2 Sisters Sweet Creations is good every day.
Or so they hear.
The sisters have concocted confections for a local megachurch, the offices of Chewy and Home Depot and anyone else who may wander into their DeSoto bakery. People are especially interested in the sisters’ sweets around Black holidays.
But those corporations that patronized the bakery during Black History Month, and ahead of Juneteenth, have yet to become regular customers despite consistent compliments. Corporate feedback has been nothing but positive, and nearly 100 Google reviews average out to a sterling 4.8 stars.
“We’re good enough to do business with you when it’s Juneteenth, but what about just on an everyday basis?” said Yolanda Bledsoe, who runs 2 Sisters with her sibling, Deidra Keener. “We’re somebody you want to do business with in, so-to-speak, that off time, when it’s not popular to do business with Black people.”
The sisters are grateful for all business they get — they’re preparing sweets for a division of employees at the Dallas Cowboys’ headquarters this week — and the bump in sales around the holidays. But there’s a question of consistency outside of those times of year.
That’s not an issue for Friendship-West Baptist Church, where the sisters worship. The church in Dallas’ Red Bird area orders more often, and in larger quantities, than Fortune 500 companies who usually only call once or twice a year.
On the third year Juneteenth is celebrated as a federal holiday, many Black business owners and advocates are still trying to gauge the authenticity and efficacy of corporate support of Black entrepreneurship that peaked in the months after George Floyd’s May 2020 death.
The dynamic the women face in Dallas’ southern suburb is just one example of the disconnect between symbolic, spoken support of the Black community and tangible support. Year-round patronization for Black businesses and Black access to capital are just two aspects of needed “economic liberation,” described by Ken Harris of the National Business League.
There’s no better time, in his mind, to talk about these issues than Juneteenth, when Black liberation is under a lens. The league is one of the nation’s oldest and oldest Black trade associations and support systems.
“There’s a direct tie in in terms of self-reliance, self-independence from an economic standpoint, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Harris said. “This is a tremendous time and we’re taking our ancestors with us and we’re going to be looking to use Juneteenth as a solution and tool and an inspiration towards the full entrepreneurial, enterprise liberation and empowerment of black business.”
A question of commercialization
Juneteenth has gone from a somewhat niche celebration for Black Americans, especially Black Texans descendant from enslaved people, to a holiday recognized by banks and the government — and big retailers.
Two years ago, President Joe Biden designated Juneteenth a federal holiday, in part because of the longtime advocacy of Fort Worth native Opal Lee, prompting a rush of Juneteenth-related products by entities who previously showed little interest in the holiday.
When Juneteenth ice cream and Juneteenth shirts bearing white models were produced by corporations, Black academics and historians decried the commodification of what is an emotional holiday for Black Americans.
But to some Texans, the “commodification” of the holiday was overstated. After all, using times meant for deep reflection — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Veterans Day — to sell discounted merchandise is American as the Fourth of July itself.
“In the ‘50s, and early ‘60s, department stores here, which had segregated water fountains and restrooms, advertised full-page ads in the newspaper with Juneteenth sales,” said Bob Ray Sanders, spokesperson for the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce. “… And it wasn’t seen so much as commercialization. It was seen as all holidays now are.”
The question of commodification isn’t so much whether it should happen at all, it’s whether it can happen responsibly, people who talked to The Dallas Morning News say.
Sanders said it’s up to Black people to make sure the day isn’t “defiled” by being associated with just sales and parties. The history and the “why” are vital, especially as some discussions about Black history are being curtailed in classrooms, he said.
Harrison Blair, president of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce, had similar sentiments. The descendant of entrepreneurs, including newspaper founder William Blair, he welcomes a capitalistic bent to the holiday. He doesn’t see an issue with the making of Juneteenth gear and signage.
“I prefer to buy them from a Black vendor because I want to give my dollars to where I know they’re going to support people who support the communities that we live, work and play in,” he said. If Juneteenth is “being commodified by the people whose culture it is, then that’s fine. You know, everybody feels a little bit more comfortable when you walk into a rib shack and you see that rib shack is being smoked out by somebody that may look like your uncle.”
Annette Gordon-Reed, a native Texan and Harvard University professor who has written books about Juneteenth, said in an email there’s a guide to how to properly mesh business with the holiday: Just look at Black Texans.
“There have been a couple of unfortunate attempts at commercialization that have been called out. But it’s inevitable that this will happen to some degree,” she wrote. “I’m hoping, however, we will be able to keep the meaning of the holiday alive despite that. I think the advantage we have is that Black Texans have been celebrating this since 1865, and we have created a template for how to do it.”
Juneteenth and ‘Black economic liberation’
The Dallas and Fort Worth chambers and the National Business League have plans to increase access to Black capital and to improve Black neighborhoods and communities that do not end when Juneteenth does. The historical context of the holiday is useful to this end.
Sanders, who retired after decades as a journalist with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, remembers segregated Fort Worth’s bustling Black districts, which died after integration. These districts existed in each quadrant of the city, he said.
Harris’ group wants to rekindle these independent Black communities across America. The NBL has a strategy to help digitize thousands of Black businesses in the next five years, helping level the playing field while tech and social media grow as key economic factors. The group also has a plan to make Black-owned businesses the largest employers of Black workers.
“We [as Black people] missed the agricultural movement, because we were picking cotton, and we couldn’t participate,” Harris said. “We missed the industrial revolution because we were Jim Crow-ed out of it and segregated to only operate within our local communities. … But then when we got successful at forming our own Black Wall Streets … we were met with severe oppression and almost terroristic activities and policies to destroy those economic centers.
“And so here we are, again, almost 70 years after the Civil Rights Movement seeking our economic plight.”
To fix these issues locally, Sanders was on a mayoral task force designed to identify gaps in Black/white education and opportunity in Fort Worth and set plans to address them.
“We decided that every one of those issues came back to economics,” Sanders said. “… You can’t really talk about freedom without talking about economic freedom and responsibilities and opportunities.”
Progress is happening, slow as it may be. Sanders is cautiously optimistic that city leadership is committed to reversing decades of disinvestment.
Sanders said the Fort Worth chamber has helped Black contractors secure projects for the school district,the city,a hospital and DFW International Airport. Government contracts, particularly at the federal level, have historically been elusive for Black entrepreneurs.
Blair said an executive with Goldman Sachs approached him about allowing Black vendors to sell directly to the investment firm’s employees.
“[He said] we’re not going to sell any kind of flavored ice cream for Juneteenth but … we’re going to invite small businesses to come in and interact with our large employee base” Blair recalled. “And we’re going to have a little fair for them to go and put up tables and sell their wares or their services directly to our employees.”
The 2023 Juneteenth Golf Classic, held at Black-owned Dallas Golf Club, is another holiday event centered on economic advancement in the area.
JCPenney and Target are two large companies that have seemingly held true to their promises to work with Black businesses. But Harris said some Black-focused programs have been opened to include all minority business, thereby dimming the focus on African American entrepreneurs.
“So we got a major fight, a major struggle, we just got to use Juneteenth to realize that we are not economically free,” he said. “We need to use Juneteenth to know that that serving as a Black economic underclass is not acceptable.”
Solidarity in the community
Gordon-Reed said Juneteenth can be a useful reminder about buying Black.
“I hope that it’s helpful in that regard,” she said. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with supporting Black businesses. In fact, it is imperative. And if the day reminds us of the solidarity we need to have within our community, that is all to the good.”
The numbers show how important it can be. More than half of Black-owned firms across the U.S. brought in less than $100,000 in revenue in 2020, and that percentage rose in 2021. Nearly 40% of Black Americans under the age of 40 report buying regularly from Black-owned businesses, but that number drops heavily among other ethnic and age groups.
Keener and Bledsoe have seen an increase in day-to-day sales since Black History Month, and they have dozens of repeat customers, yet the consistency isn’t there yet to build the wealth other white-owned confection companies have seen.
But they are making enough to hire at least one other employee, and there are everyday positives that keep the pair going.
One man traveled four-plus hours from Victoria to buy sweets from 2 Sisters Sweet Creations. Like many older Black customers who come by, he was beaming with pride as he showed his copy of the February Dallas Morning News that included an interview with the sisters about their Black History Month activity.
They hope for a day where that exposure isn’t such a surprise and large-scale support isn’t siloed to one late-spring weekend or the calendar’s shortest month. No big business, outside of Friendship-West Baptist Church, has ordered more than once from 2 Sisters, or ordered outside of a Black holiday, though these companies usually tell the women how excited they are to work with a Black-owned business.
“It’s almost like, ‘OK, it’s a cool thing to do. It’s Juneteenth so because that’s a Black holiday, we need to find somebody Black,’” Keener said. “… But however you found us [for Juneteenth], that vehicle worked three weeks ago, or it’ll work three months from now.”
The women are proud to bake for a host of individuals of all shades and backgrounds. But perhaps their favorite customer was Lee — they made her birthday cake last year.
It was a fitting example of the cross between history and entrepreneurship near the holiday. Sanders said it’s important not to forget one while trying to discuss the other.
“There are many people like, again, Opal Lee and others, to make sure that there’s meaning put to that whole effort of celebrating Juneteenth, that people talk about the heritage, that people pass along the history,” Sanders said. “Not trying to sanitize it in any way, but just telling the history well. Telling it all, the good and the bad.”
