Our Black Year by Maggie Anderson

Author:Maggie Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

Although the Farmer’s Best closing knocked us on our rear ends, we were getting signals that we had at least piqued people’s interest. The e-mails, T-shirt orders, and registrations kept coming—between the website and the Facebook group, about eight thousand official EE members by August—and so did speaking requests. We received awards from or invitations to partner with several key organizations—from the United American Progress Association, a grassroots organization based on Chicago’s South Side, to the NAACP, National Urban League, and National Black Chamber of Commerce.

Throughout this time we were reevaluating our media strategy, which had been focused on getting as much national, mainstream media exposure as possible, sometimes at the expense of neglecting smaller Black outlets. Our PR firm had to focus on paying clients, and it was not doing much in terms of promoting our story. So other media’s coverage triggered most of the media we got, and that made us think we may have been spending too much time explaining and defending instead of sharing and inspiring. Educating outsiders who wanted to understand the issues was important, but we wanted to spark real change, and nothing was going to change unless Black people were inspired to act. The result was that we altered our media strategy: We would focus our efforts on predominantly Black outlets.

Which was why meeting Doug Banks, one of the most popular Black radio hosts on the air, was so invigorating.

We crossed paths a few weeks after my June speech at Friendship-West Church, when I attended the National Urban League Conference in Chicago. Apart from being a radio giant, Banks is an author and public speaker, though he is definitely not your typical talking head. He presents a full-bodied, nuanced portrayal of the issues and believes in intelligent conversation—as much as can be achieved on a radio call-in show, anyway. In other words, he’s smart, articulate, and takes seriously his role as cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Ride with Doug and Dede. Because of all that, people view him as a leader in our community.

When I told him about The Empowerment Experiment, I could almost see the wheels clicking. That happened with lots of people. And, like lots of people, he said he supported the project 100 percent. What made Doug different was that he immediately took action, inviting us to be on the show, which airs in the all-important 2–6 p.m. weekday time slot. We set it up for August 18, a Tuesday. John and I were ecstatic. Every day on the show Doug submits a topic for discussion on “The Adult Conversation,” and folks call in. We thought Doug and Dede would interview us for the standard few minutes, which is what happened with most of our other media appearances. Instead, they called us at home and kept us on the show for an unprecedented three hours. The topic was “Should Black People Do More to Support Black Businesses?”

We got our answer in a hurry: no bleeping way.

While John

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