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32  GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 the News reported that, after Mark Crockett opened Rita Caz Jewelry Studio in 1986, Emmett Burks, who was retiring from his business, remarked that he and Crock- ett were the only Black- owned businesses in town at the time (though Hershell Winburn’s aforementioned business had actually opened several years earlier). Several Black-owned busi- nesses opened and closed in the 1990s and 2000s, includ- ing Meskie Brown’s Ethiopian Restaurant, Lang’s Village Hair Salon, Locksley and Guy Orr’s Gypsy Café, children’s cloth- ing store Munchkidoodles, Pyramid Books, Keahey’s Graphics, Keith and Kecia Tolliver’s Kecia’s Treasures (featuring West and Central African folk art and world clothing) and Rolling Pen Book Cafe. Rita Caz closed in 2017 after 31 years. “The question everyone has is, what happened?” McKee said. “There used to be a significant number of Black-owned businesses — there’s not a simple answer to the question.” Reasons for decline Black Americans have always faced barriers when it comes to opening and maintaining businesses. The blight of slavery, from the outset, barred enslaved Black Americans from property ownership for decades. When Black Americans were able to build communities in the years that followed, violence from whites could and did often destroy that growth. June of this year marked the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, when whites burned to the ground the thriving Black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma — known colloquially as “Black Wall Street” — and killed more than 100 Black residents in one of the worst incidences of racially motivated violence in American history. Historically, Black Ameri- cans have also been denied loans for businesses from financial institutions — a practice that continues well into the 21st century. In a report that studied American small business loans between 2012 and 2017, the Federal Reserve concluded that small businesses owned by Black entrepreneurs were the least funded among those who had applied for loans during that time period. Black busi - nesses have also been the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the National Bureau of Economic Research reporting in April that 41% of Black-owned businesses in the U.S. had been shuttered, compared to 17% of white- owned businesses. Though Yellow Springs perhaps had a higher than average incidence of Black- owned businesses for a com- munity whose population was mostly white in the 1960s and ’70s, there has been a steady decline in Black- owned businesses since the 1980s. Jocelyn Robinson said the declining diversity in the village’s businesses has been multi-faceted. The loss of industry in town, she said, contributed to the decline of not only Black businesses, but Black residents in general. “The demise of Vernay, the college, the light technical and industrial base that the village had — all of those places had made commit- ments to employ a wide range of people,” she said. Moreover, shifts in the country after desegregation played a part in the decline of Black-owned businesses — not just in Yellow Springs, Staff of Lang’s Village Salon, 1994, clockwise from top: D. W. Lang, Cheryl Williamston, Rick Stanley and Rosenda Chatman. Sign for the first Black-owned Cassano’s franchise, on Xenia Avenue. Ellie “Gabby” Mason, of Gabby’s BBQ. The Party Pantry, located where Trail Town Brewery now stands. Breathe . T A K E A M O M E N T ; T O G E T H E R , W E ’ V E G O T T H I S . If you need assistance or know someone who does, please reach out yscf@yscf.org | 937.767.2655 To donate to the COVID-19 EMERGENCY FUND, visit www. YSCF .org PHOTOS, FROM TOP: 1, 3, YS NEWS ARCHIVE; 2, 4, ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE