Progress has not been a straight line, but a steady succession of developments amount to strides toward making Nubian Square a cultural destination that stimulates the economy in Roxbury. The square, long in need of economic redevelopment, is not there yet, and more commercial enterprises need to join the mostly nonprofit leaders of this initiative.
The vision of Nubian Square — long ago the biggest retail center in Boston after Downtown Crossing — reborn as a cultural hub goes back more than a decade. The Black Market on Washington Street opened 10 years ago. Then an ordinance, the City Council sponsors of which included Tito Jackson, Ayanna Pressley and Michelle Wu, created the Roxbury Cultural District in 2017. Six years ago, The American City Coalition (TACC), launched Savor the Square with an annual calendar of events.
The Black Market, operated by Kai and Chris Grant, has aimed to stimulate the creation of Black-owned businesses in the square. Their efforts have had a cultural inflection. The goal of the cultural district, like others across the state, was explicitly to promote arts and culture to drive economic activity.
On its website, TACC describes Savor the Square as “a culturally inspired economic development program that supports BIPOC micro-entrepreneurs, including vendors, musicians, and performers, through a curated platform that allows them to showcase their creative expressions and build new audiences.”
These three efforts were proceeded by ACT (Arts, Culture and Trade) Roxbury, an arm of the Madison Park Development Corporation, which lasted from 1998 to 2007.
“We believe arts and culture are a vehicle for economic development,” the late Candelaria Silva-Collins, the initiative’s director, declared in a 1999 interview. A film festival and open studios weekend have outlasted ACT Roxbury.
Of late, the Black Market has run into financial difficulty and is seeking to raise $80,000 to settle a dispute with its landlord, the Madison Park Development Corporation. Those who believe in this Roxbury couple’s daring mission are encouraged to donate to help preserve the market’s space.
Other cultural and economic stimulus endeavors are proceeding.
On Saturday, May 16, Savor the Square will put on the fourth annual Greater Roxbury Book Fair in the Shaw-Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library. Outside, assorted vendors will be selling their wares as entertainers perform.
Inside, Frugal Bookstore, Boston’s only Black-owned bookstore, located in Nubian Square, will be selling the books of authors featured in the program.
The book fair is both a literary and intellectual event. The keynote speaker this year is Kellie Jackson Carter, the Wellesley College professor and author of “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance.” This year’s book fair is dedicated to Silva-Collins, who died in March.
Sustaining the event for four years is an accomplishment, given that previous efforts to hold a book fair in Roxbury have faltered. But the current fair has been underappreciated and under-attended. Two years ago, a session with Ibram Kendi, a lighting light of his generation, should have filled the branch library’s biggest room, but didn’t come close.
Two people who did come went afterwards to have a meal at an African restaurant on Dudley Street that had been empty in mid-afternoon. Their presence suggested the broader economic potential of the book fair and similar events — people coming from outside Roxbury and spending money with eating establishments.
Joyce Stanley, former longtime director of Dudley Main Streets, envisioned Nubian as culinary destination for ethnic meals, another cultural expression. That would dovetail nicely with other artistic and cultural events.
Perhaps the Greater Roxbury Book Fair will never be as popular as the longer-running Harlem Book Fair, which attracts 30,000 participants to the one-day event in the country’s most populous city and its book publishing center. But the local fair deserves a bigger audience and should command one, given the concentration of Black scholars in the metro area.
Soon a long-planned jazz cafe and restaurant is scheduled to open inside the Bolling Building in the square after securing financing. Jazz Urbane will represent a year-round cultural destination to supplement events spread across the calendar. The periodic jazz concerts in the Shaw-Roxbury Branch Library have demonstrated a demand for such performances, with some attendees coming from outside the immediate neighborhood.
Also coming, in the late fall, is the expansion of the Community Music Center of Boston from its South End base into a renovated building in the square. The center provides music education for students of all ages up to high school seniors, developing performers and music devotees among younger generations.
The Black Market, book fair, jazz club and music school are concrete developments toward making Nubian Square a popular cultural destination. Most of them are driven by nonprofit enterprises. Nothing wrong with that, but more commercial enterprises ought to join the parade.
The momentum is there — momentum that has been slow to gather since the City of Boston renovated the former Ferdinand’s furniture store into the Bolling Building and moved the School Department into it. That was more than a decade ago, and the city spent almost $125 million to get the job done.
A rule of thumb in economic development is private investment follows public investment. See the creation of the interstate highway system across the country and suburbs sprouting and sprawling. Let us see the same pattern evolve, right here near the heart of the city, in Nubian Square.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
