Paying Homage to the Past, Building the Brighter Future

RoMo Pics

The movers and shakers behind Erie's Black Wall Street, who helped to establish the nonprofit in 2020, have worked to create a pathway to empowerment and prosperity in Erie's Black community. August being National Black Business Month, the work of Erie's Black Wall Street and the businesses it represents is taking center stage.

Over a hundred years ago, in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 71 grocery stores and meat markets accounted for two-thirds of the 108 Black-owned businesses operating in a community of some 10,000 residents. Eleven of the businesses were boarding and room houses, along with five hotels. Nine different billiard halls provided spaces to gather, play, talk, and be.

In 1921, over a dozen Black physicians and surgeons practiced and operated in Greenwood. There were two dentists tending to the community's teeth while four were employed as pharmacists. Six Black professionals worked as loan and insurance agents and real estate brokers, and another three were lawyers. From shoemakers to tailors, painters to building contractors, another two dozen were Black crafters. Twelve barbers, six shoe shiners, and five clothes-cleaning shops comprised the service sector.

That is the brighter side of history.

The dark side of history is that over a hundred years ago in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, from May 31 to June 1, one of the deadliest racial massacres in U.S. history occurred.

So the story began — Dick Rowland, a young Black man, rode in an elevator with Sarah Page, a young white woman. As the story spread from person to person, allegations of what happened grew and swelled, from ogling to harassing, from attacking to raping, to a point that an incensed white mob descended upon Greenwood.

Ultimately, they'd torch blocks of the neighborhood, decimating Black-owned homes and businesses. Many died, more were injured and hospitalized, and even more Black residents interred — all from an area known as Black Wall Street.

Even if the number was one — and it is far more than that — it would have been too many. Prosperity, hope, the shining light of the American Dream realized by many over the years was snuffed out in a matter of hours.

At that time, Greenwood was a "Black Wall Street." From West Ninth Street in Atlanta, to Bronzeville in Chicago, and Hayti in Durham, North Carolina, to others in Arkansas, Mississippi and beyond, Black citizens were creating and establishing wealth throughout the nation in concentrated communities. Tulsa's story takes up more pages in history books, perhaps because of the sudden, violent nature of how the tragedy occurred.

That shining light in other communities, in other towns and cities, however, was dimmed over time — choked out by policy and cultural misconceptions.

But before 1921 lies the story of a nation brought forth on land inhabited by people already calling it home — a nation to be built on the backs of people brought here against their will to till and tend, cultivate and harvest, make and produce a nation that would, for the only time to date, divide after having united to wage a war over who was a person and who was property, or less-than human. And after, lies the story of a nation that, nearly a hundred years after reuniting, would heed the call to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, yet still simultaneously struggle and strive to achieve the recognition that all people are created equal, and all have the right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Knowing and acknowledging our history — how many Black businesses were built, how many were shuttered or destroyed not because they were unsuccessful, but because they were Black — is, of course, important. Important, too, is to know the story that despite real discrimination — from people's misguided perceptions to antiquated public policy — still, today, Black businesses and centers for Black commerce rise — like Erie's Black Wall Street (EBWS).

The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 was one of the deadliest racially motivated mass murder events in our nation's history. Erie's Black Wall Street attempts to honor what was lost during that massacre by building a better way of life for Black business-owners in Erie. Photo: Wikimedia

Heralded on its website as "your pathway to empowerment and prosperity in Erie's Black community," the drivers behind Erie's Black Wall Street "are dedicated to fostering Black excellence and wealth while building a stronger, more connected community."

The idea emerged when college friends — DaVona Pacely and Angelica Spraggins (who are married, and were founding board members) and Kyra Taylor — began imagining how to form a better connection between Black-led activities and Black-owned businesses throughout Erie County. They lengthened the table, and as the group of historians, social workers, and therapists continued having the conversation, the concept of Erie's Black Wall Street as that driver of economic and social change and advancement emerged in January 2018, first as a Facebook group.

"We were having this conversation about our history," Taylor, executive director of Erie's Black Wall Street, told me about how the group decided upon the name. "There were many Black Wall Streets across the United States, and we saw what tragedy happened to them. But they were effective and efficient — and we wanted to have that, and to honor what they went through, and to support our business owners and our community members to have a better way of life here."

Here is Erie — a county once dubbed by online listicle manufacturer 24/7 Wall St as "the worst place for Black people to live," Taylor told me, and home to one of the poorest ZIP codes in the nation.

"We wanted to take something that was negative and turn it back into something that's beautiful," Taylor explained.

When it launched, EBWS quickly amassed a list of some hundred businesses led by Black owners who wanted to be a part of the network. Today, Taylor told me it's nearly doubled.

Investment in EBWS — the fuel to power the empowerment — is also growing. EBWS receives support locally from Diverse Erie, the Hamot Health Foundation, and the Erie Community Foundation — as well as Erie Gives Day, the foundation's annual community fundraising drive. It's secured outside-the-area funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Black Equity Coalition. That has led to, in 2023 alone, an EBWS investment of over $133,000 in the Black community through programming, entrepreneurial initiatives, and community building.

That includes Erie's Black Wall Street's Pathway to Homeownership.

The program, which drew 70 registrants in 2023, engages participants over four consecutive Saturdays — providing them with information about personal credit, mortgage lending, and the ins and outs of the home-buying process. That involves history lessons on how race and culture have impacted homeownership for Black people. At the end of the four weeks, winners are randomly selected, and, in 2023, three participants were awarded $21,000 to be used towards the down payment on a house.

"In 2020, the year EBWS was founded as a nonprofit, the homeownership rates for Black residents were just 1.9 percent," Taylor told me. "We want to change that."

One example of EBWS's endeavors to positively impact the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem is the team's partnership with Bridgeway Capital's Minority Owned Business Incubator. Together, they've launched Vanguard Erie — a co-managed pilot program that provides "comprehensive support, education, mentorship, and funding opportunities to help minority business owners launch and grow their operations successfully," Taylor explained.

"I applied for that program because I was looking for guidance as far as what to do when starting a new business, and then what direction I should go with this new business," Mabel Howard told me.

Howard, no stranger to business, opened Café 7-10 — a bakery, a gathering space, and a place to recite, read, and listen to poetry — with her mother, Thelma Mae Blanks-Howard, in 2019. Howard's next venture — not that she's leaving Café 7-10 (the numbers of which are her mother's birthday) — is Brown Girl Penning, a creative marketing agency.

"My goal is to be the go-to promotions agency for artists, arts organizations, and small businesses — and I'd like to do that in a poetic way," Howard, a well-known and talented poet, told me.

That idea came to Howard when she realized that through her prior work she's helped promote dozens of poets and artists over the past few years. They recognized her skills and worth, and so did she.

"I believe in growing together, and I feel like I've put that time in," Howard said of turning a passion into a profession. "I've put in the seeds to grow with these artists, and I'm ready to take them to the next level as I also grow to the next level financially."

Turning to Erie's Black Wall Street, which she'd done first as it was establishing, "just made sense," Howard told me, because of the network and resources. "Erie's Black Wall Street has been able to broaden my worldview as far as the need for my services, and the money that could possibly be waiting for me in different areas outside of Erie and beyond."

In addition to Erie's Black Wall Street's website, there is another way people calling Erie home, visitors passing by, or voyeurs looking in can connect with Black-owned businesses. The EBWS app — an adaptation and evolution of the long-running Erie Metropolitan Black Yellow Pages published by Cynthia Muhammad — gives users the ability to "have access to Black-owned businesses at their fingertips," Taylor explained. "You can scroll through the different categories of businesses and get their information. It's important because those Black business owners need to have support and need to have visibility for existing and new customers."

An idea inspired by the brilliant successes of Tulsa, Oklahoma (despite their bitter cost) and its consequent nonprofit have taken root in Erie and are growing.

The mornings for Kyra Taylor and her team can be early, and the nights can be long — just like those of the business owners she works to inform, connect, and support. But to Taylor, it is all worth it, and adding up to something bigger in the future.

"I grew up with a very supportive family, and I have a little one," Taylor told me. "I want Erie to be a better place for her."

In 2018, Taylor, a New Castle native who landed in Erie to study at PennWest Edinboro (then Edinboro University), was thinking of moving. Instead, with that idea percolating, she dug in and stayed.

"My husband and I decided we were going to stay here, and my thing was, 'I'm going to stay here, I'm going to have a child here — a little brown girl. I have to make sure that area is a better place for her."

For Taylor, that sense of family extends to Erie's Black Wall Street.

"With EBWS, I look at everybody that we work with and our community as family," Taylor told me. "Yes, we have disagreements, and we don't see eye to eye on certain things sometimes, but the common goal at the end of the day is love. And just to see the impact that EBWS has had on my four-year-old in just a short amount of time — she is already a master at saving money, and she is very confident and bold and sure of who she is. And she knows who different business owners are."

A four-year-old little girl modeling a lesson capable of being learned by all, thanks to the four-year-old nonprofit, Erie's Black Wall Street, and all it brings to the community and beyond as it continues to rise.

Remember Erie's Black Wall Street on Erie Gives Day by visiting eriegives.org/organizations/eries-black-wall-street

August is National Black Business Month. Celebrating National Black Business Month, Erie's Black Wall Street is partnering with the Jefferson Educational Society to host two events on Aug. 8 and 19. For more information, visit either organization's websites.

To learn more about Erie's Black Wall Street mission and impact, visit EriesBlackWallStreet.org, and download the EBWS app.

You can follow Ben Speggen, vice president of the JES, and a contributing editor at the Erie Reader, on Threads and Twitter/X @BenSpeggen, and connect with him on LinkedIn.