An unprecedented moment unfolded in the Mississippi Delta Friday at E.E. Bass Cultural Arts Center as the first black male mayor of the City of Greenville welcomed the first black vice president of the United States.
Mayor Errick Simmons declared it was a “great day” for small businesses in rural communities as Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Queen City and one of its long-standing establishments to highlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to “supporting and uplifting America’s small businesses.”
Harris was joined by U.S. Homeland Security Chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson (MS-2), who said of the Biden-Harris Administration, “They don’t forget the people who made it possible for them to serve.”
Thompson asserted this administration’s investment in communities, cities, counties, school districts and even the state of Mississippi has yielded opportunities that are not often presented.
“We now have more money than we’ve ever had to do with, but now we’ve got to decide how we’re going to spend it,” he said.
Joyce Johnson, owner of Joycee’s Fabric & Sewing Center located at 622 South 9th St., was visited by Vice President Harris in the early afternoon hours of Friday.
During her introduction of the Vice President, Johnson spoke about what opening her own business in 1994 meant to her and the commonalities she and the Vice President share as they both learned to sew under the tutelage of their own mother and grandmother.
Johnson, who described opening Joycee’s Sewing & Fabric Center as a “dream come true,” also talked about what it meant for her to be able to sustain her business throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What you may not know is, like many small business owners, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened my livelihood — I had to make serious decisions as to whether I could keep Joycee’s open,” she said. “But, thanks to Hope Credit Union and programs like the Paycheck Protection Program, I found out that I had options that would allow me to keep my business open and my dream alive.”
Vice President Harris began her address to the audience by reaffirming the significance of a small business such as Joycee’s.
“I know what it means to have a place like that in a community where you can go and where families go and where it is intergenerational in terms of the families that are impacted by the work that happens in places like that,” she said before thanking Johnson for allowing her to visit.
The Vice President highlighted the endeavors of Congressman Thompson on behalf of the State of Mississippi as well as Hope Credit Union CEO, Bill Bynum, who also encouraged her to see for herself what is going on in the Magnolia State as it pertains to the economy and small businesses.
And, she noted Tuesday’s passing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022, which makes lynching a federal hate crime.
Vice President Harris regarded the City of Greenville as resilient, alluding to The Flood of 1927.
“Over the past two years, like so many communities around our nation, you have faced incredible challenges and you have met those incredible challenges with incredible strength,” she said. “Greenville is a place built by the ambition and the aspiration of its people.”
The same is true, as history would suggest, for America.
However, realizing certain dreams and ambitions is not as easy as some may think.
Vice President Harris pointed out that turning ambition and aspiration into action often requires capital — capital to start and grow small businesses and to buy and renovate a home, which requires financial services that are not equally accessible to everyone, especially those who live in rural communities.
“Black entrepreneurs are three times more likely to report that they did not apply for credit for fear of being turned away by a bank. Black and Latino homeowners are rejected at a higher rate when applying for home loans from traditional financial institutions, even when they have credit profiles similar to other applicants,” she noted.
Those reasons are why Vice President Harris continues to make strides such as securing $12 billion for community lenders in December 2020 and supporting the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
She emphasized the importance of community lenders in rural communities as she believes they often see the potential that others might overlook.
“Hope Credit Union loaned Joyce just over $10,000, an amount too small for most traditional banks to bother lending, but it was an amount that was transformative for Miss Joyce,” Vice President Harris illustrated. “Across our nation, small businesses are engines of economic prosperity and this is especially true in rural areas and in Mississippi where over 99% of all businesses are small businesses.”
Vice President Harris, even more comprehensively, illustrated how small businesses and their owners contribute to the preparedness of future generations and the leadership of the communities they serve.
“They are civic leaders, they sponsor the local softball teams, they mentor and hire young people from the community, they are role models,” she added, noting the challenges they sometimes face.
Those challenges, according to the Vice President, are being met with solutions such as affordable high-speed internet, expansion of the nation’s investment in community lender institutions and the expansion and extension of the Community Advantage Program — a loan program introduced by the U.S. Small Business Administration to meet the credit, management, and technical assistance needs of small businesses in underserved markets.
Vice President Harris summarily stated Greenville is a place that can help the Biden-Harris administration “take temperature” of how it is doing with regard to its investment in small businesses.
“This is a place that is filled with people with talent and tenacity and ambition. People, who, when given the opportunity, will build something extraordinary,” she concluded. “There are communities like Greenville across the South and across our nation, reservoirs of ambition and aspiration just waiting to be tapped, that is why we invest in community lenders and that is why we will keep working to build an economy that includes everyone and that is why we will keep working to ensure that every person in our nation, no matter where they live, or who they are, has an opportunity, not only to succeed, but to thrive, because when we do, we lift up communities like Greenville and we lift up our small businesses and all of America.”
