There aren’t many places in America where you can pick up a home-recipe, cooked-to-order chili cheese dog for $3.60, much less a vegan chili cheese dog for an even $6. But the purveyor of this awesome deal, Jordan’s Hot Dogs in South Los Angeles, is a community asset on a whole other level, too.

Jordan’s is a multi-generational Black-owned business, founded by Alabama-born Oranee Jordan in 1965 and sustained, through thick and thin, by her descendants. Today the Jordan family stands committed to serving up fresh, affordable comfort food for years to come from their location on Crenshaw Boulevard, a commercial and cultural hub of Black LA.

Communities of color have borne disproportionate burdens in the Covid-19 crisis—an outcome of longstanding, interlocking inequities—and businesses like Jordan’s have suffered right along with them. Yet these key local enterprises can also be a fulcrum for communal recovery.

To support their resiliency, in June 2020 the Nielsen Foundation committed $1 million to provide Black entrepreneurs with technical assistance and small grants. Through LISC, the money is going to augment the efforts of business development organizations (BDOs) that are connected to Black businesses and based in centers of Black American culture—the Crenshaw district in LA, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, and Chicago’s South Shore.

Collective resources in Black communities, including Black-owned businesses, often were created as a kind of workaround to systemic oppression and lack of access, observes Jason Foster, president, and COO of Nielsen Foundation grantee Destination Crenshaw, a major infrastructure and economic development initiative that celebrates Crenshaw as a wellspring of Black culture. By starting businesses, Black entrepreneurs forge their own opportunities to build wealth and legacy. They fill gaps for Black consumers, providing goods and services that reflect everyday needs and interests. They hire Black workers. And they help keep dollars circulating within majority-BIPOC neighborhoods, rather than streaming out to enrich distant corporate owners. “So the health of our Black businesses,” says Foster, “is actually the health of our Black families and Black communities.”

Read the full article about Black-owned businesses at LISC.