Growing up in southwest Atlanta, Jamila Wright never thought she would go to Spelman College.
Wright grew up in public housing with a single mother and always assumed the private historically Black college was out of her means. But a teacher encouraged her to apply, and, to her surprise, she was accepted.
Then kismet happened. Wright was offered a newly established full-ride scholarship for local students with high academic achievement and high financial needs. She was going to be able to go to Spelman after all, and graduated in 2010.
“That just kind of set the trajectory for everything in my life,” she said.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
Later, she moved to New York City and in 2017, the longtime tea enthusiast launched Brooklyn Tea with her husband out of their apartment first doing pop-ups and festivals around NYC. A year later, they emptied their retirement savings and opened their first location in the city. In 2022, they opened a location in Castleberry Hill in Atlanta with the help of one of Wright’s Spelman sisters, Kerri Ann Thomas, who is based in Atlanta.
Now, her tea can be found in more retail locations. Since August, Brooklyn Tea is stocked at more than 100 Target stores across the country and online.
She estimates about 60% of business for Brooklyn Tea’s store in Atlanta comes from students, staff or alumni of the city’s HBCUs, and she’s not the only one to get a major economic boost from the local HBCUs.
A new report from the United Negro College Fund has found HBCUs across the United States produce $16.5 billion in economic impact per year and contribute 136,000 on-campus and off-campus jobs.
Michael Lomax, president and CEO of UNCF, said the nonprofit decided to create this report because HBCUs are not often thought about as economic drivers, though that is far from reality.
“These are major economic impactors, and because money matters and dollars matter, that often gets people’s orientation to shift about the value of the institution,” Lomax said.
He added that the numbers around economic impact particularly resonate with “decision makers in Congress and at the White House.”
Students and employees spend at off-campus businesses like Brooklyn Tea, which in turn helps support jobs. HBCUs themselves also spend on services with local businesses, another contribution.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
In Georgia, the report looked at four HBCUs outside of Atlanta — Albany State University, Fort Valley State University, Paine College in Augusta and Savannah State University — and five in the city: Clark Atlanta University, Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Spelman College.
Morris Brown College was not included because at the time UNCF initially did the study, Morris Brown was not accredited nor operating full-time, Lomax said, but they will consider including the college in the future.
The five HBCUs in Atlanta produce $1.1 billion every year in economic impact and contribute nearly 7,800 on-campus and off-campus jobs to the local economy.
If the schools were a single corporation, they would rank as the 10th largest headcount in the metro, just under Cox Enterprises, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and above companies like Georgia Power and UPS according to figures from the Metro Atlanta Chamber.
The Georgia HBCU with the highest economic impact is Morehouse School of Medicine at $423 million per year. It accounts for more than a quarter of all the schools’ total impact. It also contributes the largest number of jobs at 2,751, though it is closely followed by Albany State.
The research was conducted for UNCF by Jeffrey Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He looked at federal data from 2021 that he then fed into proprietary statistical models. The figures are not adjusted for inflation.
Though the numbers are from 2021, the topline findings are a fair estimate for the schools’ annual economic impact, according to Humphreys.
“That’s the great thing about HBCUs, it’s not a one-year impact like perhaps holding something like a major sporting event, like a Super Bowl, or even hosting the Olympics,” Humphreys said. “The HBCU impacts recur year after year and tend to increase over time.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
For Wright of Brooklyn Tea, her business would not be what it was if she hadn’t gone to Spelman. In, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she was able to keep her Brooklyn store open despite not having any in-person customers because a network of Spelman and Morehouse alumni came together to pay for her store’s rent for two months.
“They just swarmed us and held us and made sure that we were OK,” she said.
As Spelman’s homecoming approaches, Wright is still undecided on if she will be traveling from Brooklyn for it this year. She will be coming to campus the following weekend to participate in a business accelerator event for AUC students put on by Wells Fargo and the Atlanta Falcons, another opportunity she attributes to her being an alumnus.
“It keeps paying itself over and over again to have been given a chance to go to Spelman.”
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