Every year during this weekend (which follows the Thanksgiving holiday), retailers generate billions of dollars in revenue from anxious customers looking for the best deals. Sadly, Black-owned businesses are not as well supported.
Kristi L. Jackson is the co-owner of one of very few Black-owned trucking companies based in Houston, Texas.
On a crisp fall Saturday morning, Black professionals converged at 36 Degrees North for Tulsa’s first BlackTech Weekend.
“We established the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce because the community was asking for a chamber that can advocate for their business, specifically, the black business community. In addition to that, we definitely wanted to make sure that the African American community is actively a part of what’s happening in our city of Tulsa.”
Kezia M. Williams and her many apprentices stand proudly with their black power fist held high in the sky on Greenwood Avenue in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma — the site and birthplace for Black entrepreneurship in America and the space that Booker T. Washington coined “the Negro Wall Street of America” now known as the Black Wall Street.
“Our history has shown us that entrepreneurship is something that not only builds community but strengthens them in a way that no other industry can do.”
Tulsa has quietly exploded in the national entrepreneurship scene over the past two years, racking up rankings with notable publications, such as “Forbes,” “Nerdwallet,” and “Thumbtack Journal,” as one of the nation’s best cities to start a business in. Only six months into 2017, Tulsa has already been ranked by “WalletHub” as the fourth best city to start a business.
