The healthy D.C. economy is leaving behind longtime black residents, new study finds

By Perry Stein

The booming and increasingly dynamic D.C. economy is leaving the city’s longtime black residents behind, according to a study released Thursday that examines African American employment, population and housing trends in the nation’s capital.

The Georgetown University report, which culled data from several recent studies, found that more than half of all new jobs in the District between 2010 and 2020 will require at least a bachelor’s degree, although only 12.3 percent of black residents in 2014 had graduated from college. It noted the average white household in the region has a net worth of $284,000, while the assets of the average black household are just $3,500.

[Net worth of white households in D.C. is 81 times that of black households]

“It’s not a pretty picture,” Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said before the findings were presented to city leaders and residents.

According to the report, the median annual income for white D.C. families is $120,000, while it is $41,000 for black households. Between 2007 and 2014, the median household income in the District increased by about $10,000 but remained flat for black households.

While striking, the findings largely mirror those of other recent studies. As the city becomes wealthier, younger and more affluent residents are moving in, raising housing prices and pushing longtime black residents out of the city. In 2015, the population of black residents in the District — which garnered the nickname “Chocolate City” — dipped below 50 percent for the first time in 60 years.

The Georgetown report traces the inequities in the District today to discriminatory practices that once kept black residents out of the economy. It also provides recommendations for the city to help strive for greater equality.

“One of the contributions of this report is how much it puts in one place both the history of the city and redlining and school segregation, and connecting it to how those impacts play out today,” said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, whose work is extensively cited in the study. “That half of all black households in D.C. have assets of $3,500 or less — that’s virtually nothing, and it’s probably a reflection that housing discrimination years ago kept them from owning homes.”

The report indicates that one of many reasons black Washingtonians are being left behind is that after the devastating 1968 riots, many businesses opted to move to the suburbs. It also notes that black residents were often “redlined,” the practice of banks and loaning institutions refusing to lend to business owners in communities with large minority populations.

“Aspiring black businesspeople were unable to fill the vacuum simply because they could not secure a line of credit to open and maintain small businesses, stores, dry cleaners, restaurants and other outlets,” the report states.

The report recommends that the D.C. Chamber of Commerce and city agencies create a database of minority businesses that would “outline opportunities and procedures for small-business loans and training aids.” Local universities, the report says, should offer courses in the “how-tos of minority business development.”

Maurice Jackson, a Georgetown history professor and chairman of the city’s Commission on African American Affairs, stressed the need to invest in education and training programs so D.C. residents have the skills needed to meet modern job demands. Jackson, the report’s lead author, also suggested that the city invest in apprenticeship and job programs for residents returning to society after serving jail time.

Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) said that as mayor, he invested in vocational and career programs in high schools that focused on IT, hospitality and other trades.

“Why those curricula?” he asked. “Because that’s where the jobs are. That’s where they’re emerging.”

The report also traces the history and effects of gentrification, noting that it has led to a dearth of affordable housing. There are 43,000 D.C. residents who qualify as “extremely low-income,” which means a family of four making less than $32,000 a year. (Ninety-one percent of “extremely low-income” families are African American.)

Beginning in the 1950s, wealthy and middle-income families started fleeing cities, including the District, for suburbs and largely left poor people by themselves in city centers.

“This suburbanization led to economic downturn within several major cities, such as Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, creating fiscal crises due to shrinking tax bases,” according to the report. “To alleviate this problem, many city governments pursued policies to attract new investments in the city, bring in wealthier residents to increase taxable income and housing sales, revitalize retail activity and raise sales tax revenue.”

Now that wealthier residents have moved back to cities, rent increases have left longtime residents unable to afford their homes. The report recommends building more affordable housing in newly expensive neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights and NoMa. And, it says, the city should intervene before poorer neighborhoods become unaffordable for longtime residents.

“In these communities, policies should offer a path to eventual homeownership, enabling individuals to eventually purchase a unit at an affordable price,” the report states. “Rent-to-own housing is beneficial because it creates personal equity for individuals and helps lift residents from poverty.”

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Featured Our History

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!!!

By Elliot Booker — 4 years ago

In a country where our ancestors were brought here as kidnapped captives, it’s important to know the stories that show the strength, courage, spirituality, of our forefathers. We live in a multimedia driven world, and images are important. That’s why from its early inception to now, images of Black people has always been negative, and very limited in the amount of stories or non-fictional accounts that show that show Black people taking control of their situations, or rebellions. A recent example is “The Birth of a Nation”, the story centering around the life of Nat Turner, and the story of the Haitian Revolution and the lives of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Dutty Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, the project that Danny Glover has been working on and finding difficult. These and other stories need to be told and discussed, by our adults, then with our children. Stories of Black men and women fighting for FREEDOM, not equality, there’s a difference. Read and share the story below, and leave your comments.

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!!!

MILLIKEN’S BEND JUNE 7th 1863

LINCOLN’S PROCLAMATION NEVER FREED ANYONE, OUR ANCESTOR’S ACTED AGAINST WHITE SOUTHERNERS TO SECURE THEIR OWN FREEDOM!

One of the fiercest battles of the Civil War was fought in Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana between Confederate troops and black regiments of the Union Army. Most of the black infantry had minimal training, were outnumbered and ill-equipped. Nevertheless, in close hand-to-hand combat, they defeating Confederate soldiers at Milliken’s Bend, in the critical battle for Vicksburg.
In most cases, these Black troops were allowed only two to three weeks of military training before being thrown into battle against the war-tested Confederate veterans and their vicious and spiteful commanders. Black men faced a peril unknown to their white soldier’s on the Union side. Slaves one day, soldiers fighting against their former masters the next, these black men excited the wrath and contempt of the vicious Confederate generals like Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest and Pierre Beauregard, the man who started the war at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 15, 1861. Black men falling into the hands of such generals were either put to death immediately or returned to slavery, rather than being accorded the status of prisoners of war.

The men who fought at Milliken’s Bend were literally fresh off the plantation, and none had been in the service for more than a month when the battle occurred. Some had just entered the service days before, and had not even been issued weapons. A significant factor in the battle was the lack of training of Union troops. Even the white officers were learning their new duties. Even without the pressure of a Confederate attack, the Union forces were undermanned and in disarray.

The fact that these men managed to fight at all is something of a small miracle. That they fought well, with minimal training and poor weaponry – and in fact, earned praise from the Confederate commander – makes their attempt to stand at Milliken’s Bend significant.

The Battle:
Confederate Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and his army were besieged in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by Union commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee.

In an effort to cut Grant’s supply line and relieve the city, the Confederates attacked the Union supply area at Milliken’s Bend up the Mississippi. The Milliken’s Bend area, 15 miles to the northwest of Vicksburg, had until recently served as a staging area for Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. It was a site of supply depots and hospitals, many of which were manned and guarded by black soldiers, some of whom were recently recruited men who were freed slaves. At Milliken’s Bend were 1410 soldiers, only 160 of them white (i.e., the 23rd Iowa regiment). The rest were three newly recruited Black Regiments—The First Mississippi (African Descent) and the Ninth and Eleventh Louisiana (Corps d Afrique, or African Corps). They were attacked here on June 7, about 8 o’clock in the morning, outnumbered by a brigade of Confederate troops, about 2,500 in number. In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, African American troops engaged attacking Confederates in fierce hand-to-hand combat, fighting with bayonets, fists, and rifle butts, or firing their weapons at extremely close range.

Brigadier General Henry McCullough, who commanded the Confederate forces, later noted that his
“charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy’s force with considerable obstinacy, while the white or true Yankee position ran like whipped curs almost as soon as the charge was ordered.”
The African American troops paid dearly for their bravery. Heaviest hit was the 9th Louisiana Infantry. Almost 45 percent of the unit’s men were killed or mortally wounded — the highest percentage of a regiment killed in a single battle in the entire war. Finally, with their backs to the Mississippi, they received the support of a Navy gunboat, and their line held.

Absent from the schoolbooks and television miniseries about the Civil War, however, are those truly great battles fought and won by the Black volunteers in Mississippi and Louisiana and elsewhere in the South. In most cases, these Black troops were allowed only two to three weeks of military training before being thrown into battle against the war-tested Confederate veterans and their vicious and spiteful commanders. Today Milliken’s Bend lies largely forgotten, Neither Ulysses Grant nor William Sherman gave Milliken’s Bend much attention in their autobiographies. Grant gave perfunctory acknowledgement to the black troops in saying that this was the first real test of black troops in combat. And that they had passed the test quite admirably. Yet, only six-months before Grant’s crossing of the River south of Vicksburg, near Port Gibson, Milliken’s Bend had served as his main base of operations. As late as January 20,1863, he had tried to launch an assault against Vicksburg from Milliken’s Bend and Young’s Point, 11 miles to the south, but his forces were repulsed savagely at Chickasaw Bayou north of Vicksburg.

A letter from Captain M. M. Miller at MILLIKEN’S BEND to his aunt stated:
I never felt more grieved and sick at heart than when I saw how my brave soldiers had been slaughtered, one with six wounds, all the rest with two or three, none less than two wounds. Two of my colored sergeants were killed, both brave, noble men; always prompt, vigilant, and ready for the fray. I never more wish to hear the expression, “The niggers wont fight.” Come with me 100 yards from where I sit and I can show you the wounds that cover the bodies of brave, loyal, and patriotic soldiers as ever drew bead on a rebel.

‘The enemy charged us so close that we fought with our bayonets hand to hand. I have six broken bayonets to show how bravely my men fought. The Twenty-third Iowa joined my company on the right, and I declare truthfully that they had all fled before our regiment fell back, as we were all compelled to do.

‘Under command of Colonel Page I led the Ninth and Eleventh Louisiana when the rifle-pits were retaken and held by our troops, our two regiments doing the work.

‘I narrowly escaped death once. A rebel took deliberate [aim] at me with both barrels of his gun, and the bullets passed so close to me that the powder that remained on them burned my cheek. Three of my men who saw him aim and fire thought that he wounded me each fire. One of them was killed by my side, and he fell on me, covering my clothes with his blood, and before the rebel could fire again I blew his brains out with my gun.

‘It was a horrible fight, the worst I was ever engaged in, not even excepting Shiloh. The enemy cried, “No quarters,” but some of them were very glad to take it when made prisoners.

‘Colonel Allen, of the seventeenth Texas, was killed in front of our regiment, and Brigadier General Walker was wounded. We killed about 180 of the enemy. The gun-boat Choctaw did good service shelling them. I stood on the breast-works after we took them, and gave the elevations and direction for the gun-boat by pointing my sword, and they sent a shell right into their midst, which sent them in all directions. Three shells fell there and 62 rebels lay there when the fight was over.

‘My wound is not serious, but troublesome. What few men I have left seem to think much of me because I stood up with them in the fight. I can say for them that I never saw a braver company of men in my life.

‘Not one of them offered to leave his place until ordered to fall back; in fact, very few ever did fall back. I went down to the hospital three miles today to see the wounded. Nine of them were there, two having died of their wounds. A boy I had cooking for me came and begged a gun when the rebels were advancing, and took his place with the company, and when we retook the breast-works I found him badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. A new recruit I had issued a gun to the day before the fight was found dead, with a firm grasp on his gun, the bayonet of which was broken in three pieces So they fought and died defending the cause that we revere. They met death coolly, bravely; not rashly did they expose themselves, but all were steady and obedient to orders.

millikensbend.com

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Featured News

Black Enterprise Unveils Nation’s Largest Black-Owned Businesses For 2018

By Elliot Booker — 2 years ago

A scene from Bridgewater Interiors L.L.C., one of the “BE100s” (Image: Bridgewater Interiors)

In many ways, 2017 proved to be both triumphant and bumpy for the nation’s largest black-owned businesses.

Several companies on this year’s BE 100s had robust revenue growth. Others struggled with increased competition, customer retention, and setting themselves apart from larger mainstream rivals. Most still possess resourcefulness, creativity, and other resilient qualities. As such, they have developed the rare entrepreneurial drive to succeed in an uncertain business climate.

There were significant shifts, however: Coca-Cola Beverages Florida L.L.C. became a new billion-dollar revenue addition to the Top 100 rankings. And on the BE BANKS list, OneUnited Bank edged out Carver Federal Savings as the nation’s largest African American banking institution.

To find out the firms that comprise this year’s BE 100s—America’s largest black businesses across industrial/service, automotive and financial services sectors—you will find our series of lists and summaries of their performance here. This article represents a series of reports on how the BE 100s have fared in each industry. Our Annual Report on Black Business begins with a review of the leading black-owned businesses among industrial and service firms.

Top 100 Largest Black-Owned Businesses

The TOP 100 includes manufacturers and tech companies that are suppliers for some of the world’s largest companies. Black firms have been making tremendous strides to innovate due to the changing climate of globalization and technology, says Kenneth L. Harris, Ph.D., president and CEO of the National Business League Inc.

“The future has forced black manufacturers and logistics firms to aggressively innovate to meet global needs, as technology unlocks productivity gains, and businesses experience growth by diversifying into new areas of opportunity within the supply chain—all necessary to remain competitive in the marketplace,” Harris says.

Let’s take a look at how some of these companies fared in 2017 and what they are doing to sustain forward momentum.

The TOP 100 now has six companies with more than $1 billion in revenues. in addition to newcomer soft drink bottler Coca-Cola Beverages Florida, they are list leaders World Wide Technology Inc., a St. Louis-based It products and services provider and staffing solutions firm Act-1 Group as well as top black automotive suppliers Bridgewater Interiors L.L.C, Modular Assembly Innovations, L.L.C., and The Piston Group, LLC.

For Southfield, Michigan-based Piston Group, revenues exceeded $1.7 billion in 2017 versus $1.625 billion in 2016. The gain came from continued organic growth and existing customers like Ford, which included providing the automaker electrification, says Amit Singhi, the company’s COO and CFO. Revenue also grew because of new business the company picked up from adding FCA US L.L.C. and non-domestic automakers like Toyota as customers. Plus the auto supplier benefitted from its acquisition of Irvin Automotive in 2016 from Takara Corp. to expand into engineering, design, and manufacturing. Singhi says growth this year will come from operations as well as acquisitions.

Based in Minneapolis, THOR Cos. had a banner year in 2017, posting revenues of $368 million—up 162% from $140 million in 2016.

Founder and Chairman Richard Copeland says just under $197 million came from the acquisition of JIT Energy Services, a minority-owned energy management and utility cost reduction services firm, for an undisclosed amount. THOR Construction contributed another $170 million. Its high-profile projects included work on the $1.1 billion U.S. Bank Stadium and the $375 million T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The company renovated the Target Center last year where the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves play and worked on the expanded Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

The company aims to collect new revenue this year from THOR Construction, JIT, and its land development, architectural design, and consulting businesses. Started in 1980, Thor Cos. plans to move into new headquarters in July, a $36 million office/retail building in north Minneapolis.

For Powers & Sons Construction, 2017 was rough. The Gary, Indiana-based company’s revenues fell to roughly $46 million, down 50% from around $92 million in 2016. CEO Mamon Powers Jr. said there were ample projects in the pipeline but a significant number of the larger ones were unable to start or had to be delayed due to issues such as a client’s inability to gain adequate financing.

The 2017 Black Enterprise Company of the Year, Powers & Sons celebrated its 50th-anniversary last year. Powers is optimistic revenues will be strong this year and in 2019, rising 20% to 25% annually. He expects the gains to come from new projects his firm will pick up at its offices in Indiana and Illinois, including work on the $350 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

READ MORE AT: http://www.blackenterprise.com/largest-black-owned-businesses-2018/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

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Featured News

African Americans in Pittsburgh express outrage, stage protest at Pizza Milano’s

By Elliot Booker — 3 years ago

Rob Taylor Jr. – Courier Staff Writer

1.62K reads

UPDATE 10:36 PM Jan. 13: 41-year-old Mahmut Yimaz has been arrested in connection with the incident at Pizza Milano’s.Pittsburgh Police say Yimaz faces one count of simple assault charge and one aggravated assault charge.

The New Pittsburgh Courier, the Voice of Black Pittsburgh, was on hand as hundreds of African Americans in Pittsburgh protested Pizza Milano’s, on Fifth Ave. in Uptown, Saturday, Jan. 13. The protests come on the heels of a video reportedly showing a Pizza Milano’s employee wrestling a Black female customer to the ground, Jan. 12, then repeatedly banging her head against the floor. Pittsburgh police officers from Zone 2 are investigating the incident.

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