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During Reconstruction after 1865, formerly enslaved African Americans built successful towns and business districts across the country. But many of those towns were destroyed by White mobs who burned them down during race riots, like Rosewood in Levy County, Florida, and the business district of Greenville in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as Black Wall Street.
Inspired by the latter, a place was built specifically to bring Black businesses together to help rebuild our economic power called the New Black Wall Street Market (NBWSM). It’s in Stonecrest, Georgia, 20 minutes east of Atlanta and created by Lecester “Bill” Allen.
The native of Dumas, Arkansas, garnered his wealth building charter schools and buying real estate across the country. “Mr. Allen has the ambition to create as many minority-owned and women-owned businesses as he can in his lifetime,” says NBWSM operations manager and event coordinator, Lord Hester.
He continues, “Mr. Allen says, ‘We built this country and we need to own some of this country! Black people spend $1.7 trillion every year, and 99.5 percent of every penny we get goes outside of our community,” Hester emphasizes.
“We must support ourselves by buying from each other. And that’s the opportunity that the New Black Wall Street Market provides.”
New Black Wall Street Market and One-Stop Black Shopping
The New Black Wall Street Market is located in a former Super Target near The Mall at Stonecrest. The grand opening during Memorial Day weekend in 2021 took place on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
“Two of the last living survivors of that destruction and five of their grandchildren attended our grand opening. And they gave us all the backstory of what actually happened when Tulsa’s Black Wall Street was destroyed,” shares Hester, who originally came to Atlanta from New York City in 1980 to choreograph the Miss Black America pageant.
“The grand opening was held as an outdoor festival in the parking lot to announce the upcoming opening where we allowed people to see the space, which hadn’t been completed yet,” he explains.
“It was completed on July 4, when we had another outdoor festival and opened the market to the public on weekends only. Then we had a full opening with regular operating hours starting in November of that year on Black Friday,” states Hester.
NBWSM is 125,000 square feet, with over 100 businesses, including a mini grocery store, specialty food shops, Mattie’s Tea Room, Pink Lion Jazz Club, and a ballroom with an event stage.
“We usually have 400-600 people for our events like stage plays, concerts, comedy shows,” says Hester. He continues, “When you come in the main doors of the market, you walk into what is like Bourbon Street in New Orleans with real bricks and balconies. And you have Aaron’s Gourmet Market just inside the entrance, which was named for Mr. Allen’s son, who died at the beginning of the pandemic, but loved gourmet foods. That area is also where we’re planning to have the Gumbo Cafe.”
The space was designed with corridors that have street names honoring Black and Indigenous history. “First, there’s Art Avenue, which has about 135 different Black artists, which includes African art and collectibles and you can even watch artists making their art,” Hester describes.
“The next street is Choctaw, named for the Native American tribe who sold the land to O.G. Burley for the original Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Then there’s A.J. Gatson Street, named for the Black man who started out as a coal miner and became [one of] the richest Black men in America,” he adds.
There’s also a street named for Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made woman millionaire in America and Greenwood, named for the section in Tulsa where the original Black Wall Street was located.
“That’s where we plan to have Big Mama’s Porch, which will be our soul food restaurant,” notes Hester. Once the full-service restaurants are added, Hester says the New Black Wall Street Market will be a one-stop shop for families.
They’re already getting visitors from all over the country. “Some of the places our patrons have come from are Washington, D.C., New York City, New Orleans, California, Florida and Mississippi, so we’ve become a tourist attraction.”
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Allen Entrepreneurial Institute
So how do the businesses get into the New Black Wall Street Market? “We had to pay a membership fee of $300, then a down payment of one month’s rent, which was about $1,200 when I joined,” says Meredes Beato, who owns Heal Today Co.
“New Black Wall Street said they had an opening in their grocery store, so I put a hold on creating leather accessories and went back to making sorrel juices to sell there, along with sea moss,” says the Dominican Republic native, who moved to Atlanta from Washington, D.C. in 1991.
“Sea moss is good for everything: depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, COVID, thyroid. It has 92 minerals, amino acids and lots of vitamins, including vitamins and D and B12,” she claims.
In fact, Beato has written a book, “How I Avoided Dialysis,” describing how sea moss helped heal her kidneys. She adds, “People who try my products become repeat customers.”
But you can’t just walk into NBWSM. “In order to have your business in the New Black Wall Street Market, you have to train first,” Hester insists. “Business owners go into a 90-day training where they go to the Allen Entrepreneurial Institute (AEI) twice a week and get two hours of intensified training, in different areas related to operating a retail business. And they were able to operate their businesses on weekends for a month and a half before we actually did the grand opening.”
He adds, “All of this was spearheaded by the AEI director, Matt Hampton. His leadership on the ground is what helped to get NBWSM to where it is today. The AEI is a 150-acre campus that is two miles from the New Black Wall Street Market.”
Another business owner who did the AEI training is Sunshine Jackson, owner of It’s All Good & Then Some. “God told me to resign from my job at World Changers International Church and go full-time with my business,” remembers Jackson.
“I started my business to include balloon decorations as well as my Dream Cream dessert.” She explains, “Dream Cream is all about fruit: bananas, blue raspberry, peach, mango, lemon, orange. The fruit is pureed down to liquid form and mixed with water, 15 grams of cane sugar per two-and-a-half gallon bucket, and it’s run through a machine that freezes it so there’s no ice in it to take away the flavor of the fruit. So if a New York-style Italian ice and a sorbet had a baby, this would be it,” laughs the New York City native who moved to Atlanta in 2008.
A friend told her about the New Black Wall Street Market. “Since the beginning, everybody here helps each other, which makes me think that’s what the original Black Wall Street was like,” smiles Jackson.
“If somebody is looking for directions to a particular shop, we would help them get there. And we refer customers to each other. It’s a real community.”
Hester says Jackson has become an important part of the market. “She helps coordinate and decorate every major project that comes through here. She is the backbone to a lot of our events,” Hester exclaims.
But all businesses don’t have to make a long-term commitment. “We started a pop-up program where we let people come in by the day,” says Hester. “They can rent space for a day or for Wednesday through Sunday and not be obligated to a long-term lease. That allows them to get their sea legs first.”
It Takes a Village to Leave a Legacy
Hester notes that though they want to support as many Black-owned businesses as possible, they don’t want to oversaturate the market with too many of the same types of businesses.
“We don’t want it to look like a flea market,” Hester admits. “You also can not come into our space with bootleg products or with products that are not licensed and verified,” he warns.
“We’re currently looking for what we don’t have at the market like hair salons, nail salons and barbershops,” he adds.
There are even bigger plans for the future. “Mr. Allen is refocusing on the New Black Wall Street International Village – a 360-acre commercial and residential property with a 16-story high-rise hotel with condominiums, a convention center and exhibit hall, a 5-story mixed-use development with an open-air mall, a 12-story corporate office development, an amphitheater, 29 single-family homes, an entertainment district and green spaces,” Hester reveals.
He continues, “Mr. Allen started to build that when the pandemic hit, so he stopped. And since the Super Target was part of the 360-acre land purchase, he redirected his energy to turning that into the New Black Wall Street Market, which is right down the street. It’s all a part of the legacy that Mr. Allen wants to leave,” Jackson adds.
“It’s all about legacy and leaving something for our families. If no one else is going to support us, we need to support ourselves.” Hester agrees, saying the New Wall Street Market is an excellent model that should be duplicated.
“Because if we don’t have Black people duplicate places like this, we as a people will not make it economically. We must spend our money with ourselves in order to save ourselves.”
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To learn more about the New Black Wall Street Market, visit the website, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages. To stay up to date on new businesses coming, future festivals and weekly events like their Sip & Paint on Thursday nights, sign up for the New Black Wall Street Market newsletter at the bottom of any page on the website.
For more information on It’s All Good and Then Some, visit the Facebook page and follow Beato and Health Today Co. on her Instagram page.
To apply for long-term leasing of your business at New Black Wall Street Market, email processor@nbwsm.com. Finally, to apply for a short-term pop-up, visit their Eventbrite page.