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Black Life Texas

Black Chamber of Commerce Uplifting Businesses

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August is #National Black Business Month and this is an opportunity for Black businesses to be celebrated, supported, and promoted for the milestones Black-owned firms have accomplished.
Being a business owner is hard work and luckily entrepreneurs have national and local chambers of commerce looking out for their best interests.

Recently the United States Black Chamber of Commerce (USBC) came out with its 2022 BlackPrint publication that lists some of its main priorities. The annual publication is provided to give the U.S. Congress and corporate decision-makers a blueprint to support Black-owned businesses.

Some of these priorities include reforming the federal 8(a) program, which was created to give opportunities to minority businesses. However, the program has been dominated by female-owned firms. USBC said if Alaska Native Corporations in the 8(a) program are given an advantage in Alaska over other underserved business owners then this model can be used for Black-owned businesses in other states. USBC would also like to see the expansion of opportunities for Black-owned cannabis businesses. Although cannabis dispensaries (medical and recreational) are fully legal and operational in over 33 states, an overwhelming majority of cannabis businesses are white-owned.

. . . Texas has the largest Black population among the 50 states and the third most Black-owned businesses.


Another priority includes increasing Black-owned companies in radio and TV. According to the Federal Communications Commission in 2019, 77% of AM radio stations were owned by white operators, while only 3% were owned by Black operators, 7% were Hispanic-owned, and 3% were Asian-owned. Only 2% of commercial FM broadcasters are Black compared to 77% of stations owned by white broadcasters. The figures for television ownership are no different. USBC says without Black representation in the media, Black voices and stories cannot be elevated to the extent of those that white-owned stations receive.
USBC adds the Federal government should institute a nationally-recognized Black-owned business certification which they believe would help federal and local governments increase their business with Black companies, contractors, and suppliers. USBC also wants the Black business community to lead global trading initiatives throughout Africa to capitalize on burgeoning economic opportunities in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

At the state and local levels, Black businesses also can turn to the Texas Association of African American Chambers of Commerce (TAAACC) and two San Antonio Black chambers of commerce.

TAAACC is a 32-year-old organization formed by 24 Black chambers of commerce operating in Texas to advocate on their and their member’s behalf. TAAACC says Texas has the largest Black population among the 50 states and the third most Black-owned businesses. Despite this presence and the huge sums of money expended to deliver government services to Texans, Black-owned businesses come in virtually last in contract awards from state agencies. TAAACC said that’s why it’s important to have a network of Black business organizations to combat these glaring disparities.

In San Antonio, it’s estimated that only 5% or a total of 9,985 firms in the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area are African American-owned. The overwhelming majority (95% or 9,500) of Black-owned firms are non-employer firms without paid employees. Only 485 Black-owned firms or 1.5% have employees – which is much lower than the 7% share of the population that is African American. Thankfully the city has two chambers of commerce encouraging Black entrepreneurship.

The Alamo City Black Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1938 as the Negro Chamber of Commerce when 12 men and one woman, Miss Euretta K. Fairchild, decided to form an organization to address the business needs of the Black community in San Antonio. The San Antonio Negro Chamber of Commerce was formed as an outgrowth of a program by the local chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity’s “Bigger and Better Business” week.”

The African American Chamber of Commerce of San Antonio (AACCSA) was founded in 1993 by a group of African American business owners and consumers seeking to improve the economic status of Black business owners and the African American community. The vision was to form an organization that would advocate on behalf of emerging and established businesses, help to create new market opportunities, provide access to capital, and revitalize African American communities.

Both these organizations, along with the national and state Black chambers of commerce, play a pivotal role in uplifting Black business. Alamo City and African American chambers host many events and learning workshops for San Antonio businesses to compete at higher levels.
To learn more about the Alamo City Chamber visit (AlamoCityChamber.org) and to learn about the African American Chamber, go to (AfricanAmericanChamberSA.org).

Black Life Texas

The Real History of Thanksgiving

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The history of Thanksgiving cannot be discussed without recognizing the reality of genocide committed against Native Indigenous people. Free land was the enticement for European settlers to come to the Americas. The Native populations on these lands would have to be removed or conquered to accomplish their goals.

Many foreigners were already slave owners who wanted to plant cash crops using Black slave labor. The history of the United States cannot be fully understood unless one examines “settler colonialism.” Settler colonialism was founded on the ideology of land theft, genocide, and slavery. Those who have written American history with an eraser of bias have found it easy to perpetuate the Thanksgiving myth of Europeans sitting down with Native Americans and enjoying a food feast together—nothing could be further from the truth.

What came before this so-called “Thanksgiving” was murder, genocide, and slavery of Native people before and after the mythical thank you dinner. Puritan settlers came up with the idea of the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a racist law enacted by the Pope of that time and brought to America by the less-than-honorable Christopher Columbus. This is the part of the American origin myth that professors and teachers still ignore to be accepted in the world of historical falsehoods. Settler colonialism is a genocidal policy of murder and land theft to satisfy a false religious belief in racial destiny (also called Manifest Destiny). Settlers required violence to realize their dreams of wealth. No community will willingly give up their land, children, resources, and dignity without a fight, and Indigenous people did not go down without a fight against these ideals that were rooted in a colonial agenda that had a religious spin on it. When European settlers were crossing the ocean and illegally crossing borders, it was something supposedly legal and sanctioned by God.

America was not a virgin land or wilderness filled with wild animals but a land tame to Native people. It was a network of native communities that linked people through roads and trails they carved themselves, which they built long before Europeans arrived. Native people cultivated farmland and crops to survive the harsh winters in the northern parts of America. The Native people knew where the oyster beds were, the water routes, and what plants had medicinal value. Settlers came to America with a culture of conquest and killing that they experienced in hundreds of years of religious savagery between Catholics and Protestants, especially the killing and exploitation of the Irish by the English and Scottish. White supremacy can be traced to the Christian Crusades against Muslims and not to capitalism, though capitalism exploited the idea to the fullest later.

These Europeans did not tame the wilderness. They invaded and murdered the original inhabitants. There are many fake origin stories from one country to the next, as apartheid South Africa once claimed and is now claimed by Israel using similar tactics for decades in a systematic way to force Palestinians from their homes, according to Amnesty International.

The fake Captain John Smith story never mentions his threat to kill all Native women and children if the Native people would not help feed and clothe the settlers from England and provide free labor for the English settlement. When Native people refused, the settlers burned their crops in an attempt to starve out the so-called “Indians.” This would result in the Pequot War, in which settlers would slaughter the Pequot tribe in the 1600s. Unknown to many, this was the first “Thanksgiving,” according to research by historians, in which settlers had a celebration thanking God for their murderous exploits. Scalp hunting was brought to America’s shores by the Scottish Protestants, who also invented the term “Redskin” to describe the bleeding head of one of their victims. Mutilated bloody corpses, which Puritans scalped, were the origin of the term “Redskin.” It was not developed as an indication of “race.” Later in history, the practice of scalping and gutting pregnant Native women would be carried out by the Scotsman Andrew Jackson, whom many now call the “Hitler of America.”

The Thanksgiving Myth is that of smiling “Indians” welcoming the European explorers to America, showing them how to reside in this ‘wilderness,” and sitting down to dinner with them. They supposedly hand their lands off to “frontiersmen,” so these invaders can create an incredible country committed to freedom, opportunity, and Christianity until the end of the world. That is the story — it’s about Native People yielding to settler colonialism. The myth is bloodless and, in numerous ways, an argument for the racist idea of Manifest Racial Destiny. Thus, the Thanksgiving myth was created to present a false history to deny the horrors of American origins and later to invent a fake ideology coined “American Exceptionalism.” American Exceptionalism was derived from these false ideas, created by criminal or ignorant historians, which claim that America is an “Innocent Nation” while other nations may have blood on their hands. Nothing could be further from the real history of America and the truth about Thanksgiving. Today, many of us celebrate family and friends and want nothing to do with the invented narrative. We can always choose to provide our own meanings and, at the same time, educate our community about the lies.

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Downtown SA Lights Up for the Holidays

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Downtown San Antonio will sparkle this holiday season with an array of lights and holiday events. 

Set against the backdrop of one of the city’s most historic and charming walkways, five blocks of Houston Street will buzz with twinkling lights, decorations, entertainers, and vendors from Nov. 24 and runs through January 2. 

 Additionally, on Nov. 24, kick off the holiday festivities with the Annual H-E-B Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at Travis Park. Festivities begin at 4 p.m. and include live entertainment, food trucks, letters to Santa, giveaways, holiday crafts, a special visit from Santa, and a movie screening of “The Grinch.” The tree-lighting ceremony begins at 6 p.m., followed by the movie at 7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. 

Get front-row seats to the 42nd Annual Ford Holiday River Parade, which offers a spectacular one-hour parade along the San Antonio River Walk starting at 6 pm at the Tobin Center. This year’s theme, “Holiday Stories,” will kick off the San Antonio tradition. Always held the day after Thanksgiving, the parade and river lighting ceremony will feature 28 illuminated floats and over 100,000 lights (2,250 strands) illuminating the River Walk. The lights turn on from sundown to sunrise every day until the weekend following New Year’s Day. Seating ranges from $15 to $40. It is broadcast live at 7 p.m. at the Arneson River Theatre.

The Rotary Ice Rink, presented by Valero, will also return this fall at Travis Park in downtown San Antonio. Since 2019, nearly 200,000 people have enjoyed the rink and surrounding festivities. For more information, including hours of operation, pricing, and specials, visit (rotaryicerink.com).

For more events, go to (VisitSanAntonio.com).

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Black Life Texas

Black Soldiers’ Convictions Overturned – A Century Later!

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More than 100 years later, the U.S. Army recently overturned the convictions of the 110 Black soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (also known as the Buffalo Soldiers), who were falsely found guilty following the World War I-era Houston Riots. 

The records of these soldiers will be corrected, to the extent possible, to characterize their military service as honorable. Seventeen of these men are buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs unveiled a sign telling the story of these men to educate visitors about what happened. 

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said, “After a thorough review, the Board has found that these soldiers were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials. By setting aside their convictions and granting honorable discharges, the Army is acknowledging past mistakes and setting the record straight.”

The Houston Riots took place on Aug. 23, 1917, following months of racial provocations against members of the 24th — including the violent arrest and assault of two Black soldiers. Following the assaults and amid rumors of additional threats to soldiers, a group of more than 100 Black soldiers seized weapons and marched into the city, where clashes erupted. The violence left 19 people dead.

In the months that followed, the Army convicted 110 soldiers in a process that was, according to historians, characterized by numerous irregularities. Ultimately, 19 men were executed in the largest mass execution of American soldiers by the U.S. Army. The first set of executions occurred in secrecy and within a day of sentencing, leading the Army to implement an immediate regulatory change that prohibited future executions without review by the War Department and the President.

In 2020 and 2021, the South Texas College of Law petitioned the Army to review the convictions. Shortly after, the Army received petitions from retired general officers requesting clemency for all 110 soldiers.

“As a Texas native, I was grateful to participate in this process early in my tenure at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, and I am proud that the Army has now formally restored honor to soldiers of the 3-24 and their families,” said Under Secretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo. “We cannot change the past; however, this decision provides the Army and the American people an opportunity to learn from this difficult moment in our history.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been deeply involved as this case has unfolded and is prepared to assist any family members upon receipt of the corrected records. Relatives of the soldiers may be entitled to benefits. Family members or other interested parties may request a copy of the corrected records from the National Archives and Records Administration, in accordance with NARA Archival Records Request procedures found at (archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records).

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