Buy Black

I totally support voting with your dollars: "Chicago Family's 'Buy Black' Experiment Becoming a Nationwide Movement."

Good marketing people could get them connected to target shoppers together; advertizing sections could be purchased through a retailers association; and that next big fashion thing for home or wardrobe or technical accessories and food could have additional flare and vibrancy, coming from a non-Vogue stamped quarter.

The one thing this clearly needs:

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment" is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

"We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point ... but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis," Maggie Anderson said. "It's like, my people have been here 400 years and we don't even have a Walgreens to show for it."

So far, the Andersons have spent hundreds of dollars with black businesses from grocery stores to dry cleaners. But the couple still hasn't found a mortgage lender, home security system vendor or toy store. Nonetheless, they're hoping to expand the endeavor beyond their Chicago home.

Seed money. Which Anderson is preparing to raise. And Gregory Price, Moorehouse College's chairman of the economics department, notes, "It would be nice to see some real, hard data. Otherwise, it could just be an episode of ethnic cheerleading."