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- Some Black businesses in L.A. that benefited from a wave of racial reckoning in 2020 are struggling today.
- Black Image Center in Mid-City is the latest of several Black small businesses to close in Greater Los Angeles.
- Black businesses are often viewed as being more than just businesses. They are considered to be extensions of the community.
Tucked away on a quiet part of La Cienega Avenue in the Culver City Arts District, Black Image Center feels reminiscent of a collegiate Black student center. On a recent Tuesday, five people were gathered for the center’s daily community co-working series.
Laughter and casual conversation swam above the sound of the clicks of their laptops. But instead of a 100-page reading or an mind-boggling problem set, they were working on creative pursuits — editing a photography-forward zine, working on the treatment for a music video project, polishing a fashion journalism article — and consulting one another on them.
“I’ve seen the daily magic that goes down at a place like this,” said Julian Samuels, a longtime volunteer at Black Image Center, who called its offerings “really rare in L.A.”
Black Image Center, an organization dedicated to providing photography resources to Black Angelenos, was born from a group of six photographers and creatives who connected over Instagram in 2020.
After securing nonprofit status, Black Image Center opened in a physical location in Mid-City in May 2022. In addition to a free 35mm film refrigerator, visitors can use both a normal and large-format printer free of charge. The open-format space boasts a cozy book nook with scores of Black photography books. The space regularly hosts sold-out photography workshops, in addition to having hosted more than 50 artists-in-residence, according to co-founder Maya Mansour.
So members of the Black creative community were shocked and disappointed when Black Image Center recently announced on Instagram its imminent physical closure.
“None of us could’ve done what we did without you. Personally speaking, y’all are the reason I feel empowered to keep a camera close by,” commented photographer Adam Davis beneath Black Image Center’s post.
Asked about the closure, Samuels audibly sighed, saying, “Oof. I understand it as a necessary transition. That being said, I can’t lie. I’m feeling pretty sad about it.”
In the March 14 announcement, the organization said it was “stepping into a new space, without physical walls, but with endless room to grow.” During a recent conversation with The Times, Mansour pushed back on the notion that Black Image Center is closing for good.
But the closure of Black Image Center’s physical space echoes that of other small businesses in Greater Los Angeles that have served as Black community hubs beyond their primary offerings, with many owners saying the initial support garnered during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement has since waned.
The Salt Eaters Bookshop, an Inglewood feminist bookstore, transitioned to a virtual model at the end of 2024. Bloom & Plume, a coffee and flower shop, closed its Echo Park doors last August. The artist Noname’s Radical Hood Library in Jefferson Park, while hanging on, has been transparent on social media about financial instability and started a Patreon account in an attempt to offset costs.
The Times spoke with some of these business owners, who said their desire to provide for their community was often in direct contradiction to business operations.
Although Black Image Center hasn’t struggled to get people into its space, a lack of capital resources has put a strain on its small leadership team.
“It’s really hard and it doesn’t work most of the time,” said Mansour of her experience with Black Image Center. “You just kind of stretch yourself in ways that you didn’t know that you could.”
Mansour cited several factors that contributed to the founders’ decision to not renew their lease come May.
You kind of just stretch yourself in ways you didn’t know you could.
— Maya Mansour, Black Image Center co-founder
For starters, where the founders had a clear creative vision — the “magic” that is evident when you walk in the room — they lacked business acumen. To this day, Mansour said Black Image Center doesn’t have a clear business plan — something that she hopes will have time to develop without the pressure of maintaining a physical space.
“Having the brick-and-mortar really does kind of put your back against a wall in a way that you have to kind of get it together,” said Mansour, who over time stepped into the role of executive director despite the group’s original nonhierarchical vision.
Also, at least three of the six original founders have stepped away from Black Image Center, said Mansour, and the center relies extensively on a small group of volunteers to maintain its robust programming schedule.
“None of us really went into this expecting it to blow up in the way that it did,” Mansour said. “I kind of promised myself: At the end of this lease, it’s probably going to be time to reevaluate. Like, what can I do for this thing?”
Mansour’s experience was preceded by that of Asha Grant, founder of the Salt Eaters Bookshop, which opened its Inglewood doors in 2021 and closed at the end of 2024.
Like Black Image Center, the Salt Eaters Bookshop was Grant’s brainchild during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grant was running the Los Angeles chapter of the Free Black Women’s Library — and accumulating hundreds of books — when a GoFundMe campaign gave her the capital to open a physical bookstore.
“It was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life,” Grant said of running the store. “More people than I’ll ever know showed up for me and showed up for our community.”
Grant described her vision for the Salt Eaters Bookshop as being someone’s bedroom but with a lot of books in the space. Zora Neale Hurston wallpaper lined the walls, vintage Ebony magazines were on a coffee table once owned by Grant’s grandmother, and an autographed Destiny’s Child picture hung near the register. If it were a song, Grant said, it’d be Brandy’s hit “Sittin’ Up in My Room.”
I was constantly negotiating how to keep doing what I love and what I know our community needs most, while also not being a martyr for the cause.
— Asha Grant, Salt Eaters Bookshop
But while visitors to the shop were embraced in a cozy hug, Grant, who was supporting the store full-time, was struggling to breathe.
“I was constantly negotiating how to keep doing what I love and what I know our community needs most, while also not being a martyr for the cause,” said Grant, who also pointed out the irony of her store offering free hygiene products while she herself lacked health insurance.
Like Black Image Center, Grant decided to close the Salt Eaters at the end of her last lease cycle. Selling books wasn’t covering rent. Over the course of the store’s existence, Grant had launched two GoFundMe campaigns and thrown rent parties in addition to hosting events and renting out the physical space.
Grant called turning to the internet for help “emotionally draining.” Also, a nearly $4,000 plumbing issue in 2023 almost forced the shop to close. Grant said she didn’t have the energy to apply for grants, and for years, she was clouded in a looming sense of dread.
“My whole existence can’t be making sure everyone is well and I’m suffering myself,” said Grant, who began a master of library science degree program in January after closing the shop in December.
Although a message on the Salt Eaters website reads, “We are transitioning to a virtual model in 2025!” Grant, in practice, maintains an affiliate webpage for Salt Eaters on the online marketplace bookshop.org. With time, she said she hopes to restart her virtual book club series and sell books on her own website.
Part of the strain is that small Black businesses are infrequently just small businesses; owners also labor under what Jazzi McGilbert, founder of the bookstore and concept space Reparations Club in Jefferson Park, calls “an unrealistic set of expectations.”
“There’s so many things that we end up carrying. Even just the psychological components of people having a hard time, and they come into our spaces to seek that relief,” said McGilbert, who has cried with her customers.
On one occasion, McGilbert dog-sat for a customer, something she said she was happy to do yet cheekily notes is not a service that could be found at, say, the Apple Store.
“Sometimes, I think these spaces are asked to hold a lot of things that really our government should be providing,” she said. “There should be more spaces that are equipped to hold people, you know, bringing back the town square. Libraries and other spaces shouldn’t feel sad and underfunded. They should feel like exciting, generative spaces that people want to spend their time in, and that requires funding.”
Unlike Grant, McGilbert strayed away from crowdfunding, as she doesn’t see it as a sustainable business model. But over the years, she has learned to make business adjustments to stay viable while still prioritizing a sense of community. For example, she will consider canceling an event if it doesn’t meet an RSVP minimum. Also, most events are priced on a sliding-scale model with free access.
McGilbert said Reparations Club has grown year over year, and she is interested in adding a cafe element to the shop in addition to expanding the business hours. But at the same time, she said rent has increased significantly over the past five years. With the lease being up in September, McGilbert is constantly questioning “how to keep Rep Club solvent and not at my expense.”
“I don’t know what’s next for us, and I don’t know if we’re next on the chopping block,” she said.
McGilbert said she suspects that part of the reason that Reparations Club has been able to survive is because it opened in 2019, before the official March 2020 start of the pandemic and the wave of racial reckoning and investment in Black businesses that occurred after the murder of George Floyd.
“I think we saw a lot of businesses open because we, maybe wrongly, maybe hopefully, assumed that would remain,” McGilbert said. “I think that part of what has happened here is that that support comes in waves, and because it necessitates Black people to be experiencing some kind of trauma to get that support, I don’t think that’s viable long-term.”
Maurice Harris, founder of now-shuttered Bloom & Plume Coffee, experienced a similar surge and waning of support.
“We were considering closing when COVID happened,” Harris said of the coffee and flower shop that opened in January 2019. “What kept us open was George Floyd.”
In addition to the two months after Floyd’s murder by police, Harris said his shop was most profitable the month he announced its closure in August 2024. By then, he said, minimum wage had skyrocketed to $17.28 from $12 when the shop opened; meanwhile, a drip coffee at Bloom & Plume increased in price by less than a dollar over the same time period.
“That’s a huge discrepancy,” said Harris, who employed five people and did not pay himself over the course of the shop’s lifetime. Despite partnering with his brother, a corporate banker, on a business plan, Harris said Bloom & Plume struggled to break even during its entire five-year run.
Although Harris’ inspiration for opening the shop was to provide an elevated, beautiful experience for everyday folks — “actually stopping and smelling the roses is an important part of sustaining your life,” he said — its demands were ultimately “fighting against” his job as a luxury florist, his main source of income.
“Can an actual mom-and-pop small business afford that?” he said. “Probably not as much.”
While not operating for profit, the Black Image Center team also felt the impact of the cultural shift away from supporting Black businesses, said Mansour, with many of the corporate sponsorships initially sustaining the center now gone.
“We’ve just been so focused on maintaining our physical space that we have really just been working paycheck to paycheck, grant by grant,” said Mansour, who works independently as a photographer in addition to running the center.
With mounting pressure, Mansour said she is “excited” about the lease ending and “creating this really natural opportunity for us to do this internal restructure.”
“There’s a lot of ego involved in the conversation around running your own business,” Mansour said. “I think that when you’re doing something where the intention is service, you really have to know when it is your time to bow out and make room for other people who are better at being of service in that way.”
Grant, who experienced this same wave of emotions mere months ago, agreed.
“You don’t want to give up on your dream, but then I kind of realized that I already achieved my dream,” she said. “I’ve already experienced it. I know what it feels like. I can feel proud about that and that I’m not a failure. Whatever I need to do is whatever I need to do.”
Mansour said there isn’t yet a clear plan or timeline for what’s next for Black Image Center, but that the founders would be looking to establish a new executive board. In the meantime, people can visit Black Image Center for its signature community co-working series until the space closes on April 10.
“Like all good things, it’s going to take time, because we want it to be good,” said Mansour of Black Image Center’s next phase. “We’re not really putting any pressure on ourselves, because there’s been a lot of pressure on us the last five years.”
