Our Black Year by Maggie Anderson

profile,” he said. “It’s perfect. You’ll be media darlings. They’re gonna’ fall in love with you. And if they love you, they’ll listen. Aaaw man, Mag, that American Dream stuff—that your parents and big brothers came here with nothing, became hardworking, productive American citizens. That’s gold, man. That’s just beautiful. John with those glasses, the girls with that frizzy hair all over the place, and you with that kind of ambiguous racial makeup thing going on. You guys are so cute and disarming. They just might listen. And that’s all you need. Everything else is backed up by facts, history, and science. If you get them to actually want to talk about this, everything can change. This is beautiful .”
    We were surprised that our little project so excited someone of Michael’s stature. That reaction strengthened our confidence. We started thinking we were onto something bigger than we had ever imagined. He warned me how busy he was going to be—he was working on a book about Barack Obama—but said that we could depend on him. And, like Rogers, he stayed true to his word. For the next few months I would text his assistant asking for small favors like calling VIPs in Black media. He always did what we asked. Both he and Steven Rogers agreed to be our executive advisers.

    The inspirational encounter with Michael led us to think more about the “movement” component of our project. I started channeling my energies into a presentation we were going to make to solicit the assistance of a group of the most powerful, wealthiest Black corporate executives in Chicago—the Big Dogs of Black business and finance. Rogers knew the president and many of the members. I wanted to convey to them what Rogers felt—that The Ebony Experiment was going to be transformative: It would be the next phase of the civil rights movement—not just another street march, after-school program, or community meeting to stamp out violence. It was going to be a game changer because it was coming from within the community. It would show what we could do— finally .
    Rogers had called the president on our behalf. A few weeks later, during a brief conversation in late October, the president asked how much we needed, and I told him our budget was $300,000. He said that was quite doable and, with the holidays looming, put us on the agenda for the organization’s meeting in early January 2009. Just like that. John and I were stunned. We had Adrienne and Ebony magazine’s presumed coverage, which would get Black people talking about the lack of Black businesses and self-help economics as a way to solve our problems. We had Rogers for credibility, overall executive advice, and help in finding sponsors. We had Michael Dyson, the leading Black scholar in America, poised to do anything for us, and we had a group of wealthy Black business owners willing to give us a few hundred thousand bucks without even hearing our pitch.
    Next, we needed a competent researcher or, more likely, a team, to study in detail what we did that year—including how we would spend our money, where we would spend it, and what we could and couldn’t find from Black-owned businesses. Just as critical was the extrapolation of that spending—what sort of impact would occur if Black folks spent “X” amount with African American–owned businesses. We could passionately articulate the issues we hoped the study would uncover, but we had no idea how to create, fund, or execute such an undertaking, which in our view was a key component of the project. Such a study would
demonstrate through scientific analysis and actual data that buying Black was not a form of racism but rather was absolutely necessary and promoted a greater good.
    We knew that major foundations, like the Ford Foundation or the Gates Foundation, spent millions conducting social research, so we figured the process