By Emily Scaff
Dina McIntosh has owned an online hair product company based in Lexington for three years. Mcintosh says her company, MannaVeda, has accumulated a following of customers who value her natural hair products.
Despite her success, she says she feels isolated from other business owners in the area.
When McIntosh walks through downtown, she said, it is rare to see another business owner or employee who is Black. She says the lack of diversity in local businesses makes it difficult for Black business owners to succeed.
“The real growth happens when you sit down with me as a businessperson who you take seriously and say, ‘Look, I’ve been there,” she said. “But we don’t have those kinds of conversations. Because we’re not at that table. We don’t have seats at that table.”
Lexington once had a developed Black community, with Black-owned butcher shops, barbers, and hotels, City Councilwoman Marylin Alexander said. However, the last Black-owned store on Main Street was sold in 2018.
In 2020, a group of city leaders started the Walker Entrepreneurship Program to bring back more diverse business owners to the community. The program, named after Harry Lee and Eliza Walker, a thriving Lexington entrepreneurial couple in the early 1900s, aims to train, fund, and support aspiring Black entrepreneurs, according to its website.
Under the program, more than 20 entrepreneurs received start-up funds to start their own business between 2020 and 2023. However, the program is on hiatus after grant funds were depleted, said Tinni Sen, a member of the Walker advisory board. Board members are discussing what the program will look like if it continues in the future, Sen said.
Black business owners have struggled to find support since the program was put on pause.
Participants of the program took an eight-week training that taught them fundamentals on business taxes, bookkeeping, and marketing.
“They poured quality information into us,” McIntosh said. “We had professors from everywhere giving us free lectures.”
McIntosh says many Black business owners fail to succeed because of a lack of mentorship.
“We are in a community that’s not close knit,” she said. “I know maybe four other Black women who are still in business here … but we never had mentors.”
The population of African-Americans living in Lexington has decreased alongside the number of Black-owned businesses. In 1950, there were 1,117 African-Americans living in Lexington, according to U.S. Census data. By 2020, that number decreased to 454.
“Because of the migration out, there were no people behind them, no children left here to take over the business where you would have this generational type of entrepreneurial spirit,” Alexander said.
Alexander says a lack of generational wealth within the Black community also contributes to the lack of Black-owned businesses.
“We don’t have ancestors who had millions of dollars set aside to make sure that their children, and their children’s children were taken care of,” she said. “There were no job opportunities to make that happen.”
About 75% of small businesses get started using personal savings, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Coffee Corner, located at a stand inside Rockbridge Regional Library, is one of the few Black-owned businesses located in downtown Lexington. Owner Melissa Wooding says a lack of funds is a main reason why she doesn’t rent her own space.
“It becomes an issue of being able to afford the rent for a downtown space,” she said. “If you don’t have your clientele built up, then you’re not going to be able to afford all of it.”
Wooding was able to start her business with a $10,000 grant through the Walker program. She is also able to operate her coffee stand at the library without paying rent.
Some community members say a culture shift is also needed in order to bring more diverse businesses to the area.
“I’m going into restaurants and getting the hush, the delayed service,” McIntosh said. “It’s not just that we don’t have business here. We don’t shop here. We don’t eat here.”
Despite the challenges, McIntosh said she has hope that the Black-owned business community will grow in the future.
“One day we will have a black business on Main Street again,” she said. “We need it again, because we used to have that.”