According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of African-American business owners plummeted from 1.1 million in February 2020 to 640,000 in April," — that translates to about 41% of Black-owned businesses in the U.S. going under in the wake of COVID-19.
By helping identify which companies online are driven by entrepreneurial members of the black community, black business directory listings provide a way to break down the anonymity the Internet is famous for. Black owned business directory listings are scoured by members of the black community that want to do business with a company that is run by a black owner.
Raye and Julian Richardson—who first met while attending Tuskegee University— Marcus Books is the nation's oldest Black-owned bookstore and has inspired generations of readers with shelves of titles by and about African Americans. We Buy Black is the largest online marketplace for black-owned businesses to showcase and sell their products to a global community.
Local chapters of national organizations like Black Lives Matter , the ACLU and the NAACP are always a good place to start, and hyper-local organizations and charities such as the Black Women's Health Imperative and Casa Ruby , a shelter that specializes in helping LGBTQ+ people of color, are also great places to contribute to.
Martinez has over 12 years of experience working in economic development and business consulting. The digital platform Official Black Wall Street has previously hosted black business crawls where attendees visit brick-and-mortar black-owned businesses in certain cities during the holiday shopping season.