“It might have been easier” to wait, said Canady, “but it would never be easy. “

Canady was among the millions of entrepreneurs who braved the pandemic and recession last year to drive an increase in business start-ups – a rise particularly pronounced in black communities. Some 4.4 million new businesses were started across the country in 2020, up 24% from 2019, according to the Census Bureau. The National Bureau of Economic Research looked at business registrations in eight states, including Texas, and found that by 2020, predominantly black communities saw an increase in registrations from the previous year.

The pattern repeated itself in Houston, where predominantly black neighborhoods led the region in starting new businesses, according to a Rice University researcher, who analyzed business records by zip code. New business listings more than tripled in 2020 in zip code 77016 in the East Little York / Homestead area and nearly tripled in zip code 77033 in South Park. This compares to a 51% increase in the region. The neighborhoods are respectively 63% and 65% black.

In the section of Third Ward where Canady operates its pop-up comic book store, an area where nearly half of residents are black, new business listings jumped 24% last year.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Saving Alfreda’s: How a pillar at Third Ward restaurant survived COVID, explosion and heartache

Experts say it’s difficult to determine what drove these trends, but several factors likely played a role. Federal pandemic relief programs may have given aspiring entrepreneurs a break from starting businesses; a study by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research found that new business registrations increased around the same time the federal stimulus checks were sent.

The Black Lives Matter movement, which caught the nation’s attention after the murder of George Floyd, placed a new emphasis on the businesses and economies of black communities, creating opportunities as consumers and businesses moved to support black-owned businesses. In some cases, the pandemic and recession, which hit minority communities the most, forced people to seek new opportunities as they lost jobs, businesses and income during the historic slowdown in early 2020.

“It’s out of necessity,” said Jie Wu, director of research operations at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. “This offers another option for earning an alternative income. “

Out of the frame

Jerome Love, for example, was sidelined when his bank pulled the line of credit from his small construction company, JDL Investments, and he was forced to cancel construction projects in South Park neighborhoods. and Sunnyside. So Love, 44, from Pearland, decided to create Tuvi Blends, a company that makes drinks with all-natural ingredients.

Love registered the business in May 2020, designing it as an online subscription service that would provide 30 bottles per month of fresh fruit and spice concoctions while providing access to cooking and fitness demonstrations. via an online portal, with the aim of taking advantage of the boom in e-commerce as the pandemic kept people at home.

“I had the idea several years ago, but it wasn’t until COVID started reading and researching how I would actually do it,” Love said. “It forced people out of the nest and made us abandon traditional marketing and think outside the box. “

The boom in business creation in black communities represents a remarkable turnaround. At the start of the pandemic, more than 3 million businesses – about 1 in 5 – closed their doors across the country at the height of the pandemic, according to an oft-cited study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a group of non-partisan thinking from Stanford University. . Almost half of black-owned businesses – 41% – have closed, as have one in three businesses owned by Latinos and immigrants.

The study, however, only covered March through May 2020. When closure orders were lifted and social distancing measures relaxed, business start-ups exploded in predominantly black neighborhoods, which had the lowest rates. higher registrations of new businesses, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The black community has been disproportionately affected by the effects of the pandemic. Unemployment among black residents peaked at nearly 17 percent, compared with 14 percent for white workers and 15 percent for all workers in the spring of 2020. In the first quarter of this year, unemployment among black workers was 11.2 percent, more than double the 4.9 percent for white employees, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

Black Americans have also been infected with COVID-19 at nearly three times the rate of white Americans, according to an August 2020 report from the National Urban League, an organization for the defense of civic and urban rights. For many new entrepreneurs, starting their own business was their way of gaining control, said Carol Guess, president of the Greater Houston Black Chamber of Commerce.

“These are just African Americans who want to take control of their own destiny,” Guess said. “They don’t want to be at the mercy of anyone when it comes to feeding their families.

This resonated with Regina Knox, 58, of southeast Houston, as she worked from home during the pandemic. She began to ask herself questions: “How do I want to move forward in my life? And how do I want my life to go forward? Do I just want to sit down and work for a company and do the same thing over and over again? “

On HoustonChronicle.com: The recovery is underway. Not everyone benefits from it.

Knox, who worked for 15 years in the archives department of an oil and gas company, had thought of starting a staff organization when she helped two friends revamp an office and classroom in 2019. The pandemic and the introspection it inspired gave the spark for Knox to make the dream come true by launching a company called Suite transformations.

She hired an entrepreneurship coach who helped her define her target market as well as an accountant to keep the accounts. She is also looking to hire a social media specialist to market the business and its services, including removing clutter and making plans to stay organized.

She had five clients this year, a good start, but not enough to quit his day job. But now that her website is live, she is hoping more customers will come once the pandemic subsides. and the economy continues to reopen.

“When I was little, I changed rooms all the time. I always had to have things in place, ”Knox said. “It’s funny, because COVID has given me the opportunity to sit down and think about what I really love to do and what I’ve never done.”

Economic justice

The Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention not only to social justice, but also to economic justice for black Americans. The recent 100th anniversary of the racial massacre in Tulsa, when a white mob torched a thriving black neighborhood known as Black Wall Street and killed as many as 300, also highlighted the story of racism that denied – or snatched – the economic progress of blacks.

An outgrowth has been the efforts by customers and businesses to buy, contract, and provide resources to black-owned businesses, which have long had to overcome obstacles such as lack of access to capital and predatory lending.

The young company from Canada, Gulf Coast Cosmos Comicbook Co., got a boost when Axelrad, a beer garden in Midtown, reached out, saying it wanted to support local black businesses. Axelrad included Gulf Coast Cosmos Comicbook gift cards in a raffle, raising the profile of the company with the local public.

Canady, which started online, gaining customers from California to New York City, opened a pop-up store in the Emancipation Park neighborhood in early March. The Emancipation Economic Development Council, an organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization, has allowed Canady to use its offices for free since March to sell its comics Wednesday through Saturday while it saves to rent a storefront. store. It had to vacate the space last Saturday as it is undergoing renovations, but plans to be in another temporary location soon.

Its social media strategy aims to promote the diversity of its comics, which include titles not always found on the shelves of mainstream stores. Enough customers come to the pop-up store that Canady has increased the days of the week the store is open, from one day to four days.

“We share strong interests in comics and we make sure people understand that comics are for everyone, not just a specific group,” Canady said. “And it really resonates.”

[email protected]