural Mississippi.

“In Greenville, Miss., pop. 27,000, a modern, brightly lit juice bar stands out in the small downtown lined with mostly mom and pop businesses and a few taverns near the town’s riverbank casino. …

“Turning heads is the owner of Kay’s Kute Fruit, 30 year-old Kenesha Lewis.

” ‘I’m really excited for the young people to walk in, and they say, who’s the owner, and they’re like, what? I had somebody do that to me,’ Lewis says laughing.

“Growing up here, she can’t recall any prominent Black-owned businesses like hers (today the town is about 81% Black). She and her husband Jason Lewis opened up this brick and mortar last Spring after a few years of making edible fruit arrangements and smoothies and selling them out of their home on the side of their regular jobs. …

“The Delta is known the world over for its delicious comfort food, but fresh produce and even regular grocery stores are few and far between. At Kay’s the blenders appear to always be running, churning up pineapple or mango smoothies with the popular add-ons of chia seeds or turmeric. …

“Lewis got the idea to start a business after her husband kept getting on her case for eating too much sugar.

” ‘I lost two teeth and he said, “wait a minute now, you’re too young to be losing these teeth,” ‘ she recalls, laughing. [So] we created smoothies together, and I said, okay, this is good for me.’

“And it turns out, it was also good for business. Lewis exceeded her projected annual sales in her first month after opening. Growing up, she says people in her community were good entrepreneurs but they usually worked out of their homes. …

” ‘Our Black people are waking up, they know that they can do this,’ Lewis says. ‘I think that we have helped them to understand that they can do this, they can succeed.’ …

“Hundreds of new Black-owned businesses like Lewis’s are starting to spring up in this region long seen as being dismissed or ‘forgotten’ by outsiders.

“Drive south of Memphis, near the massive river levees, and a lot of small town store fronts are boarded up. … So when Tim Lampkin, 35, moved back to his hometown of Clarksdale after college and a stint working in corporate America, he had an idea.

” ‘When I came back I noticed that a majority of the businesses in [Coahoma County] are white owned,’ Lampkin says. Like in nearby Greenville, more than 80% of Clarksdale’s 15,000 residents are African American.

“In 2016, Lampkin started what he calls an economic justice non-profit. Higher Purpose Co. helped Kenesha Lewis in Greenville from start to finish, applying for a loan, prepping her for meetings with bankers. And they follow up frequently with her today, all things Lampkin says would probably be a given for aspiring white business owners in the area.

” ‘If we’re going to make special exceptions for entrepreneurs because, you know, they’re a white farmer and we know their family, why can’t a Black entrepreneur get the same level of access and understanding and patience when it comes to getting access to capital?’ Lampkin asks.

“A mentorship program Higher Purpose started in late 2019 is now helping some 300 Black entrepreneurs across Mississippi take their business acumen to the next level. The non-profit helps them do things like find grants to cover closing costs or tap into donations and seed money for renting or buying spaces and storefronts. …

“At Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., Rolando Herts, director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning, says the region is a microcosm for the country’s broader racial and economic inequality.

” ‘In the consciousness of America, this is considered to be one of, if not the most, racist states in the union,’ Herts says. ‘Everybody’s able to look at Mississippi and say, “at least we’re not Mississippi.” ‘

“Ever since the Delta was plowed up into plantations mostly after the Civil War, Herts says there’s been a permanent Black underclass. Many don’t trust the banks, for good reason, he says, and in turn many banks traditionally haven’t done business in the still segregated Black communities. …

“For Herts, it will take hundreds more groups like Higher Purpose to really right the wrongs of the past. But he does see momentum behind their work, which is driven by mostly young, energetic and social media savvy people.

“And the businesses they’re supporting are filling a need. One of Higher Purpose’s biggest success stories is Dr. Mary Williams in Clarksdale. She opened what was then the town’s first urgent and primary care facility about three years ago. Before then, she says, working people had to drive 45 miles or go to the local ER just to get routine care after hours.

“She soon discovered there were many untreated cases of hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity in her community. …

” ‘A lot of them … didn’t know their blood pressure was up, they didn’t know they were diabetic,’ Williams says.

“But getting to where she is today, weathering the pandemic with a clinic that now serves some 3,000 patients, wasn’t easy.

“While working as a nurse practitioner at the local hospital, Williams got ‘no’ after ‘no’ from banks when she applied for loans to start her business. One told her she may be a good health care provider, but that didn’t mean she was a good business owner. Another said there was no business like hers in Clarksdale to base her proposal on, so she’d have to put up her house as collateral.

” ‘I mean, the whole idea for this loan was for community development,’ Williams says. ‘Here I am bringing in a clinic to develop the community and improve our health care and I got a hard “no” unless I give them my house.’

“That lit a fire in her: she was going to help her underserved community if it took everything she had.” Read more at NPR, here.