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New Website Helps Diners Find Black-Owned Restaurants

OUR WEEKLY LOS ANGELES — “African-Americans make up only eight percent of restaurant owners and managers in the U.S.,” said Warren Luckett, co-founder of BRW in a recent Forbes feature. “Our mission is to provide a platform that calls for inclusion in the industry and exposes and elevates black-owned businesses.”

Published

7 years ago

August 26, 2019

Oakland Post

With the popularity and general necessity of food, one might wonder, why there aren’t many more black-owned restaurants? (Photo: iStockPhoto / NNPA)

By Lisa Fitch, Our Weekly News Los Angeles Contributor

More than 2,000 Black-owned eateries are featured on the new internet-based restaurant locator eatblackowned.com, which launched June 21 intending to support Black-owned restaurants.

“There’s only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: we all love great tasting food,” creator Edward L. Dillard said. “We have soul food, vegan, BBQ, Caribbean, seafood and more listed on the site.”

“I believe that if people have a place where they can find all the minority-owned restaurants in this country, more of us will start to support these small businesses,” Dillard said.

Increasing Black dollar circulation

“Ninety-three cents of every dollar spent by Black consumers produces no economic benefit for the Black community, as the dollar only circulates in the community for six hours,” he adds.

A professional truck driver for a company out of New Jersey, Dillard has been on the road for 15 years, and travels across the country four or five days of the week.

“I didn’t like the direction of the country,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I wanted to do more to support Black-owned businesses, but I was always gone. I don’t spend money on clothes, accessories or shoes. The majority of my money was going to food.

“I decided to spend it in different restaurants,” he added, noting that the internet was of little help. “The problem was only the major cities and only real popular restaurants would come up in my search. The really small ones wouldn’t come up.” There already are some existing websites promoting Black-owned businesses in general, but they don’t have a lot of restaurant listings.

Dillard was inspired.

Have a vision and go forward

“I had a vision in mind but didn’t have the experience in designing a website,” he said. “Luckily, there’s Google and You Tube. They pretty much teach you everything! I realized there was a small chance that I might be able to make this happen.”

Dillard spent nearly five months conducting research for his project, collecting the names and addresses of more than 2,000 restaurants in the U.S. Then, he completed the website design.

“It took me a long time to design a website,” Dillard said. “What surprised me is that I got the job done.”

Working as a one-man show, Dillard then collected the restaurant pictures and website links to complete the project for launch. So far, the site includes 94 restaurants in New York, but only 35 within a 25-mile radius of downtown LA.

Fostering culinary inclusion

“African-Americans make up only eight percent of restaurant owners and managers in the U.S.,” said Warren Luckett, co-founder of BRW in a recent Forbes feature. “Our mission is to provide a platform that calls for inclusion in the industry and exposes and elevates black-owned businesses.”

Visit https://labrw.com for a list of participating BRW restaurants.

With the popularity and general necessity of food, one might wonder, why there aren’t many more black-owned restaurants?

“Access to capital,” explained Veronica Hendrix, who participated in a panel discussion on food at a recent LA chapter meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists. “It takes a lot to start a restaurant, in terms of finding a location; working with the leasing company agreement; and overhead costs.”

“I think that’s why so many of them are choosing alternative ways of creating a presence in the community,” Hendrix added. “Food trucks, pop ups, becoming personal chefs, cooking for small groups—just looking for alternative ways of raising capital.”

Setting realistic goals

“A lot of banks initially look at them as a risk until they’re proven,” Hendrix said.

Nearly 60 percent of restaurants fail within their first three years, according to recent studies of business start-ups. Restaurateurs have to set realistic goals; conduct market research and analysis; and have an original concept with good food.

‘“I love talking about food,” said Hendrix, who currently writes a blog called “Collard Greens and Caviar”— a take on her wide range of food tastes, from down-south soul food to European delicacies.

“Social media has been huge for me,” Hendrix said. “Through social media, I’ve created a sense of food family.”

The panel — which also included Noelle Carter, who formerly worked in the LA Times test kitchen; and Mona Holmes, writer for Eater Los Angeles — agreed that food journalists are not taken very seriously, even though food is something we deal with every day, preparing it, or eating it, or both.

“Food is very personal,” Hendrix said. “It can create a lot of memories and evoke feelings.”

Attracting regular customers

The panel agreed that almost nothing beats homemade, although many restaurants seek to replicate the looks, smells and tastes of family kitchens, creating an experience that creates a regular customer.

Hendrix admitted that whenever she smells nutmeg, she thinks about her mother’s homemade teacakes.

“That smell triggers comfort, love and safety,” she said. “For us, those teacakes were everything.”

The late Leah Chase, whose restaurant, Dooky Chase, served as an important New Orleans meeting spot during the Civil Rights movement, agreed: “Food builds big bridges,” she said. “If you can eat with someone, you can learn from them and when you learn from someone, you can make big changes.”

Dooky Chase was named one of the 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years by Food & Wine.

It takes a great deal of work to evoke such a place and create such feelings. To that end, restaurant owners work especially hard. Eatblackowned.com hopes to assist them on the advertising front.

Dillard has plans to include more Black-owned food businesses on the website. “There are Black-owned franchises,” Dillard said. “I will list them, but I’m having a hard time finding those franchises. Rapper Rick Ross owns a lot of Wingstops in Florida—we’ve added them.

“Some Black-owned franchises don’t promote that they’re Black-owned,” he added. “They ‘keep it corporate.’ We do have some franchises listed: Tiger Woods, Shaquille and Michael Jordan have a few franchises.”

A vanishing industry

African American culture has gone global with the exception of soul food. Across the United States, legendary soul food restaurants have closed. In big cities like Chicago, these once-popular restaurants are no more: Army and Louis (1945-2010), Gladys Luncheonette (1946-2001), Izola’s (1950-2011). In New York City: Copelands (1962-2007), and in Los Angeles most of the popular M&M (Mississippi Mary) restaurants (1968 through early 2000s), as well as Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch have been shuttered.

Lavell Jackson, a former co-owner of The Candy Store, believes several factors like African American migration, African-Americans preparing their own dishes, more Blacks preferring fast food, internal turmoil among family-owned Black restaurants, healthier options and the economic slowdown have done harm to a “niche industry.”

“In regard to the economy, I made hundreds of thousands of dollars during the crack cocaine era,” Jackson said. “My diner was filled with drug kingpins, as well as the local clergy, beautiful women, as well as professional athletes. Now places like Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles–one of the small numbers of diners — has survived and has been dependent on a small cult following. I believe gentrification will give the industry a boost, also.”

Rate restaurants on website

A user’s login page will also be added this fall, with customer reviews and a star system to rate each restaurant.

“Within the next two to three months, I would like to have the members section set up,” Dillard said. “There, you will be able to login with a custom user name and pass code. Members will be able to rate restaurants, leave comments and add pictures for the restaurant.

“Eventually, I will have a page for recipes,” he added. “Members will be able to post their recipes for visitors of the website to search and read.”

Businesses can post a eatblackowned.com listing by completing a form online, which asks for the name, location, contact information and other details of the establishment. Company logos and images can also be added, along with a restaurant description.

“There are two options: basic listings and featured listings,” Dillard said. “Featured listings are paid for and they have several benefits over basic listings. If anybody searches, you’ll be ranked at the top of the first page.”

Dillard is also looking for companies to advertise on the site. “We have advertising space on the front page,” he said. “And we also have space available on our listings page.”

The full-time truck driver believes his website’s listings will help to make some difference in the nation’s Black community.

“I hope this website will get more people to support Black-owned businesses,“ Dillard said. “There’s a huge racial wealth gap in this country. We need to do everything we can to build ourselves up.

Hopefully, someone will find a new eatery they never tried and go get some great tasting food.”

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COMMENTARY: Jim Crow 2.0 at the Pentagon

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The American people are expected to believe that one extraordinary officer after another suddenly fails to meet some undefined standard of excellence. We are expected to ignore impeccable service records while accepting that political appointees alone possess the wisdom to determine who is worthy of advancement.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 3, 2026

bpusa-syndication

Pete Hegseth insists that he is restoring “merit” to the United States military. But after months of dismissals, blocked promotions, and ideological purges, the evidence tells a different story. His campaign against so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has become something far more dangerous: an assault on equal opportunity that falls with particular force on African Americans, while also targeting women, Latinos, gay Americans, and transgender service members.

The latest example is both troubling and infuriating.

Once again, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly blocked the promotion of an exceptionally qualified woman—Rear Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt. Bauernschmidt is no ordinary officer. She became the Navy’s first woman to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, one of the most demanding leadership assignments in the world. Her career reflects decades of exemplary performance, operational excellence, and leadership under extraordinary pressure.

Yet once again, a distinguished military career appears to have been subordinated to an ideological agenda masquerading as “merit.”

I call BS!

The American people are expected to believe that one extraordinary officer after another suddenly fails to meet some undefined standard of excellence. We are expected to ignore impeccable service records while accepting that political appointees alone possess the wisdom to determine who is worthy of advancement.

The pattern has become impossible to ignore.

General Charles Q. Brown Jr., only the second African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was dismissed despite a career that placed him among the most accomplished military leaders of his generation.

Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman ever to serve as Chief of Naval Operations, was removed despite decades of distinguished command experience.

Reports have documented interventions that blocked or delayed the promotions of Black officers and women selected through the military’s rigorous promotion system.

Now Rear Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt joins the growing list of highly accomplished officers whose careers have been derailed for reasons that have never been persuasively explained.

Where is Congress?

Its silence has become deafening.

Congress has an independent constitutional responsibility to oversee the armed forces. Instead, too many lawmakers have watched silently while one of the nation’s most respected institutions is subjected to ideological litmus tests and political interference.

This is not military reform. It is testosterone-fueled performative masculinity disguised as a philosophy of military excellence.

The irony is impossible to miss. Hegseth repeatedly invokes “merit,” yet his rhetoric begins with the assumption that Black officers, women, and other historically excluded Americans must somehow justify their achievements in ways that white male officers are rarely required to do.

That is not meritocracy. It is prejudice wrapped in patriotic language.

No one is asking that anyone be promoted because of race or gender. Americans simply expect that promotions be based on demonstrated competence, leadership, integrity, and service. The officers being targeted have already proven themselves repeatedly under one of the world’s most demanding evaluation systems.

Their records speak for themselves.

The attack on African American military leadership has been especially pernicious.

For generations, Black Americans fought in segregated units, earned decorations while denied equal treatment, and repeatedly demonstrated loyalty to a nation that often failed to extend them full citizenship. They broke barriers not because standards were lowered but because excellence finally overcame institutional discrimination.

Today’s campaign against “diversity” threatens to revive old assumptions under new slogans.

The implication that Black generals and admirals somehow owe their success to affirmative action rather than extraordinary performance echoes some of the ugliest stereotypes of the Jim Crow era. Yesterday’s segregationists claimed Black Americans were inherently less qualified. Today’s culture warriors simply employ more politically acceptable language while inviting the same suspicion about Black achievement.

That is why Hegseth’s campaign increasingly resembles Jim Crow 2.0.

The targets may now wear stars on their shoulders instead of military patches on segregated uniforms, but the underlying message is hauntingly familiar: Black excellence is presumed suspect, while white excellence is presumed earned.

America’s military became the finest fighting force in history because it opened its doors to talent wherever it could be found. It grew stronger after President Truman desegregated the armed forces. It became stronger when women assumed greater command responsibilities. It became stronger when every qualified American was given the opportunity to serve to the fullest extent of their abilities.

Diversity is not a concession. It is a strategic advantage.

The nation’s adversaries do not fear an American military because it is racially homogeneous. They fear it because it draws upon the talents of more than 340 million Americans whose diverse experiences, perspectives, and abilities make our armed forces unmatched anywhere in the world.

Every politically motivated dismissal of a distinguished officer sends a chilling message throughout the ranks: excellence alone may no longer be enough if you belong to the wrong demographic group.

That weakens morale. It weakens recruitment. It weakens retention.

And ultimately, it weakens national security.

Pete Hegseth has every right to pursue military readiness. He has no right to redefine merit in ways that repeatedly cast suspicion upon the accomplishments of Black officers, women, and others who have devoted their lives to defending this nation.

America deserves better. The men and women who wear the uniform deserve better. The Constitution deserves better.

And unless Congress finds the courage to exercise meaningful oversight, history may well remember this period not as a restoration of military excellence, but as the moment political ideology attempted to resurrect, in modern form, the old poison of exclusion.

Jim Crow did not strengthen America. Jim Crow 2.0 will not strengthen America’s military. It will only diminish it

Wade Henderson
Strategic Advisor
Civil and Human Rights
wade@wadejhenderson.com

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New Judge Could Decide if Karmelo Anthony Gets a New Trial

By Emilie St. John (Contributor) Karmelo Anthony will return to court next month in his first step to overturn his murder conviction. Anthony was found guilty last month in the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf and sentenced to 35 years in prison. His new legal team has filed motions seeking the recusal of State District […]
The post New Judge Could Decide if Karmelo Anthony Gets a New Trial appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 31, 2026

Oakland Post

By Emilie St. John
(Contributor)

Karmelo Anthony will return to court next month in his first step to overturn his murder conviction.

Anthony was found guilty last month in the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf and sentenced to 35 years in prison. His new legal team has filed motions seeking the recusal of State District Judge John Roach Jr. from overseeing the appeals process.

Two hearings have been scheduled on the motion for Aug. 9 and 10 in the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney, Texas, according to Fox4 News.

On July 14, Senior Judge Sid L. Harle of the 226th District Court was assigned to preside over the defense’s motion to recuse Collin County Judge John Roach. The assignment took effect immediately and authorized Harle to handle all matters related to the recusal request, the filing read.

The Collin County District Attorney’s Office continues to defend its handling of the case by issuing a statement to NBC 5 DFW.

“The defendant’s new lawyers have filed a motion containing several inaccurate characterizations of the trial proceedings. The entire prosecution team and I conducted this trial ethically and in full compliance with the Court’s rulings and any agreements with defense counsel. We look forward to addressing these claims thoroughly in a Court of law in the coming weeks. The jury heard extensive evidence over the course of the trial and returned a unanimous verdict. We remain confident in that verdict and the fairness of the proceedings.”

Anthony’s new legal team, made up of appellate, civil rights, and criminal defense attorneys, was retained following Anthony’s conviction.

“Our responsibility is to determine whether a legal error occurred and to ensure that every issue supported by the record is fully and vigorously presented on appeal,” the team said in a statement.

“We recognize the profound loss suffered by one young man’s family and the uncertainty facing another, and we extend our respect to everyone whose lives have been forever changed by these events,” the release reads.

Anthony was charged with the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf during a track meet in Frisco, Texas, April 2, 2025. Anthony has long maintained it was an act of self-defense.

The attorneys are representing Anthony pro bono. The nearly 200-page notice of appeal seeks a new trial because his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial was violated.

“The cumulative and practical effect of these provisions was to exclude members of the public from proceedings at every stage,” the filing reads.

The filing also focused on an alleged “handshake deal” that kept Anthony from taking the stand in his defense.

The defense filing said the agreement was that the jury would not hear that Metcalf and his twin brother had been accused of racism and bullying in the past. In exchange, they also would not see Anthony’s cellphone records or his school disciplinary record, according to court documents reported by the Dallas Morning News.

Anthony’s former defense attorney, Mike Howard, said the defense relied heavily on that deal. The team chose not to ask certain questions of witnesses or call on a separate expert witness based on that agreement. It also abandoned plans to introduce testimony and evidence about the allegations against Metcalf and his brother.

Appellate attorney Russell Wilson is now handling post-trial proceedings and Anthony’s appeal. He recently sat down for an interview, stating, “The court committed multiple errors during the June murder trial, preventing him from receiving a fair trial.”

“You know, we file motions that we expect to prevail on, but we understand that there’s two sides to every story. And at the end of the day, it’ll be a judge that has to make these decisions, but we feel confident in the positions that we’re taking,” Wilson said during an interview with WFAA. “There were substantial issues that we thought a reviewing court needed to look at. We thought these were constitutional irregularities, and we could have them addressed now. And so, we put them into a motion for a new trial.”

Bree West, a former Dallas County Assistant District Attorney, found it startling that so little time was given to Anthony’s team for such a serious “life or death” situation.

“I do think that it’s really challenging that potentially a court decided that you have 10 minutes to make that level of decision when it has the potential of being life-altering,” said West during an interview with Fox 4 News.

Judge Harle is no stranger to high-profile cases, having presided over the prosecution of a police officer charged in connection with the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Anthony was convicted on June 9 of the murder of Austin Metcalf and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The post New Judge Could Decide if Karmelo Anthony Gets a New Trial appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

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COMMENTARY: LSMFT! Lord Save Me from Trump!

WESTSIDE GAZETTE — The author criticizes Donald Trump’s rhetoric, noting his use of terms like “Dumbocrats” and “Communist” to describe Democrats and democracy. The column asserts that Trump’s current strategy involves creating doubt about midterm elections due to a lack of Republican agenda.
The post COMMENTARY: LSMFT! Lord Save Me from Trump! appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 31, 2026

Oakland Post

Frankly Speaking

Wow! Wow! Wow! The swamp drainers have truly stepped down to new levels of stupidity. You remember Weapons of Mass Destruction? We now have Weapons of Mass Distraction. Trump has introduced Dumbocrats and Communists into the conversation about Democrats and Democracy.

Trump lies so much, and his current strategy is to set up doubt about midterm elections because he and Republicans have no agenda!

He has no “Trump “ card, but Iran has a strait! He called it a skirmish; it’s now a War. He said five days; now it’s five months. He said few casualties; now it’s 18 deaths. He knew nothing about Project 2025 but hired its architects! Trump lies about the lies and often forgets these little inventions called cameras and phones

We see and hear and then see and hear the inconsistencies.

I didn’t like 45 and dislike 47 even more!

The post LSMFT! Lord Save Me From Trump! appeared first on The Westside Gazette.

Based on reporting by Westside Gazette.

The post COMMENTARY: LSMFT! Lord Save Me from Trump! appeared first on BlackPressUSA.