Top: Friends Tanya Smith, Amanda Ward, Tracey LaFrazier and Tracey Harris. Bottom: The scene on the Green. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Beneath a steely blue sky, Kentrell Ragin found the right words somewhere deep in his ribcage. Vocals swelled on all sides, and looked up for a moment, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. At the mic behind him, members of the Empowerment Christian Church kept the music coming.
“If you need a miracle, I need you to raise your hands and receive it!” he shouted. In front of him, two dozen pairs of arms rose into the warm air, fingers outstretched. Without missing a beat, Sian Mackall found three of her friends in the grass, and began to dance.
An infectious, sometimes larger-than-life excitement came to the New Haven Green Saturday afternoon, as the third annual Black Wall Street Festival (BWS Fest) brought music, dance, food, and over 210 vendors to the heart of New Haven. A celebration of Black artists and entrepreneurs, the eight-hour fête recognized how small businesses can build a community—and keep its creative ecosystem running.
For the first time this year, the festival marked the penultimate event of a week-long BWS Fest celebration that also included an artist showcase, film festival, investment summit, entrepreneur party and fashion show. A closing brunch took place on Sunday at Jack’s Bar and Steakhouse on College Street.
Top: Co-Emcee Avery “Slay” Washington. Bottom: Sian Mackall (in white and jeans, at center) jumps in to dance with friends. “I think it’s really fun and a blessing,” she said of the festival, which she’s attended all three years. Lucy Gellman Photos.
“It’s been the most rewarding experience to create a platform where people can thrive,” said New Haven Director of Cultural Affairs Adriane Jefferson, who worked closely with The Breed Entertainment and a BWS Fest team to ensure the city’s partnership on the project. “I’m filled with emotion and gratitude that so many people feel the significance of pouring into a community.”
Saturday, those long hours of planning came to life across the Green, where a lively, often-jamming stage gave way to vendor tents, food trucks, and a family zone with painting, crafts and video games. Surrounded by a wreath of pink and purple balloons, Keniah Sanjurjo chatted with passers-by about her two small businesses, Satisfied Glow and Pampered and Spoiled.
Both are inspired by her own journey to self-love, Sanjurjo said. Growing up in New Haven, Sanjurjo had what she thought was a fairly normal childhood—she went through the New Haven Public Schools, enjoyed spending time with friends and family, and found work in HR after graduating from James Hillhouse High School. What was missing, she realized only later, was a pride in her natural beauty as a Black woman.
“It was never really encouraged to wear your natural hair,” she said. “I didn’t really see it. It was always relaxed … growing up in New Haven, that’s all I knew.”
Top: Keniah Sanjurjo and nail tech Olivia (she declined to give her last name). Bottom: ConnCAT and ConnCORP team members Andrea Taylor, Steve Driffin, Carlton Highsmith, Erik Clemons, Brionna Davis, and William Fluker.
Then in 2019, she started thinking about what it meant to have natural hair herself. At the time, she was working as an assistant in human resources, and “was on a journey of embracing my natural beauty—all of me,” she said. Caring for her hair led her to take better care of her skin. Then one day, she heard the term “esthetician” for the first time. Something clicked.
Within months, she was studying at the Paul Mitchell School in North Haven while holding down a job as an HR assistant. After founding Satisfied Glow in 2020, she went into business full-time in 2022. Pampered and Spoiled, which offers spa parties for kids, quickly followed. Now, both businesses operate out of 458 Grand Ave. in the city’s Fair Haven neighborhood. Along the way, she’s become a wife and a mom, and grown closer to her own faith.
“It feels good,” she said. “It feels really good to be around other Black business owners—to see people who are creating these opportunities, and those who paved the way. You know, it all starts with a dream.”
Top: Kevnesh Boyd. Bottom: NAACP of Greater New Haven volunteer Yancey Williams, a research student at the Yale School of Medicine. “It’s important to give back to the community,” he said.
Nearby, that dream extended to mental health worker Kevnesh Boyd, whose Hamden-based business, Quality Consulting, grew out of a need for tailored and specific mental health services that she saw in the Black community. Like Sanjurjo, she didn’t start out expecting to become a small business owner: it became more of a calling the more she learned about herself.
Born and raised in New Haven, Boyd moved around the city a lot as a kid, she said—a symptom of poverty that she understands much more holistically now. At Central Connecticut State University and then the University of New Haven, she studied counseling and psychology, learning about mental health services that were never available to her as a girl.
Then in 2015, she was working as a licensed professional counselor in the Connecticut Department of Correction when something broke inside of her. “It was the most toxic workplace environment,” she remembered Saturday. As she worked closely with inmates, she could see the sheer amount of need within the carceral system—and the difficulty of getting those needs met.
What she dreamed about was access to more holistic care, from yoga and meditation to cannabis education, case management services and art therapy. After receiving her own diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), she founded Quality Consulting in 2017. She went full-time as its clinical director two years later.
Top: Natasha Weber and Rev. Odell Cooper. Bottom: The family-friendly kids zone.
“I wanted to dissolve mental health disparities in the Black community,” she said. Now, the business employs nine people and serves 115 clients, 90 percent of whom are low-income. In a given week, she said, the biggest need she hears is people looking for community (economic stability and access to housing aren’t far behind, she said). It’s why they lead several groups dedicated to collective healing.
Saturday, she was excited to spread the word, particularly before a conference dedicated to wellness and reentry on September 27. After attending Black Wall Street two years ago, when the festival was still on Temple Plaza, she was thrilled to see the event’s growth.
“To see this many people on the Green is crazy and magical,” she said.
And it was. Nibbling on spoonfuls of a sweet rainbow icy, author and playwright Rev. Odell Cooper declared the event a triumph. Saturday, she’d come out with friend Natasha Webster, a facilitator who has called greater New Haven home for two decades.
“This is great to see us out,” Cooper said. “Connecting, communicating … you never know who survived the pandemic, who reinvented themselves in that time.”
Top: Artist Jasmine Nikole. Bottom: Candice Williams of Herbal Jones LLC.
As they walked among rows of vendor tents, friends Tanya Smith, Amanda Ward, Tracey LaFrazier and Tracey Harris paused to jam to DJ Meechie, dancing as Bill DeVoe’s “Poison” faded into Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
All longtime friends and New Haveners, the four said they were attending for the second year in a row—and had high praise for the festival as it continued to grow.As their impromptu dance party ended with Motown, a steady stream of bubbles began to float by.
Their laughter filled the air, drifting overhead. Smiling, Smith showed off a sweatshirt that she had just purchased, embroidered with the coffee-colored, blank face of a woman. As someone who loves to shop, she said she was grateful for the chance to support small business, and the amount of handmade merch available at the event.
“It’s wonderful,” LaFrazier said. “It brings the community together, there’s a sense of unity.”
Top: Nia Williams of Thee Yarn0Graphy. Bottom: Thomasina Evans, Ala Ochumare-Harris, and Myasia Harris.
Two rows over, artrepenuer Nia Williams of Thee Yarn0Graphy took that sense of unity to heart. Growing up in New Haven, “it was kind of hard to find a way,” she said. There were times that she struggled with her emotions, or had bursts of anger, she said.
Then last year, she picked up crochet, a form of crafting that her paternal grandmother Carrie had shown her years before. The simple meditation of a needle and yarn calmed her instantly.
“It helped me look at things differently,” she said. “It was basically a kind of therapy for me.”
Less than a year after she picked it back up, she was excited to be a first-time vendor at Black Wall Street, she said.
As they stopped to check out YesQuare’s delicate crochet and macramé earrings, wives Ala Ochumare-Harris and Myasia Haris took a moment to savor the sight: hundreds of Black people smiling and laughing and catching up with each other in every direction. It was a kind of unexpected birthday gift to Harris, herself a creative cultivator, on her 42nd trip around the sun.
“I’m buying Black on my birthday,” she said. Ochumare Harris, who is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter New Haven, added that she was excited to be at the event for the first time in its three years downtown. “It’s beautiful!” she said.
Top: Jameson Davis and members of the African American Society. Bottom: New Haven Works employees Tynicha Drummonds and Kamilia Norfleet.
Among the vendor tents and tables, several local nonprofits and social service organizations also entered the fray, with swag that ranged from voter registration forms to water bottles printed with the neat New Haven Works logo.
At a booth closer to the stage, Jameson Davis introduced the African American Society, a new group “dedicated to the contributions of the Global Majority,” he said. Born and raised in Hamden, Davis grew up watching his parents pour into the community, he said. His dad, a state trooper, spent years fighting discrimination in the department. His mom, a teacher at James Hillhouse High School, often took him on trips to buy groceries for her students.
After attending law school in Vermont, he decided to return to his old stomping grounds. The organization, which offers fiscal sponsorship and operates out of a Manila Avenue office in Hamden, is his first step into giving back to the community that raised him.
“We’re building connection,” he said as he handed out flyers announcing the launch of the society. At a table behind him, shirts in the red, black and green of the Pan-African flag peeked out, as if they too were waiting for visitors to come stop at the tent.
Top: Elite in action. Bottom: Diane Brown and her son, Joncie Maybin.
Back at the stage, members of the Elite Drill Squad spread out across the grass, ready to perform. As drums rumbled from the stage, they began to move, blue tassels flying. Brrrrum! the drums announced, and dancers became a coordinated, undulating sea of orange and camouflage (watch the performance here). At the front of the group, Ja’mese Hunter didn’t miss a beat. In an interview earlier this year, she called dance a kind of escape from reality, especially when she gets overwhelmed.
As the sound drifted back toward the tents, An Urban Librarian Consulting’s Diane Brown took a moment to listen. A week ago, she praised BWS Fest organizers as revolutionaries. Now, she surveyed the scene, from the cheering crowd to a family zone where paintings sprouted across small canvases all day long. She smiled as she embraced her son, Joncie Maybin, content with the sun on her face and the crowd buzzing happily around her.
“I feel blessed,” she said. “I just feel blessed.”