By Colter Hettich, Features Editor
Paul Lewis, energy consultant for Empower Energy Solutions, watched a documentary from his easy chair. Belizean Natives hoisted buckets from a well on the television. Native children studied weathered and outdated textbooks in schoolrooms with no electricity.
Lewis helps people. His career allows him to help people transition to renewable energy. He joined the Abilene Black Chamber of Commerce, the second Black Chamber to form in the state of Texas, to help minorities in business. Little did he know his greatest chance to help would involve the very people he watched in that television documentary.
Heading South
The Tri-county Black Chamber of Commerce chartered on Feb. 11, 2005. Leondria Thompson, Tri-county CEO and chairman, said she founded the chamber to assist African Americans in business and remove barriers they frequently encounter.
The Tri-county Chamber actually serves 18 counties, divided into six “tri-county” regions. A county is considered developed once an active Black chamber of commerce has been established, and Thompson said she expects all 18 to be developed by 2012.
Twelve councils, comprised of Tri-county members, decide which projects to pursue and how to pursue them. The international initiative council discovered a well of opportunity in the small, South American nation of Belize. The two parties signed an agreement in October 2005 that allowed Tri-county representatives to meet with Belize heads of state and assess their needs.
“The first one was an agreement to create the channels and lay the foundations which we can build upon,” Thompson said. “We successfully fulfilled every objective from that agreement.”
Soak Up the Sun
Upon arrival, Belize officials greeted Tri-County Black Chamber representatives with open arms and an oversized banner that proclaimed, “We are open for business!” The team quickly discovered the reasons for the Belizeans’ excitement.
“The country itself is comparable to where the States were in ’54 or ’55, infrastructure wise,” Lewis said.
The country’s power grid receives its electricity from Mexico – at a painful price. Most Belizeans pay between 1.20-1.60 Belizean dollars (40-60 American cents) per kilowatt-hour. The president of a major businessmen’s association in Belize City told Lewis he tries to keep the energy consumption of his 123,00 square-foot warehouse under 50,000 kilowatt-hours per day. For an air-conditioned building that size, 50,000 kilowatt-hours is practically unobtainable.
Although the country sits on Yucatan’s east coast, consistently still days eliminate wind as a reliable source of energy. The one resource Belizeans have plenty of is the same thing that draws many tourists to its shore: sunshine.
Recent developments in solar technology have made Belize’s energy goals easier. In the past, a dedicated panel was required to heat water and another to produce electricity. ENTECH, a company specializing in advancing solar energy technology, has developed a new module that produces almost twice the energy of traditional flat panels and can both heat water and provide electricity.
Tourism is responsible for more than 75 percent of the country’s income. But something other than business made its way to the top of Lewis’ priority list.
During one of the many meetings Lewis endured throughout the trip, a doctor presented a series of photographs, projected for all to see. Lewis watched one shocking photo replace the next. The indigenous Mayas’ schools were as poor as the documentary he watched back home reported, only now much more real.
“The schools are just an open shelter with no electricity,” Lewis said. “And they have no idea what state the rest of the world is in, outside of their corner of the world.”
After returning home, he contacted his associates in Fort Worth and explained the situation in Belize. Lewis now believes it is not only “very favorable” that the schools will get electricity, but hopes a current negotiation will result in donated computers for the children there.
“Education is a very strong tool,” Lewis said. “The kids are eager to learn, and they’ve got schools that are thriving. They just need help moving forward.”
Lewis has fixed his gaze to the future. After all the necessary meetings and phone calls, he gratefully filed the four major projects he hoped to accomplish under “doable.”
The Tri-County Black Chamber’s international initiative council already has helped Belize City move forward. Since October 2005, the council assisted a company that created the country’s first taxi service.
The council aims to simultaneously provide resources and create jobs. Lewis said installation of the renewable energy equipment the country needs could provide thousands of jobs – jobs that require training, which will increase the quality of the workforce.
“I can just envision what solar [energy] can do for that country,” Lewis said.
Belize officials welcomed the American visitors and ideas, but made certain the Americans understood their priorities.
“The statement was made by the prime minister that they don’t want to become a Cancun,” Lewis said. “They want to develop their infrastructure. They don’t want to lose their heritage and their culture.”
The Tri-County Black Chamber, an organization whose mission aims to preserve a cultural history while “stimulating the economic, cultural and social environment,” had unkowingly prepared themselves for this day.
In the Beginning
Belize officials met with Tri-County leaders in Houston this summer and, on July 1, signed a second, bi-lateral trade agreement. Tri-county delegates will soon return to Belize to carefully analyze the country’s energy and infrastructure and lay out a plan of action. But this high-profile project did not fall into the international initiative council’s lap.
Opportunity has a habit of sneaking by the apathetic and the timid, leaving its victims in regret. Even while the law prohibited him from voting, Booker T. Washington recognized the absence of Black entrepreneurs and Black-owned businesses. In August 1900, he gathered more than 400 Black businessmen together in Boston for the National Negro Business League’s first convention.
Washington’s idealistic “machine,” as some called it, began downstream in the river of business. According to www.dallaslibrary.org, “by 1926 the NNBL was drawing, even from its most ardent supporters, criticism for its lack of any directed programs.”
Division over the direction and effectiveness of the league paved the way for Black chambers. NNBL’s Dallas chapter did not escape the controversy unscathed. In November 1926, a state charter allowed Texas’ first Black chamber to stake its claim at 2315 Hall St. in Dallas. Early Black chambers, like Dallas’, fueled excitement that spread quickly through the South. Due to a lack of resources, it took years for the excitement to materialize.
John McCowan, Thomas Mays and Robert English founded Abilene Black Chamber of Commerce, ABCC, in May 1975, making Abilene home to Texas’ second Black chamber. The ABCC fell inactive in 1979, but made a comeback six years later.
“I guess organizations just go through phases,” said Floyd Miller, ABCC president. “I had always been involved in the Black chamber. I guess it just had that community feel.”
About 60 members pay dues, but two to three times that number attend most ABCC events. Since 1979, membership has continued to grow, and with it the organization’s responsibilities. A decade ago the city of Abilene turned over the annual Martin Luther King, Jr., dinner to the commerce. Normally seating about 800 people, Miller said the dinner is the largest multicultural gathering in the city.
Abilene feels like home to Miller, but his self-motivated attitude and diverse experience make him all the more qualified to sit as president. In 1983, while working in West Texas agriculture, a thought occurred to him. In 1983, not much good news was to be found in agriculture; crops struggled, and people rarely spent cash on frivolities. Miller decided to design a flier for farmers, cotton gin workers and feed stores with a positive message and his business’ information.
“On the front page would be an article about something positive, something farmers can relate to,” Miller said. “On the back, maybe we’d have a poem or something.”
The fliers were a success, but Miller eventually had to move on. He spent several years preaching at North 10th and Treadaway Church of Christ and now works in the investment industry.
Unity and Progress
History is made in a moment, but studied for a lifetime.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2. The bill prohibited all kinds of discrimination, whether based on race, color, religion or national origin. Only seven months later, on what is known as “Bloody Sunday,” state troopers hospitalized 50 peaceful demonstrators trying to cross an Alabama bridge.
In 1967, President Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first black Justice, to the Supreme Court. The next year Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.
Racism and ethnocentrism have plagued the United States of America since its inception; but brave men and women of many colors have stood up and defied them. In 1968, few would have believed that 40 years after Dr. King’s assassination, the US would elect a black man as its president.
Unfortunately, the emotional celebrations of Nov. 4, 2008, were accompanied by demonstrations of hate. US citizens elected President Barack Obama, an ethnically diverse individual, to its highest office, but racial tensions, as sparse as they might be, still exist.
Tri-county CEO and founder Thompson focuses on the positive aspects of the 2008 presidential election.
“What the election has changed is not so much the mechanics, but the mindset,” Thompson said. “If you believe there will be more opportunities, then you will do the things necessary to go after those opportunities.”
Seizing opportunity is what Black chambers of commerce, specifically the Abilene Black Chamber of Commerce, are all about, Miller said. The organization focuses on supporting African-Americans who want to start or have started a business, but excludes no one.
“We’re not anti-anybody, we’re just pro-African American,” Miller said. “When the Black chamber started, it was kind of out of necessity. There was really no organization that was accessible to African Americans . But there are still people that need mentoring.”
Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League more than 100 years ago, desperately imploring his fellow African Americans to advance themselves intellectually, socially and economically.
Washington was quoted as saying, “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”
Abilene Black Chamber of Commerce and the people of Belize embraced Washington’s philosophy, and it led to a relationship that could drastically improve the lives of thousands of Belizeans – a relationship Washington might agree is worth having.
