Our Black Year (25 page)

We also found another place to shop—a cramped, disappointing joint called Woods Grocery, on the South Side, just a few blocks north of Farmers Best but in another retail hemisphere, the one in hell. It was J's Fresh Meats with a couple more refrigerators, a slightly improved grocery selection, and much higher prices. I'd drive about fourteen miles one way to Woods because it had some cold cuts, cheese slices, a large selection of sugary cereals and sodas, and a wide array of frozen TV dinners, the new staples of the Anderson household diet. Driving to Woods, I took the same route I used to get to Farmers Best, longing for Karriem's store every minute of the journey. Thinking about spending $40 at Woods on what typically would cost roughly $15 elsewhere made me angry. This was insane: two boxes of cereal at $6 each; pancake mix for $3.69 when, prior to our experiment, I had never paid more than $2 a box; a pack of bologna for $3.99. We don't even eat bologna; we eat turkey. Bologna, in my mind, is a distant, suspicious cousin to meat, but under the desperate circumstances of The Empowerment Experiment in the third quarter of the year, it qualified.

In retrospect it sounds exactly like what it was: ridiculous. But when I was driving all those miles and paying all that money for primarily substandard food, I mostly thought about the people who live around Woods and had to shop there. It was pretty much their only option in what otherwise appeared to be a food desert. But I didn't feel burdened, nor—and this sort of shocked me—did I feel like giving up. If anything, I felt like it was my duty to keep shopping this way. If a point was going to be made, maybe it was good that I didn't have a wonderful option like Karriem's store because most Black Americans don't.

One thing about an adventure like this, if ever there was an adventure like this, is that you make discoveries about the world and about yourself. Some are dreadful; others are awesome. And some are just curious. As
our bologna saga illustrated, finding meat was particularly challenging. Once in a while we'd find something in the small refrigerated section at Woods—cold cuts, bacon, a cylinder of ground beef. On a good day we'd find a bag of frozen chicken wings. But usually the case was picked clean. We might as well have become vegetarians, except we couldn't find vegetables either. Is there something like Bar-b-cue-nacho-chip-arian? Frozen-burrito-arian? Those might have been closer to our status.

On one of my increasingly rare online searches, I stumbled across a meat distributor that looked promising, Israel's Clean Meat House, which, near as I could tell, was also a church, or maybe a Bible study group, on the far South Side. You don't get that very often—butcher and Bible. But the word “clean” appealed to me, and it looked legit. I was a little surprised that I hadn't come across this outfit in my previous searches, but I'd never looked specifically for meat packers or meat distribution companies. Israel's had only recently begun selling directly to the public, I learned, to help bolster lagging sales. When I called to check it out and explained our project, the person on the other end of the phone knew of us.

“So that's you?” he said, his voice probing. “Is that really you? And your husband? I saw y'all on TV, but I'm one of those folks who's less likely to believe something just 'cuz I saw it on TV? You know what I mean?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” I said. “Everything feels like a show now.”

“But you. Y'all for real,” he said. “God Bless it! This is real. And I'm talking to you.”

“Yes, sir. And I called you because I want to support you. It's for real.”

“Well, that's good. He may not come when you want Him to . . . ”

“But He's always right on time,” I said, finishing the popular Christian axiom. “Speaking of being on time, this talk is really on time. You know that our grocery store closed down? I need food. And I need it from a quality Black business. Now, is that you? Was He on time?” I said, chuckling.

“Yes. He is an on-time God.” I think he'd had enough of the unnecessary religious banter. “You said you went to our website, right?”

Then he explained how retail worked with Israel's Clean Meat House. It was an education in resourceful, if somewhat elemental, African American food procurement.

First, you call or fax in your order from a fairly wide selection of cuts—turkey, lamb, and beef products—including burgers, hot links, Italian sausage, bacon, breakfast sausage links, and patties. On Israel's Meat Market Day, the second Sunday of each month, you could pick up your order at their main location, which was an annexed part of a church on the South Side. Or if you ordered enough, the drivers would meet you at one of a number of different locations. The church was about twenty miles away from us. So I drove to the parking lot of a Black-owned bank, which was only a few miles closer on the South Side but a little more conveniently located right off the expressway. Locals could walk up and purchase products on the spot on Market Day, but only those who ordered and paid in advance were entitled to the big discounts. The first hour was reserved for those customers; Israel's handled walk-up customers in hours two and three.

I was hoping to see a huge crowd, something akin to the famous scene from the African American classic
New Jack City
, when neighborhood drug kingpin Nino Brown, portrayed by Wesley Snipes, sets up in an abandoned lot and passes out turkeys and boom-box radios to the adoring residents and throws money to the kids.

Fortunately, the people of Israel's Meat were not wealthy drug dealers, giving out turkeys in exchange for pumping drugs and crime into the neighborhood. They were the exact opposite, really, but seeing a similarly appreciative crowd would have been nice. I noticed one man, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt with a bright purple tie, leaning on an old Ford Taurus with a large cooler at his feet. He was fifty maybe, clean-shaven, with shockingly bright eyes. The day was hot, and he was sweating and looked uncomfortable—until I got out of the car. He smiled a Jimmy Carter smile and started walking over, arms outstretched. I returned his hug, pointed at the cooler, and said, “That for me?”

“Yes, Ma'am. And we threw in a little extra so you can sample the beef products. You okay with beef?

“Yes, and thank you so much.” I hugged him again. He took the bags out of the cooler and loaded them into my backseat. He was closing my door and about to turn away. “Sweetie,” I said, “I need a receipt. You know we're saving the receipts for the study.”

“Yeah, yeah. Man that's great,” he said. “We all need to save our receipts.” He shook his head, went to his car and returned with a receipt. “Here you go. Take care nah.”

I felt a moment of sadness, overwhelmed by the knowledge that he would never grow his company into something like Johnsonville Sausage or Hillshire Farm. Then I looked at the backseat and saw all of those boxes of turkey burger patties, hot links, and Italian sausage, and I felt overjoyed. “Thank you, Jesus!”

For my next Israel's order, I did venture to the church after stopping at God First God Last, which was only a few blocks away. I wanted to see whether more folks would show up at the church office. Much to my satisfaction, they did. It was not like the crowd who came out for Nino Brown, but there were about fifteen customers standing in line when I arrived. Just like me, they were picking up food they had already ordered. The parking lot took up the corner of Kingston Avenue and 75th Street, a busy thoroughfare of the South Side. It was one of those streets camera crews filmed when they wanted to show a gritty Black neighborhood. But this working-class area lacked the suffocating depression of Madison Street on the West Side. People here were shaking hands and waving at each other, working, or walking with their kids and coworkers. Every store on the block was open. The owners weren't Black, for sure, unlike every person you could see, but at least the stretch wasn't full of abandoned storefronts.

The back door to Israel's refrigerated eighteen-wheeler was open, and I saw my friend from the bank parking lot there behind a small desk placed next to the truck. The operation seemed very organized. Customers provided their name, and the nice fellows from Israel's, all wearing white, short-sleeved shirts and bright purple ties, handed them the meat from the back of the truck. Everyone in line engaged in small talk while waiting. As each customer reached the desk, I could see that patrons and employees knew each other.
Yes! Repeat customers
, I thought. I
was happy to support an honest businessman, although buying meat from a truck instead of at a major retailer did feel a little pathetic. But then I thought,
maybe this is how Johnsonville started decades ago. We just have some catching up to do.

We availed ourselves of Israel's finest for a while, but the process was so cumbersome and, in truth, I wasn't that crazy about the taste of the meat, except for the turkey Italian sausage. In September we stopped buying there.

While we were foraging for food and building the movement, Mima's health was in rapid decline. Most days she'd make it out of her bedroom to the living room, but she would just lay on the couch all day watching TV. These were sad and desperate times, when she was lucid enough to talk about the fact that she wasn't going to be with us for much longer and to wonder about what came next.

In August the Black Business Network, an online community of nearly thirty thousand Black supporters of African American businesses, asked me to deliver a keynote address during the conference celebrating its official launch in Atlanta. Though BBN's organizers had been operating for a couple of years as TagTeam Marketing, a resource for Black entrepreneurs to grow and showcase their businesses, this event would celebrate the official launch of TagTeam's new offspring, the Black Business Network. BBN's focus was to facilitate buying Black, and its launch coincided with my scheduled trip to visit my parents.

BBN, like most Afrocentric community-based activist organizations we encountered, was a robust supporter of The Empowerment Experiment. Although the group couldn't offer funding or the connections we needed, their faith in our movement was unmatched. John referred to them and other Black economic power groups as “the base,” “doers,” and “the soldiers.” I called them the “wall peeps” after one supporter told me during a BBN event: “Mrs. Anderson, I'd go through a wall for you!”

What BBN lacked in corporate sponsors, university affiliations, and media recognition, they made up for in passion, hope, and a willingness
to do what needed to be done. Headquartered in an impressive facility in Atlanta, BBN had its own store, classrooms in which to teach successful business practices and train sales reps, and a state-of-the-art auditorium where businesspeople could make their pitches and others, like me, could speak. Those sales/motivational sessions could get pretty emotional, with lots of hugging and clapping.

My plan was to spend the weekend with my parents and then give my speech on Sunday afternoon. But Mima wasn't doing well. On Saturday she was having trouble keeping food down, and we were getting conflicting instructions from the on-call nurses. That night, when Mima finally fell asleep, I resumed working on my speech. When she awoke in pain about four hours later, I gave her meds and we talked about my plans to write this book. She said I should dedicate it to Cara and Cori and made me promise to include lots of pictures in it.

“Some people don't understand your writing,” she added. “Make it so everyone understands.”

Mima
, I thought.
Even now, she's offering blunt, constructive criticism like only she can.

The morphine tabs kicked in as we cuddled, and I told her repeatedly that I loved her as she drifted off. The next day, when I was getting ready to go to the meeting, it was clear that the intense pain had resumed. Unfortunately, we could do nothing about it because it wasn't time yet for the next dose of medication. I didn't want to leave, but Mima and Papa insisted. They were scared, but they were also adamant that I was going to give that speech.

I cried when I left them, cried during the drive to BBN headquarters, and kept at it as I walked toward the building. I was trying to prepare myself for the energetic reception I knew awaited me. I tried to take deep breaths, but the heave-filled sobs overwhelmed them. Just as I placed my hand on the door, I heard my name.

“Are you ready for Maggie Anderson?” an amplified voice said. “Are you
ready
?” I heard shouts and clapping. “Y'all ain't ready,” the man's voice said. “This queen is coming all the way from Chicago to be with us and that's all you got?”

Standing in the doorway, I should have smiled, but I couldn't. My mind was locked on Mima.

My host had been doing a good job of pumping up the crowd. Music was blasting, and the DJ was mixing in excerpts from Dr. King's last speech, the one in which he asked the people of Memphis to take their money out of downtown banks and put them in Black-owned banks like he had done. Did these folks at BBN believe I was part of all that? It was overwhelming.