Black Business Is Beautiful presented by The Black Market

After the murder of George Floyd, this market was created out of a place of anger & frustration, I turned those emotions into actions of self-discovery and allyship.

As a business leader, I heard many stories from white people who were VULNERABLE and said they were scared of black people (especially what the media shows) or talked about their own biases, which made me dig deep and admit I have my own biases.  My team pushed me to stand up and DO something about it, so we created something to make an experience to change our biases.   And we curated the first Black Business Is Beautiful market in September 2020.  

As an entrepreneur, I am ready for failure (maybe I even kind of love it), so I expected that black entrepreneurs would laugh at my vision or and that customers would not show up.   Instead of failure, September 12, 2020, was FULL of support and love – 35 vendors, 700+ customers, and dozens of volunteers. 

When we created this market, in addition to closing the racial wealth gap, our priority was to use my platform as a white woman and our outdoor venue to create a market where people can change their biases by having AWESOME experiences with black people.  Since the beginning of the market, it has been a goal of the committee to build a market where ALL people feel welcome, safe, and loved, and then transfer it to a member of the BIPOC community to sustain their business and that is exactly what happened.

By Merging with The Black Market, we are able to give this market to the community while also giving a PERMANENT space to The Black Market at The Lab and The Shed at The Lab.