Black Owned Business

Businesses owned by women of color are quickly spreading. Growing three times faster than any other sector in small business, their firms employ 1.7 million people and generate $184 billion in sales. And more of these firms are located in Los Angeles and Orange County--146,000 or about 14% overall--than anywhere else in the country, according to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners. Recognizing the collective impact of more than 8 million women-owned firms, the U.S.

Calling for more "investment in our own community," the executive director of the South-Central Los Angeles Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities announced Tuesday that the nonprofit agency would deposit $3 million in local black-owned banks. "We see this as a starting point for expanding [the center's] commitment to the community we serve," said Dexter Henderson. "We plan to build on this commitment and hope that our action will be a catalyst for additional local investment."

Two decades after musicians and actors took their final bow at Watts' Mafundi Institute, the fading imprint of the cultural academy's logo clung stubbornly to its front wall. As city projects and small businesses moved into the building after 1975, whitewashing failed to smother the mural of proud African faces. And, for many locals, the Mafundi symbol continued to evoke memories of a renaissance that flourished after the 1965 riots.

It wasn't until Janice Bryant Howroyd took an economics class in college that she realized how poor she had been, growing up as one of 11 children in a small town in the segregated South. That's because despite poverty, Howroyd's family and community bombarded the young girl with love and instilled self-confidence and respect for education--qualities that have sustained the Tarboro, N.C.

Sitting prominently on W. Paul Coates' desk is a black-and-white metal sign that simply reads "Janitor." Coates, owner of Black Classic Press, explained that the sign helps keep him and his staff level-headed. He and the eight employees of the publishing company do all the janitorial work as a way to remind themselves of the basic things that need to be done as they try to build a successful business. And success is what Black Classic Press has been enjoying lately.

C.H. "Chuck" James III has an Ivy League business degree, a board seat at a prestigious management learning center and a city of Industry company that bears his name. But when faced with strategic business decisions, he often asks himself, "What would my great-grandfather do?" The original C.H. James was a trailblazer who founded a West Virginia produce firm in 1881 by bartering memorial pictures of assassinated President Garfield for the garden-grown vegetables of coal miners.

The pace of growth for top black-owned businesses slowed considerably from a year ago amid a backlash against affirmative action and economic difficulties, Black Enterprise magazine reported Monday. Sales for the top black-owned companies rose 7.75% to $14.1 billion last year--the fifth straight year of growth--but at an expansion rate that fell short of the 11.8% growth measured the previous year.

Several hundred black farmers called for an end Wednesday to U.S. Agriculture Department practices they say are discriminatory and threaten the existence of black farms. At a rally outside the USDA and at a special hearing of the Congressional Black Caucus, speakers had the same message: The USDA must erase immediately the practices that have caused it to be labeled "the last plantation." John W. Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Assn.

Nine years ago, Culver City businesswoman Barbara Lindsey threw the first Los Angeles Black Business Expo. The half-day event, held at an airport hotel, drew 50 exhibitors and 1,500 visitors. This year the business and trade show expects to attract 500 exhibitors and 40,000 visitors when it opens its three-day run Friday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. More important than growth in size is the change in direction by the expo's new owners, Watts Health Systems.