New Black Wall Street Market located in Stonecrest, Georgia, is a Black-owned mall that offer a range of beauty items, fashion, music, health products and more. According to director Matthew Hampton, about 80% of these business owners are Black women.
Rolling out interviewed three Black businesswomen to get their thoughts on the importance of ownership.
How important is New Black Wall Street for the millennials of today?
Zoet Beauty Supply: “Many millennials [not everyone] but many may miss the importance of Black economics, development, and what it means to our community. This alone shows them that we can really create and make almost everything that we need right in our own community. It means a lot to circulate the dollar in the Black community,” Charis McWhorter shared.
“Especially in our industry, the dollar does not stay in our community at all. We are going to keep our hair and nails done regardless, this industry has proven to be recession proof. So as soon as we get our paycheck we are going to spend something on beauty. So, it’s leaving our community hands as soon as we give it over to the other stores, so why not create something so we can circle the dollar back into our community,” Dana Hawkins added.
The St. Louis Collection: “Very important, and I don’t [say that] just because I’m a woman doing it. It’s important for Black men to take their leadership roles again, stand up, and help lead our communities. I feel like the Black man is just as important getting into entrepreneurship but it’s definitely important that I’m here because a Black man does own this. It’s a 125,000 square foot building of beautiful Black businesses in here. I think the Black man and Black woman, we are helping to balance each other out by hopefully gaining some economic wealth and empowerment,” business owner Janeen St. Louis added.
Beautify Plus: “So the New Black Wall Street Market is paying homage to Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So hopefully people at least YouTube the documentary so they can really understand the reason why it’s so important to stabilize the economy in your local communities. It’s very important to teach young people how to own businesses. Lecester “Bill” Allen who is the philanthropist behind this project he has a slogan that’s in the hallway that’s connected to the ceiling that’s inside the building that says “ownership, ownership, ownership.” That’s something he told local legislators about Black folks. We want to own more things in our economy because globally we are some of the largest spenders. We want to make sure we are pumping a lot of that back into the stabilization of the community,” business owner Crystal shared.
Watch the video below to see what each of these business owners sell.
