Terell Tilford calls himself a true Angeleno. Amidst the gentrification is his neighborhood in West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, his art gallery, Band of Vices, stands resilient.

The gallery’s new show, “Globalization, Pandemics, Racial Reckoning & Giorgio Agamben's 'Bare Life': Where Do We Go From Here?”, showcases artists from all around the world, including India, Poland 'and Spain. The photographs and paintings curated, mostly focus on Black portraiture and show the various facets of Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and the pandemic by several artists of color, like Alicia Piller, Najee Dorsee and Muna Malik.

A photograph inside the Band of Vices gallery shows a young African American boy holding up the sign that says "Am I Next?". (Photo by Maya Iman).

“The beautiful thing, I think, about Band of Vices is that we are in a community that is surrounded by predominantly Black and brown people, and it's very important that we are here,” he said.

The gallery is one of the thousands of Black-owned businesses in America that has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and BLM movement.

For businesses like Tilford’s, August is celebrated as the National Black Business Month, to “drive the policy agenda” that affects these businesses, according to the official website. About 58% of Black-owned businesses were at risk of economical struggles before the pandemic, compared to about 27% of white-owned businesses, as per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Terell Tilford talked about how he wants his gallery, ‘Band of Vices’ to become a space of equal representation for all, in this video.

Black businesses are also more likely to be shut off from accessing capital when compared to their white counterparts with similar credit scores. During the pandemic, this proved to be an additional challenge for these businesses.

Band of Vices took a hit during the pandemic, and it proved to be difficult to keep it running, Tilford said. At this time, Tilford received donations from people who supported his business.

“We did receive a very big boost in sort of a, I don’t want to call it complete endorsement, but Beyonce and her team acknowledged us while acknowledging a whole other bunch of Black-owned businesses at the same time. So, that was probably the biggest boost that we got at all,” he said.

Several celebrities protested for the cause of BLM, including Beyonce, Halsey, Ariana Grande, Timothy Chalamet and Billie Eilish. They not only hit the road but also took to social media to spread activism. However, social media users criticized them for not actually doing anything for those affected. Emma Watson was among them. She faced criticism for not leveraging her platform with millions of followers to share resources.

Many other celebrities donated to the BLM cause. Couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, an organization committed to the eradication of racial injustice.

Beyonce’s foundation BeyGOOD announced in September 2020 that it would donate $1 million to Black-owned businesses that had been affected by the pandemic. The foundation launched the Black-Owned Small Business Impact Fund, which gave $10,000 to small businesses.

Actress Keisha Knight Pulliam partnered with philanthropist Arian Simone to launch the Fearless Fund to invest $5 Million in Black women-owned businesses. Along with this, Mastercard announced the Strivers Initiative, an endeavour to help Black female business owners to overcome hurdles in their business, including a grant program with Fearless Fund.

“I would like to see more celebrities or more people, not just behind the scenes,” said Alafia Myton, owner of the food stall Island to Table Patty Hut in downtown L.A. “It’s good to see them outside as well, along with the movement, because that’s what builds it and makes it stronger.”

However, not all local Black businesses received donations from celebrities.

Instead, many had to take advantage of the BLM movement and promote their business on social media. Business owners like Victoria St. John, owner of Sweet Vicky’s bakery in Long Island, New York, did this by using the quarantine period to market her goods on platforms, like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

St. John had always loved baking, but she never expected to open her own bakery, especially a month before the outbreak of a global pandemic. Despite the closure of thousands of businesses, St. John’s bakery was not only able to survive but also thrive.

“Believe it or not, that was like the most booming time for me,” she said. “A lot of people started coming to in-home businesses because we were the only thing basically open.”

This video takes a look into how the aspiring dessert chef launched her business.

There were more new Black-owned businesses during the pandemic proportionate to the total population than at any time in the last 25 years, according to a study by the Kauffman Foundation. The study, based on census data, revealed that on an average, 380 out of 100,000 Black adults became new business owners during the 2020 pandemic, as opposed to the 240 in 2018 and 2019.

St. John was one of these business owners. However, the murder of Geroge Floyd and the BLM protests that followed, made St. John cautious about when to make posts about her desserts. When she wasn’t out on the street protesting herself, St. John was figuring out how to market her business in a racially sensitive time period.

“I felt like people’s minds weren’t focused on anything other than the movement or Black Lives Matter,” St. John said.

St. John is not alone in finding a way to market her business with societal movements in mind.

Businesses and companies are now aligning themselves with trending social issues to avoid consumer backlash, according to Morning Consult. A tracking poll showed that consumers were more likely to support a business or brand if they spoke up about divisive issues, such as the BLM movement.

To better align herself with societal movements, St. John used her social media platform to bring attention to a particular movement by gearing her marketing towards holidays like Juneteenth.

“For Juneteenth last year, I had to make cupcakes the colors of Africa, so things like that I felt more comfortable posting at the time,” she said.

St. John received the support needed from her Instagram consumers to grow and sustain her bakery.

Unlike St. John, other Black business owners relied on the support from their surrounding communities to sustain their business.

During the BLM movement, Samuel Manar, owner of downtown Los Angeles’ Delvigne Croissant, received an outpouring of support from his community. He was even listed as a Black business owner in the Los Angeles Times, allowing him to gain more customers during the pandemic. This exposure, he said, really helped save his business.

Although Manar gained more customers during the pandemic, he felt the support died down as time passed.

“Since the beginning, I am like, ‘There is something now, but in a month or two, the support is just going to stop,’” he said. “‘People are going to stop talking about it, and the real cause won’t be treated.’ And that’s what happened.”

In June 2020, about 60% of white adults said they supported the BLM movement, according to the Pew Research Center. However, three months later, that number dropped to 45%.

Fighting racism in France and America, Samuel Manar continues to follow his passion.

Big brands took notice of this support that the BLM was receiving and wasted no time to declare their commitment to the cause. They pledged support through Tweets and declarative statements on other social media platforms to garner consumer support. At this time, Black-owned businesses were “going viral” on social media.

This video gives an insight into how the BLM movement and its aftermath impacted these businesses.

Celebrities played a significant role in the universality of the movement, using it to market their personal brands. Public Relations experts, Trisha Pawar and Gautam Madhavan, took notice of this trend and found the popularity behind the Black Lives Matter movement both negative and positive. The endorsements from celebrities and social media platforms helped the movement receive a lot of momentum, however, the concern of it being used as a marketing strategy is a concern, according to the PR experts.

Indian actor Rwitobroto Mukherjee observed the selectivity of actors when it comes to vocally expressing their activism.

This led to the rise of “brand activism,” or taking a stand of prevalent issues being discussed by a majority of the people in the world, most of whom form a huge part of these brands’ clientele.

A study commissioned by New York-based Zeno Group, analyzed how companies that have a “purpose,” are more likely to garner support from consumers. Based on this study, the growth in business of Black owners can be analyzed. The wave of racial reckoning during the BLM movement had a trickle down effect on the economics of the community. People began looking for products that were Black-owned online and looked for ways to support the local businesses in ways that have impacted them in a positive way.

Today, it is not enough to publish a Tweet criticizing the actions of an entity or claiming to support the plight of the wronged. Brands must actively support societal issues, including racial injustice, gender inequality, lack of diversity at the workplace and ignorance about environmental sustainability.

The BLM movement received more than $90 million in donations. Tech behemoths like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Intel, and the like, along with clothing brands like Etsy, H&M and Levis, and food brands like McDonald’s all backed up their claim of support through promises of hefty donations to the cause of racial justice and systemic oppression.

On the other hand, a report published in the newsletter Public Information, showed that a number of companies who donated to the BLM movement also donated thousands of dollars to legislators who have received the lowest grades from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. While brands were quick to endorse the hashtag, they did not show the same equity in their boardrooms. In 2020, only four out of the 500 biggest American companies had a chief executive who was Black.

Faulty reporting by Fox news host Lou Dobbs has led to the misconception that major corporations have been donating millions of dollars to the BLM movement. In reality, the large amounts said to be for BLM, were pledges of investments to address economic and racial inequality.

Among the small businesses interviewed for this story, most never saw the money that was pledged in huge headlines.

For Woodspoon, a Black-owned Brazilian restaurant in downtown L.A., the support came instead from a place of familiarity, which was intertwined with the cultural identity of the eatery.

“We’ve had a lot of support from the humble customers who have been with us for the past 15 years,” said Natalia Pereira, the owner of the restaurant. “The restaurant got a lot of attention because I am Black, a woman of color. ”

The entry to Woodspoon, the Brazilian restaurant owned by Natalia Pereira. (Photo by Tannistha Sinha)

Other Black-owned businesses were getting this attention as well. The BLM movement sparked conversations in terms of lending support to local Black-owned businesses and led people to search exclusively for Black-owned products. In fact, while online support came pouring in, people supported their local Black businesses through personal donations and spread word about them in their individual capacities.

“I have gotten so much support that it’s just crazy,” said Rayshun Parkman, owner of The Trolley Stop New Orleans. “With the amount of support that I have got, I was able to quit my job in the matter of three months because of the love and support I’ve got and being a part of BLM business owner.”

Parkman’s Los Angeles-based business is among the thousands of businesses that identify as Black-owned on social media. This past June, Instagram announced its new “Black-owned” label that businesses run by Black owners in America can now add to their profiles. Applications like Uber Eats and Yelp can also showcase Black-owned businesses exclusively as part of the business profiles.

This label has garnered Parkman a clientele who often hire him for catering. He attributes this success to the label he chose to put on his profile.

He said there were people who just came by and said they bought from him simply because he was a Black-run business.

For some small Black businesses, like Island to Table Patty Hut in downtown Los Angeles, subscribing to the Black-owned label on Yelp caused a surge in customers.

“I actually had customers come in, and they were just supporting because it was a Black-owned business,” said Alafia Myton, owner of the Jamaican food stall.

Some owners came across the label by chance. Ray Brinson, owner of the New York-based Pretty Girls Eat Too, was “playing around” with her Instagram when she saw the option to add the label to her business profile.

“I had no idea that even existed,” she said “But I wouldn’t say that got me more customers. I use hashtags, so some of the times I use like #Black-owned business, #BlackEntrepreneurs. That kind of stuff gets me recognition from other Black- owned pages.”

Brinson is not the only young entrepreneur to use hashtags to bring more exposure to her business. St. John did this as well, promoting her bakery under similar hashtags to Brinson. This created a community of Black entrepreneurs on Instagram who promoted each other's businesses through their Instagram stories.

The community grown around social media for Black-owned businesses has become a support system of sorts, according to Kimberly Ella, co-owner of New York based business, Jeune Skin.

“There’s definitely a huge amount of impact on the connections we made with other Black-owned businesses,” Ella said. “I feel like it’s just helped us become more supportive of one another and stick together a little bit more.”

More than 1.3 million Instagram posts included “Black-owned” or “Black-led” since the 2020 BLM movement, and the number of American businesses that listed these labels on their profiles increased by 50% during this time.

This photo gallery represents the strength displayed by Black entrepreneurs during times of adversity. They have received recognition for their endeavors, but their words evince how they are unable to forget the circumstance that got them there.

There is a community of Black entrepreneurs on Instagram that allows them to promote each other’s Black-owned businesses. Business owners, like Brinson of Pretty Girls Eat Too, used hashtags to promote their business and help Instagram scrollers find their page. However, it was the interaction between Black entrepreneurs posting their fellow Black entrepreneurs' sales on their Instagram stories helped Black-owned businesses gain more followers and customers.

Brinson used this method to promote Pretty Girls Eat Too. She has acquired a substantial following on Instagram, gaining about 1,500 followers in the past year. The young chef has even been contacted by big brands such as UberEats. Though the pandemic led to the closure of many small businesses, according to Brinson, Instagram saved hers.

On the other hand, some businesses, like Sweet Vicky’s, have not relied so much on social media or the Black-owned label. Yet, Philthy Ragz’s women’s clothing store in Inglewood has received support from the community for simply being an integral part of the Black community.

“Being a prominent business in the community and being active in the community, local people who follow the brand knew that we're Black-owned prior to the Black Lives Matter movement,” said showroom manager Mariah Lowe.

This community support seemed to also exist before the pandemic for Tilford and his gallery. Even before he began receiving donations from those who supported BLM, he stressed that the Black community came together by giving out the cash apps and Paypal accounts of Black business owners.

“People said, ‘You know, if you believe in their mission and what they are doing, then send them some money.’ It was really touching and beautiful,” said Tilford.

Though big brands are just beginning to put money behind societal movements and Black-owned businesses, it is clear that the Black community has been supportive of one another since before the idea of BLM existed.