Statistics continue to substantiate and validate the city of Atlanta’s worldwide perception as the black mecca. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that Georgia has the highest percentage of black-owned businesses of any state in the nation.
Most of those black-owned businesses in Georgia, of course, reside in the mammoth metropolitan Atlanta area. Only the District of Columbia, which is often categorized as a city or a state depending on the topic of conversation, has a higher percentage of black-owned businesses at 28.2 percent. Georgia stands strong at 20.4 percent.
Black-owned businesses in Georgia cover a wide range of industries, including risk management firms, clinics, record labels, professional gyms, hotels, telemarketing and data centers. From 2002 to 2007, the number of minority-owned businesses in the nation increased by 45.6 percent to 5.8 million, more than twice the rate of all U.S. businesses, the bureau said.
Leaders in metro Atlanta’s black business community said the list of attributes contributing to the state’s success is long, reported the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
One reason for Georgia’s perch atop the U.S. states in black businesses is the fertile training ground. The Peach State is home to some of the nation’s top historically black colleges and universities that often preach the gospel of doing for self. Fortune 500 companies offer the type of training and salaries that enable entrepreneurial-minded blacks to jump-start their dreams. The African-American community itself has traditionally invested in startups when banks would not lend.
“When you look at Atlanta, it is seen as one of the top cities in the nation for young people to relocate,” John Grant, the executive director of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, told the AJC. “They bring a lot of creativity, energy and innovation.”
Leona Barr Davenport, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Business League, credits the former mayor of Atlanta, the late Maynard H. Jackson, for defiantly insisting that talented blacks and minorities be included in the lucrative contracts at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the 1970s.
“That is a success that has resounded across the country,” she told the paper.
Tony Morrow concurs. As owner and chef of The Pecan restaurant in College Park, Ga., Morrow one of the entrepreneurs who took the skills he learned working for others — such as local favorite Pano’s & Paul’s, as general manager of the Morehouse cafeteria and in corporate dining at Bank of America — to blaze his own path.
“Atlanta is a mecca for us,” he said. “It’s a place anybody can stop working so hard for somebody else and do it for yourself.”
–terry shropshire
