McClellan comes to VSU to celebrate minority businesses, laments 'inequities' that remain

ETTRICK – A visit Wednesday morning that was planned to celebrate the growth of Virginia State University’s minority-owned business incubator took a little bit of an emotional turn for Rep. Jennifer McClellan.

McClellan, a Democrat and the first Black woman to represent Virginia in the U.S. Congress, was speaking to a class of business students when she was asked about the Supreme Court striking down the Biden administration’s plan to forgive student-loan debt, and attempts in Virginia and across the nation to restrict public-school curriculum and ban certain books from school libraries. She answered with an impromptu history lecture laced with criticism for Republican leadership both in Virginia and in Congress, saying that every time Black people were put in position to gain economic or political capital, there was backlash from others to curb it. Currently, she said, we are in a “backlash with the beginnings of our reckoning in history” that began with George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

“There are people who don’t want our true, complete and accurate history taught because they don’t want to address the inequities of 300 years of slavery,” McClellan said, pausing between some of those words. “My parents lived through Jim Crow. My mom was born in the middle of the Depression; my dad, right before. My mother did not vote until she was in her 30s.”

McClellan said her mother, who is now 90 and a former VSU employee, was the first in her family to go to school beyond the eighth grade and that was only because she attended a Catholic school. The only options for her uncles were either factory work or the military “where they weren’t allowed to fight.”

“They could cook, and they could clean, but they were not allowed to fight,” she said.

The opportunities for McClellan’s aunts, she said, were as domestic workers “where they were exempted from the minimum wage, exempted from anti-discrimination laws.” The former state legislator said she learned about that not from her schooling but from the family members themselves, and now that so many who experienced Jim Crow have died, those stories went with them to their graves.

“If that history is not taught in our schools, nothing will be done to address inequities,” McClellan said. “And that’s what some people want.”

In Virginia, McClellan said the 2021 gubernatorial election that gave the GOP control of the top three statewide offices and half of the Virginia General Assembly "sent a signal" to Republicans nationwide on how to put restrictions on what kids can learn in school. Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration has been pushing for more parental control in public-school curricula, a move that has bristled Virginia Democrats, including McClellan, who say it cuts out huge chunks of minority history from lesson plans.

"They think the way to win is to pit parents against teachers and bring culture wars into our schools," McClellan, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in that election, said of Republican leaders..

While not mentioning him by name, McClellan hinted that former President Donald Trump, whose 2016 election she said earlier “was backlash for Barack Obama,” was a driving force behind ignoring the inequities. Trump’s bravado and apparent knack for igniting controversy with his public comments often have been cited as the basis for angry political discourse today.

“People who can’t win on the merits of their ideas are trying to sow division so that they can win and keep everyone else fighting,” McClellan said. “And that’s as old as time.”

In Virginia, McClellan said the 2021 gubernatorial election that gave the GOP control of the top three statewide offices and half of the Virginia General Assembly "sent a signal" to Republicans nationwide on how to put restrictions on what kids can learn in school. Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration has been pushing for more parental control in public-school curricula, a move that has bristled Virginia Democrats, including McClellan.

"The way to win is to pit parents against teachers and bring culture wars into our schools," McClellan, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in that election, said.

She encouraged the students to register to vote in the upcoming election, if they have not already, and learn about who is on the ballot. All 140 seats in the Virginia General Assembly are up for grabs in the November election, and with that, so is political control in Richmond. Virginia Democrats are fighting to hold their slim majority in the state Senate, and Virginia Republicans are pushing to stay the ruling party in the House of Delegates.

Additionally, elections for local offices in Virginia’s counties are also up in November.

“So if you care about what programs are going to be available to you when you start your business, if you care about what curriculum is going to be taught in our schools that train your future employees, if you care about how much you’re going to pay in taxes, whether your [student] loans will be forgiven, you better know who’s on the ballot and where they stand,” McClellan said.

Afterwards, McClellan said in an interview she fully expected to receive questions not related to her initial purpose for being there because “government touches all aspects of life.”

“It confirms for me why I am where I am,” she said. “I'm fighting the same fights my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents fought, and I’m fighting them so [the students] won’t have to.”

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Celebrating entrepreneurship

McClellan, a Petersburg native who grew up on the VSU campus, was in town to celebrate the success of the VSU Center for Entrepreneurship, which launched in 2018 as an avenue for business students and expanded three years later to include minorities who already own or want to start their small businesses. The initial plan was to help 300 business owners across the Richmond-Petersburg metropolitan statistical area; today, that number has grown to more than 1,000.

Dr. Patrice Perry-Rivers, the center’s director, said that since 2021, the center has helped with the founding of 154 businesses – almost four times the planned goal of 40 foundings – and 513 business expansions, which is more than 12 times their original goal.

Current VSU students and vendors helped by the center shared their stories with McClellan. Joshua McIntosh, one of the students, told McClellan how he started a lemonade-manufacturing business last year and this year was working on a business plan to establish a food-truck that would “basically run itself automatically.”

When Perry-Rivers praised McIntosh for his business initiative, he tried to deflect it by crediting VSU for his success.

“It was really like, 99% of the VSU Center for Entrepreneurship, and I just happened to be there,” he told McClellan.

Vendors had set up tables inside Singleton Hall to show McClellan what businesses they launched with the help of the center. Those businesses ranged from self-help services to sunglasses and everything in between.

Ceydria McCray, owner of Breezzy’s Lemonade, donned the costume of her company mascot to explain her business, offering McClellan a sample of her beverages. McClellan took a swallow of strawberry lemonade and was impressed.

“That is really good,” she said, taking some more swigs. She later posed for photos with McCray in the costume.

McClellan said after her tour that she planned to take what she saw at VSU back to Washington with her and champion federal grants to VSU and other historically Black colleges and universities to grow minority businesses.

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Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: VSU sings praises of minority entrepreneurship before congresswoman