Any great recipe for success is made better by listening to Black women. From protests calling out Kroger for their participation in the food apartheid, a $3.5 million promise from Louisville Metro to the Louisville Community Grocery Coop to the rise of Feed The West, Feed Louisville, and Feed the Revolution, food justice has been propelled into the limelight as a main topic of conversation amidst the largest Civil Rights movement in history. So many of these efforts are led by Black women. Despite having a high number of women-owned businesses, Louisville is still behind on equal pay. According to the University of Louisville, the gender pay gap means that “it takes women an extra three months of wages to make up that 22% difference.” The pay gap is even worse for Black women. It takes us eight months. And Indigenous women have to wait nine months. To make things more challenging, the food industry is especially brutal for women. As my fellow LEE Initiative member Lindsey Ofcaceck suggests, “It helps to have a mentor who is a woman in the industry who has risen the ranks.”
In my efforts in this movement and industry, I decided to explore the experiences of Louisville small business owners in the food industry who have persevered despite the odds. As a woman working in food justice, I've been told all the ways I could fail by men in the industry. Finding the right business partner, investor, or mentor is challenging because a lot of women end up being reduced to all the sexist stereotypes that patriarchy has come to treasure. While we can’t give every woman entrepreneur an amazing mentor, we can share advice from some women whose businesses have weathered the storms. I want to tell these stories, because so many people told me that Feed The West and Black Market could never succeed. If I had given into that discouragement, we wouldn't have fed 31,000 West End residents in six months. By my side are women in Louisville who have persevered, despite the odds: Ms. Wanda Wilson of the Reevesville Family Farm, Cassia Herron of Louisville Association for Community Economics, and Tammy Hawkins of the Parkland Neighborhood Food Mart.
Ms. Wanda Wilson
Phonograph Farms at Reevesville
Many Louisvillians have never been to Paducah. As Black Market continues to meet Black farmers from across Kentucky, I’ve been honored to learn from Ms. Wanda Wilson, who connected Black Market KY with our premium organic eggs. Her son George Wilson is the owner of Phonograph Farms at Reevesville—more than 120 acres of beautiful farmland in Paducah, KY. It’s where you’ll find the scenic Rustic Nights events hosted by former retired star George Wilson, (Ms. Wilson’s son). When asked about the guidance she’s been given over the years, Ms. Wilson tells me that one piece of advice could have cost her family the farm, “A jack leg carpenter told us as farmers that we didn’t need a building permit to build our buildings. That was big.”
In case you’re wondering, like I was, “jack leg” is the same as “jimmy-rigged” or “bootleg.” Thankfully she was able to salvage the lumber, but the labor was already lost. Over generations, Black farmers have dealt with systematic disenfranchisement. Through sharecropping and the Jim Crow era, many Black farmers had their land stolen—this has resulted in the loss of generational wealth. Ultimately, the Reevesville Farmers found out that the shady carpenter had worked for a competitor.
Ms. Wanda and her family embody the sheer brilliance of Black ingenuity.
Cassia Herron
Louisville Association for Community Economics (LACE)
If there is a more studied urban food system scholar and activist in Louisville than Cassia Herron, I’ll be shocked. Well before she incorporated the Louisville Community Grocery Coop in 2019, I fangirled over all the women from this article, but Ms. Herron is certainly #goals. She has been committed to the fight for food security since well before it was a trending topic.
Cassia was told to be more like the "respectable" Black leaders in the city. Over the years, different people advised her to tone down her passion, like so many driven, brilliant Black women are. A white woman who helped raise money for a different Black organization stole Cassia’s idea and ran it into the ground. Cassia had to tell this woman no. Twice. She is happy to report that she was able to stiff arm bad advice. The Louisville Community Grocery Cooperative (LACE’s first major project) is about disrupting the existing systems of capital and fund development amongst other things, “We are going to raise the money without unnecessary intermediaries.”
Tammy Hawkins
Parkland Neighborhood Food Mart
Rather than being blessed with million dollar forgivable loans from her parents or having the benefit of an inheritance, Tammy was instead gifted with grit. She is truly here for the community. As a food justice advocate, she has been an absolute asset in the West End. For her, it wasn’t as much about bad advice, but the lack of advice overall,
“When I started, I didn’t have a lot of people to get advice from. I learned through trial and error. I grew my businesses through experience.” For Tammy, the worst business advice would have been to solely rely on others or wait until someone gave her permission. She is one of the most underrated business owners in the state. She has been so humble for such an accomplished entrepreneur. It’s exciting to see her food mart thrive despite the pandemic.
I won’t confirm or deny whether the folks giving all this bad advice were men, but I think you can take a wild guess. Here’s what I noticed — these women continued to push. And they had community support. As food justice advocate Karen Washington teaches, we are living in a food apartheid and it is imperative that we address all the intersections of food insecurity. These three Black women are making strides and we have a responsibility to follow in their footsteps, instead of taking advice from those who are unwilling to invest in our success.
Shauntrice Martin is an abolitionist and mother who founded #FeedTheWest and Black Market KY to combat the food apartheid. She has written about politics for Taji Magazine, SELF Magazine, and Courier Journal. Shauntrice has earned numerous awards including Louisville Forty Under 40, The Coalition of Black Excellence Impact Award, and Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence.