MSA celebrates black history month
This month, Main Street Alliance is celebrating Black History Month with a special focus on the power of small business owners to create meaningful change.
As most of you know, our mission at Main Street Alliance is to help small businesses organize to build the power they need to effect positive change for themselves, their employees, and their communities. Many of the issues we advocate to address, disproportionately affect black business owners and community members.
The importance of recognizing Black History Month is to remember the struggles that Black Americans have faced throughout our nation’s history—and how they have fought through these difficulties to make significant contributions to our society. Throughout history, many black American small business owners have organized together to create change in their communities. This month we honor those individuals and celebrate their accomplishments as we continue to work towards a more unified and equitable country.
A. Philip Randolph was a prominent figure in African American history and made significant contributions to the black community as a trade unionist and civil rights activist. His wife, Lucille Green Randolph was a small business owner of an elite hair salon in New York City. She used the success of her small business to support her husband’s political career. Phillip Randolph led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and served as its first president. Randolph's nonviolent protest and mass action efforts, such as the March on Washington movement and a national civil disobedience campaign to ban segregation in the armed forces, inspired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and made him a true "father of the civil rights movement."
The Black American community has always stepped up in times of need. The same is still true today. Through their tireless advocacy, black small business owners continue to organize together in order to create positive policy changes that benefit all people regardless of race or ethnicity.
William Green is the owner of Fox City Flix in St. Neenah, Wisconsin. Fox City Flix is a family-run and friends-inspired movie entertainment company. William joined Main Street Alliance as a way to continue his family’s commitment to serving the community in a purposeful way. William is passionate about Paid Family Medical Leave because he wants to be able to provide paid time off to his staff to be with their newborns.
This year at Main Street Alliance, we are focusing on issues such as Paid leave, childcare, anti-monopoly measures, capital access, and healthcare—all areas where small businesses can make a big difference in creating positive change. We are proud to stand alongside these businesses as they fight for greater equity and inclusion in our society.
