New Black Wall Streets are popping up in neighborhoods all across the country, nearly a century after the Tulsa Race Massacre wiped out a thriving Black Oklahoma financial district.
First, in a recent press release, it was announced that The Allen Entrepreneurial Institute (AEI) will be launching a new mixed-use facility in the Atlanta area. The purpose of the mixed-use facility is to provide a space that allows entrepreneurs to expand their businesses, especially minority executives.
Fox 5 Atlanta reveals that the facility will officially open on Labor Day Weekend of 2021.
“It’s an emotional high starting to see this place impact the lives of people,” director Matthew Hampton said to the outlet. “This idea was birthed out of a 20-year commitment the Allen family and Mr. Lecester Bill Allen, our founder, had to encourage minority entrepreneurship.”
Next, Al-Jazeera reports that another one of the “New Black Walls Streets” is popping up in Oklahoma, itself, near the location of the original Tulsa Race Massacre. But this time, it has a digital twist.
“A tech-based financial literacy startup, New Black Wall Street LLC, wants to provide 21st-century platforms for Black economic empowerment,” reports the outlet. “The organization is unique for its heavy emphasis on cryptocurrency, helping people ride the wild wave of wealth creation through Bitcoin and non-fungible token (NFT) sales.”
Our sister site, AfroTech, reported heavily on the various digital efforts to bring on “New Black Wall Streets” for the digital world, most notably in the form of “Black Tech Street,” which has a similar mission to the tech-based financial literacy start-up.
Finally, in Baltimore, it was announced that the city hosted a Black Wall Street Festival recently. The festival featured 12 Black vendors that had a variety of concessions to offer, from T-shirts to books.
The old saying “they tried to bury us, but they didn’t realize we were seeds” comes to mind when thinking about the New Black Wall Streets popping up all over the country.