About MKE Black

 

MKE Black celebrates and promotes Black business, events, culture, and advancement in the greater Milwaukee area. We are a non-profit dedicated to providing a one-stop shop for locals and tourists, with information on dining, shopping, culture, resources, and more through our website and app. We also help Black Businesses by providing funding and resources to thrive. MKE Black is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

 

Founding

 

MKE Black was founded in 2019 by Paul Wellington and Rick Banks, two people who wanted to showcase Milwaukee’s Black community to local residents and tourists.

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Mission

 

To amplify the Milwaukee Black Community by facilitating intentional investment of resources and building global connections.

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Vision

 

To create boundless opportunities driving Black community wealth.

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Guiding Principles

 

MKE Black is guided by the following seven principles:
 

• Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.

• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.

• Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

• Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

• Kuumba (Creativity): To always do as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

• Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.