‘Provide for Our Own’ : Groups Launch Campaign to Aid Black Businesses

Hoping to “rekindle the spirit to provide for our own,” representatives of several black community and merchants groups announced a yearlong campaign Thursday to persuade black consumers to patronize black-owned businesses in Los Angeles County.

Organizers of the “Buy Liberty” campaign--which will rely heavily on billboards and bumper stickers--said the effort also is designed to reduce the high unemployment rate--19%--among blacks in Los Angeles.

“By reducing unemployment through the building of black-owned businesses, it is hoped that this positive productivity will have the same effect in the reduction of crime in our community,” said campaign Chairman Anthony Essex, who is also an official with the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Essex and others at the Los Angeles news conference, staged to unveil the campaign, denied that the campaign was a boycott to punish non-black merchants in inner-city commercial districts.

Recalls Civil Rights Movement

Mychal Wynn, head of the Network of Black Entrepreneurs, said patronage by blacks of black merchants would “rekindle” the attitude initially taken during the civil rights movement in the 1960s of helping one another in order to promote growth and pride.

The campaign organizers pointed out that for each dollar that blacks spend on goods and services in Los Angeles County, only seven cents end up with some of the estimated 4,000 black-owned businesses here. It is estimated that black consumers in the county spend at least $4.5 billion for goods and services annually.

Campaign organizers said they hope the campaign will correct a major hindrance as to why black merchants don’t attract more business. According to Essex, many black consumers prefer non-black businesses because they are bigger and can offer a wider variety of goods and services than black merchants. About 80% of the black-owned businesses in the county have fewer than 25 employees and realize a net profit of less than $50,000 a year.

Campaign organizers hope that the drive will increase annual gross receipts for black merchants by 20% and that 200 new black-owned businesses can be started by next summer.

The other groups initiating the Buy Liberty campaign--named for the recent Independence Day observances--are the Black Business Assn., Merchants for Community Improvement and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.