NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ - San Francisco, CA, United States, 2007/09/15 - The pool of eight million part-time workers among the African-American labor force in the United States is a group which can particularly benefit from public and private policies in support of African-American entrepreneurship.

An analysis of African-American income by blackmoney.com indicates that eight million of the 18 million black workers are locked in part-time jobs earning $20,000 less than full-time workers on average. Executive editor John William Templeton says support of African-American entrepreneurs can open more opportunities for those workers, including launching their own enterprises.

The fourth annual observance of National Black Business Month has given consumers and businesses a new set of habits for economic development.
A set of 31 different activities ranging from investing in black-managed public companies to eating at black restaurants was provided during the August event.

Templeton founded the observance in 2004 along with Frederick E. Jordan, P.E., a 30-year veteran civil engineer who was chair of the National Black Chamber of Commerce at the time.
Since then, they've created an annual State of Black Business report using proprietary data to give the most current annual and state-by-state information on the status of black businesses.

The report includes ranking of states on a black business affinity index. New York achieved the highest rating in 2007. These statistics along with a host of information are included in Open Up the Doors: the State of Black Business, fourth edition.

Information to register as a business or consumer supporter of National Black Business Month can be accessed online.
The nexus between black business and heritage was discussed by Templeton during a paper at the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History in Atlanta in 2006.
This year's poster presents the national theme "The most important thing we can do right now is what they did back then -- support black business." It depicts a photo of a 1905 Emancipation Day parade in Richmond, Virginia.

Notes to editors
Permission to use the photo was granted by the Special Collections of Virginia Commonwealth University Library. The poster was distributed to libraries around the country for their National Black Business Month exhibits such as the Flint, MI Public Library.

Richmond is the site of the largest African-American national historic district -- the Jackson Ward National Historic District--preserving a business district from the 1880s.

Templeton was instrumental in the creation of that district as president of the Jackson Ward Project Area Committee in Richmond in the early 1980s while he served as editor of the oldest black newspaper, the Richmond AFRO-AMERICAN and Richmond Planet.

Since then, he became the first African-American editor of a business newspaper at the San Jose Business Journal.

Blackmoney.com was launched in 1995 as the first African-American business daily. Other products of eAccess Corp. include the ASPIRE Books imprint whose titles include Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 by Templeton. The company is also the principal investigator for a study to create a context statement of the African-American experience in San Francisco.

Agency / Source: eAccess Corp.

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