African American Muslim Street Merchants- Pioneers of A Healthy Economy

By Zaid Adib Ansari

African American Muslim Merchants-Pioneers of Economic Uplift

This blog offers a crosswalk blending historical insights, practical business advice, and spiritual guidance. Each section of this essay is packed with descriptions and a narrative history that was present in US cities a few decades ago. In this post, I’ll include personal anecdotes, real-life examples, and quotations from African American Muslim entrepreneurs of that era. These stories show ia slice of an important aspect of an emerging economy among African American Muslims. These community rooted economic trends spread to the greater African American communities and other communities in the US. African American Muslim street merchants in the 1970s and 1980s, and beyond developed an ethos of economic self-reliance.

Islam Encourages Trade and Commerce

Several commonly held assumptions about African Americans’ labor and African Americans’ enterprise inform our discussion in this essay. I believe that American popular culture is the breeding ground for these assumptions. Umar Ibn Al Khattab (radiyallahu ‘anhu) said:I heard Nabi (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) saying: If you all depend on Allah with due reliance, He will certainly give you provision as He gives it to birds; who go forth hungry in the morning and return with full bellies at dusk.” This hadith and numerous Ayah punctuates the absolute necessity of self reliant work based on trust in Allah.
(Sunan Tirmidhi,2344, Sunan Ibn Majah,4164, Musnad Ahmad,1/30,52) Imam Tirmidhi (rahimahullah) has declared the Hadith authentic.

African American Muslim Merchants Made Street Vending Popular

Self esteem and self confidence make up the core of African American Muslim street vending. The theme of self reliance and self worth were persistent formal and informal themes among African American Muslims from the 1950s to the early 1990s. Why this ethos declined is the subject for another essay. However, the group, the Nation of Islam, although not recognized by orthodox Muslims as an authentic Islamic group, because of its beliefs and principles are inconsistent with Islam. However,their branding of the concept of “Do for Self”, held sway with many African Americans.

Incense, Body Oils, T-shirts, and Earrings Feed Many

When I graduated from a mid-west university in the late 1970s, I did not believe that a university degree with a last-word economic pathway for me. My brother in Islam, and good friend, brother Ilyas, was a master salesperson. Selling came naturally to him. We were brothers and business associates.This was in the early 1980s. At that time, I was the program director for a halfway house for men on probation. Brother Ilyas was the lead counselor. Neither of us were satisfied with working a 9-5, five days a week. We sought an opportunity for self reliance by studying trends among African American consumers. We also recognized that mainstream retail outlets in America left few buying choices for African American buyers. We also realized that this purchasing barrier for African Americans open a door of opportunity for us., We believed that African American Muslims could build a sidewalk card table or a door-to-door sale platform that could create better economic choices for African Americans. We stepped into that gap. Many African American Muslims managed to carve out this enterprise niche.

Black Jazz Festivals, Black Expos, and Black Family Weekends

By the mid 1980s, African American Muslims merchants patronized a widely circulated schedule of community based events that were good places to sell merchandise. This ‘event circuit’, as we called it, had the potential of producing $10,000 dollars in revenue over a weekend. These events were held in the Mid West and Middle Atlantic states from spring to early fall. Registration fees were reasonable. Brothers who order merchandise weeks in advance, load up a car or van and attend the event. Serious merchants used these events as bonus revenue, besides a local schedule that maintained their presence. Locally, many of the best markets were barber shops and beauty shops and crowded streets where a lot of people congregated to shop or catch buses or trains. We always were mindful that folks in the community had money to spend the first ten days of the month. The rest of the month was slow. Sometimes it was so slow, it was limping. We structured our business activities accordingly.

Many African American Muslim Merchants Created Jobs

Among the African American Muslim merchant group, we had pioneers and trailblazers. These Muslims were typically in their early 50s. They had been working for themselves for several years, and some had physical locations where they housed their businesses. Some were generous mentors. Allah blessed me to be coached and guided by one. His name was Taalib Din Ahmad (May Allah have mercy upon him). He taught me about the earring business. The earring game gave me a fresh and progressive economic paradigm to examine opportunity, up close. The Earring trade was a visceral dive into the economic self reliance, or ‘Do for Self’. Early on, I recognized that the best way to make money was to create jobs. I had to grow and expand my customer base. To grow, we need a workforce. To make this happen, we allowed trustworthy brothers and sisters to have earring cases on consignment. How this worked was I’d give a seller a chance to make forty percent of what was sold. They didn’t need upfront money. They just needed to be trustworthy. I’ll describe how the earring case process worked before I end this essay.

The Street Corner and the Door-to Door Earring Case

My mentor, my trusted brother in Islam, Taalib Din Ahmad (May Allah have Mercy upon him), scolded me one day, and said, “If you are broke, you still own the mind of a slave waiting for some master to feed you”. Before I could reply with a bunch of weak excuses, he said ‘let’s go to the hardware store’. I scratched my head, literally. When we arrived at the hardware, he picked up a couple sheets of plywood, small nails, small screws, and a couple of hinges black spray paint and nylon fishing line. Last, he picked up a couple of small screw-on screen door handles. Next, we drove to a fabric store. There, I was surrounded by middle-aged women buying colorful fabric. I didn’t scratch my head but, I was still trying to figure what are the next steps . Next he said, we are going to your house. Once home, he said, we got a mobile cash register. We got money, Ahkee. Over the next two hours, he built an earring case. The figure below shows the process of constructing Ahmad’s Earring Case.

I’ll wind up this essay here. The next step was watching Brother Taalib sell earrings. His warm, generous smile was authentic. Ilyas and I followed his earring sales recipe step by step. Within a few months, we followed a popular earring trend started by a Rap Group, Salt-N-Pepper. They wore big hoop earrings. We bought an array of styles and priced them to encourage multiple sales deals-one pair is $15, but I’ll let you have a two pair for $25. I’d toss in some humor to ease tensions. I remember hitting the street of a fast traffic corner on a Saturday afternoon at 12 noon. By 6pm I walked to my car to count the money I made. I had made more money in six hours than I would have made at my well-paid professional job for two months. For years, I used to joke and say if I ever met Salt N-Pepper, I’d break them off a cut. Ilyas and I used to motivate ourselves and say we had to have five figures in our pocket daily, and our shoes shined at all times. One lesson I learned from brother Ilyas was to never count your money while you are still working. If you see you have sold a lot quickly, it can demotivate sales. He cautioned me, don’t count until you quit. Don’t quit before five or six hours on the street. Many times Allah has written your provisions in the last few minutes of your sales day-week or month. Be patient and keep grinding.