Digital Dope: Black Wall Street App (Celebrating Black Entrepreneurs in Tech)

If you’ve never heard of Black Wall Street, I’d encourage you to learn a bit more about it here. The Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma was a thriving community and boasted the highest concentration of black businesses in the US at the time. Due to the oil boom, people were flocking to Tulsa in droves to take advantage of the opportunity to build a stable and sustainable life for their families. If you traveled back in time to the Greenwood Community in the 1900’s, you would find black-owned hotels, banks, restaurants, and state of the art homes which featured many luxuries that even their white counterparts didn’t enjoy. This economically self-sufficient and prosperous community was given the name Black Wall Street.

On May 31st, 1921 a tremendous assault began which saw the destruction of over 150 black businesses including churches and hospitals. Over 300 African Americans were brutally murdered and the once-booming African American business center in Tulsa, Oklahoma would cease to exist.

While Tulsa likely still exists as the most renown example of a black community which was sustained by flourishing businesses, there were many communities like Greenwood all over the United States which met a similar fate. Vinegar Hill in Charlottesville Virginia, Harlem in New York City, Parrish Street in Durham, North Carolina, and Newark, New Jersey are just a few.

That leads us to today. There is a growing movement amongst African Americans in the United States; one where African Americans and other marginalized communities are choosing to spend their $1.3 trillion dollars in economic spending power with black-owned businesses. Official Black Wall Street has been a leader in representing, organizing, and growing that movement. Black Woman Entrepreneur, Mandy Bowman, can be credited with bringing together over 17,000 black businesses nationwide through her Black Wall Street App.

In this interview, Mandy recounts how she always knew that she wanted to become an entrepreneur. After graduating from a predominately white institution, she stepped into wokeness and learned all that she could about black history and culture. After reading “Riot and Remembrance” a book that talks about the rise and destruction of Black Wall Street, she set out to help and support as many black businesses as she possibly could.

Perhaps you are a black-owned business. Or perhaps you simply have a goal to patronize black or minority-owned businesses. While there are many other black-owned business directories in play, the Black Wall Street App has the highest volume of black businesses neatly collected, and digitally stored and organized so that you may have access to the new Black Wall Street at your fingertips. Mandy Bowman is beyond dope, and we are sending positive thoughts and prayers that she will one day be able to slide out of her 9-5 and become the full-time entrepreneur that she was always destined to be.