Modern-day Business Analysis

“Now, Mr. Lincoln?” was a program that gave money to black entrepreneurs to help start their businesses in the Hilltop area of Tacoma, WA. During this time, Hilltop was an area that was crime-ridden, so the program was largely aimed at improving these economic and social situations. The campaign targeted business plans that were primarily in the service industry and required no college education to run.

Unfortunately, all businesses that received financial aid from the “Now, Mr. Lincoln?” campaign failed within 18 months of the program. This can be traced back to a variety of internal and external factors. To begin with, the business owners who received the funds were considered mavericks in the black business community. Previously, African Americans were primarily laborers working for industrial manufacturing, not business owners. Many of these individuals lacked expertise in many aspects of entrepreneurship. This absence of knowledge may have contributed to the businesses’ failures. Externally, the nation experienced a slight recession in the early 1970s due to a sharp rise in the price of oil. This drastically affected individuals in the Puget Sound area as The Boeing Company was forced lay off half its staff as its sales declined. The effects rippled throughout small businesses in Tacoma as consumer spending fell. Unfortunately, the business that benefited from the “Now, Mr. Lincoln?” campaign were far too unstable to survive the recession.

To understand the significance of the Now Mr. Lincoln project, it is essential to understand the demographic context of Tacoma in the 1960s and 1970s (see maps below). Like most American cities of the mid-20th century, Tacoma was highly racially segregated, with its substantial black population residing almost exclusively in the Hilltop, Central Tacoma, and Eastside neighborhoods. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of the black-owned businesses supported by the Now Mr. Lincoln campaign were located in these neighborhoods as well. However, as the maps displaying black population distributions in 1970 and 2010 indicate, all of these neighborhoods were affected by the massive exurban migrations that occurred across the country in the late 20th century. In the Tacoma area, middle-class blacks fled their historical inner-urban neighborhoods for the more affluent and recently desegregated suburbs of Fircrest, Lakewood, and West Tacoma. [NA 12]