The deadliest and costliest natural disaster in American history barreled into New Orleans and killed scores of lives and livelihoods. This we will never forget. Yet, Arnold Baker tripled the size of his concrete plant business in the five years since Katrina decimated the city and sprinkled broken lives all over the nation. He owes much of the success to the resources, guidance and contacts he made through the National Black Chamber of Commerce.
“They gave me a structure that enabled me to grow to where I’ve tripled the size of my company in five years from resources made available by the black chamber of commerce,“ said Baker, who became the incoming chair of the NBCC at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. recently. “The reason that I am chair is because I had this experience. Otherwise, as a businessman, I wouldn’t waste my time, resources and energy into an organization that didn’t work this organization works for me. It works on a national level and it works on a local level.”
Sherrie Gilchrist, the celebrated and dynamic outgoing chairwoman of the NBCC, has found a way to circumvent the good ol’ boys’ clandestine network of cronyism and provide chances to burgeoning small businesses.
“There is no traditional chamber to ensure that people get bids, that they get the information about bids, that they know how to complete the business plans, which loans are the best, how to understand the SBA [Small Business Administration] loans and the local loans,“ says Gilchrist, who started this practice at her local multicultural chamber in Chattanooga, Tenn., before having it adopted at the NBCC. “And we found that this was missing. If small minority businesses could have access, they could compete. But what we found out is by the time it is announced in the paper or you hear it from someone, the train is already out of the station and you can’t prepare for it.”
With astute and civic-minded businesspeople monitoring the situation on behalf of African Americans and other minorities, the playing field is leveling out in ways it never has before in the history of this nation. And because of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, scores of businesses across the country that would have shuttered by now are still alive today.
–terry shropshire
