Being a Black Business Owner is as American as Apple Pie

20 Year Navy Career

“How many years were you in the Navy?” I asked Drae over a game of Scrabble.

He stared intently at the board, not willing to take his eyes away from the game for even a moment to answer my question. “Oh, I was in the Navy for some twenty years.” Drae moved his hands across the board, placing his first word, REAR. “I was the Scrabble champion back in the Navy. No one could beat me.”

“Uh-huh.” I looked at his word doubtfully, unsure if he could beat me in a game of Scrabble. Not because I haven’t lost before, but because I play for points. I have never played in a Scrabble tournament before, but my mother and I played all the time growing up. Even with my degree in English, I have yet to beat my mother at a game of Scrabble. But I have beaten this notorious Navy Scrabble champion numerous times.

“Just because I don’t have a degree, doesn’t mean I’m not smart. I learned a lot while I was in the Navy.” Drae puffed up. I could tell I hurt his feelings. Whenever we play Scrabble he declares he will win, but I don’t recall him winning a game even though he swears he’s won at least one.

“What was your job in the Navy?” I asked to soften him up as I placed my word on the board, RIPEN.

“I wanted to be close to the money, so I told them to put me in the books. I was a bookkeeper for about seven years. Because I wanted to know where the money went, you know. They know how to make money, and I wanted to know too,” he said.

“So the Navy gave you training on how to be a bookkeeper?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was easy, and the cheapest way to do it too. I just told them what I wanted to do and they put me in it.”

“That’s good,” I said. “You must be really good with money.”

“I am. When you are a business owner, you have to be good with money,” Drae made his next move, TEN.

“What did you do the rest of the time in the Navy?” I stared at the board, not sure of what word I wanted to play next.

“I did what I do for the government now. I was a Pattern Maker.”

“Pattern Maker? That's the name of the position?”

“Yeah, I build things with my hands. I’ve been doing this since I was a child.”

Early Life in St. Louis

Drae Wright was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1960. He was one of ten children who was raised by his grandmother. Drae’s grandmother was a hard-working woman. She started an elder care business on her own and had several buildings she opened to take care of the elderly. It was unusual for children, even back then, to be interested in that type of work; especially male children. But it was not strange to Drae Wright who enjoyed helping his grandmother care for the elderly.

“I got up early and did whatever she did and went where ever she went. I went with her to the old folk's home. I helped her feed them, read stories to them, bathed them, and changed their diapers. I was only eight years old, but I was strong. My grandmother and I would work together to take care of the elderly. Even back then, my grandmother said I was special and that I would become very successful one day.”

“I enjoyed helping to care for the elderly. One of the ladies who lived in the elderly home, Ms. Lucinda, was very special. She used to bite me all the time. She would tell me to come and see her, she said she would not bite me, but whenever I saw her, she would drag me into her arms and bite me. A couple of times she even broke through the skin. But every time I saw her, she would call me over. And being a child, I believed her when she said she wouldn’t bite me. But every time I went over to her, she bit me. However, I think one of the reasons I continued to go over to Ms. Lucinda, is because she often had silver coins on her like quarters and silver dollars. She would give them to me when I came over to her and got my hug and bite. I don’t know where she was getting the money from, but she always had it on her. Then later on they found out she was eating the money. I guess when I came in, instead of eating the money, she gave it to me. Because I never saw her eat the money. But she stopped going to the bathroom after a while and they took her to the hospital to see what was wrong. They wound up taking twenty-something dollars’ worth of coins out of her stomach. Her head was bad. These old people couldn’t do a lot of things for themselves, and even though I was a little boy, I didn’t mind helping my grandmother with her work.”

Childhood Interests for the Future

In addition to helping his grandmother with the elderly, Drae Wright exhibited several interests as a child.

“I loved animals,” Drae said. “I oftentimes would see hurt birds as I walked around my neighborhood. Their wings would be broken for one reason or another. I took them home and bandaged up their wings using Popsicle sticks to hold their wings in place. It was pigeons mostly that I found. A couple of them became strong enough to fly away. Around that same time, I was also working with my hands. All my life I had talent. I was trying to figure out what I enjoyed and wanted to do in life. I had a love for Lionell Trains and AFX cars. Both my train set and car set were electric and I spent hours watching them go by on their separate tracks. Then I had an idea to combine the train tracks and the race tracks so I could have my train and cars interact on the same track. See I knew that trains ran on city roads, so it made sense that my cars and trains should be able to interact on the same track. I was dealing with electrical equipment, so I had to be careful with the wires. Even at the age of seven, I could have been considered an engineer in my own right. I took a knife and used a lighter to heat it, then I used the hot knife to melt the plastic on the tracks and cut it up into smaller pieces until I could meld the two tracks together.”

“Wait a minute,” I said incredulously. “Your grandmother let you use a lighter when you were seven years old?”

“Yeah, my grandmother knew I was ingenious. I really was. At the time I was already helping her in the old folk's home and she saw me bring home the birds and care for them. She trusted me. Once I got a little bit older, my grandmother bought me a blow torch to help me create a town around the tracks.”

The Moment that Would Change His Life and Determine His Path

“So was carpentry your first choice for business, or something else?” I asked.

“I enjoyed helping my mother (grandmother sic) with the elderly. That led me to fix up the birds, which I genuinely enjoyed. I wanted to become a veterinarian, to be a doctor. I was excited about the idea of becoming a veterinarian. So I went up to my teacher, he was a white male, and I told him, ‘I want to be a veterinarian.’ And my teacher, seeing me, and that I was a little black boy said, ‘Well you are really good with your hands. You should be a carpenter.’ I was already doing the woodwork at this time, and he suggested I would probably be better at being a carpenter because being a doctor was a little too much for a black kid to think he could be. His words crushed me. I wanted to be a doctor, but he made it sound like I could be nothing more than a carpenter. I believed him and accepted my fate and that set the course of my life for the next 30 years. I abandoned my dream of becoming a veterinarian and decided to throw myself into my woodworking. If I could not be a doctor, then I would become the best woodworker I could be. I began by finding little pieces of wood here and there and taking them home. Using a chisel my grandfather must have left around the house before he died, I shaped the wood into houses. I started by building a house for my Ken and Barbie doll. Like I said, as a child, I was different. I never questioned my sexuality. I knew I was attracted to girls, but I enjoyed playing with dolls.”

“Who got the dolls for you?” I interrupted Drae’s story, thoroughly intrigued.

“My grandmother. She wasn’t concerned about me having the dolls. She could tell I guess that I just liked playing with them. I tried to get some of the other boys in my neighborhood to come over and play with me. I told them about my Ken doll. But they weren’t interested in that. They only came over when I asked if they wanted to play with my race car and train set. That’s when I had the idea to build myself a small town.”

“See, the first houses I created were big, so my Ken and Barbie doll could fit in them. But then I couldn’t play with the houses and my tracks because the houses were too big for the tracks. So I decided to make smaller houses, the size that the small GI Joe’s could fit in. And I placed them alongside the track and started creating a town. I didn’t know how to build a city when I first got started. I began by gathering wood for my project, which did two things for me. It kept me busy and off the streets. At that time, the kids on the streets were throwing eggs at people’s houses, breaking out people’s windows, stealing, and some were already thinking about being in gangs. I wasn’t interested in that stuff. I had a hammer and chisel and I was able to keep myself busy by chiseling out windows and doorframes for my small town. I began building the town in my room on the floor. Later on, I wound up taking down my bed so I could have more space to build. At night, I would sleep in the bed with my grandmother since I no longer had a bed to sleep in.”

Recognition for His Work Came Early

“Of course, my grandmother was impressed by everything I had accomplished. But no one else knew about the town since it was in my bedroom. Then one day my grandmother’s church was having a talent contest. My grandmother invited her church members to come over and take pictures of my town for the contest. They came over and were fascinated by my work. They asked me questions about how I put the houses and tracks together. The church members were so enthralled by my town, they contacted a news station who also came by my house to interview me and my grandmother and take pictures of the town. It felt really good to receive recognition for what I was doing.”

“Up unto that point, I was doing the woodworking as more of a hobby, something to keep myself busy. I really didn’t think about making money off of it too much until I was thirteen. I had been building and working with wood for a while now. I was walking in the neighborhood one day and saw one of my neighbors throwing out four wooden chairs. They were all damaged in some way from use, and he was just getting rid of them. I walked up to the man and told him I could fix his chairs. I had never fixed a chair before, but I knew I could do it. I just knew I could. He told me if I could fix his chairs, he would pay me for them. So we agreed and I took the chairs home. I glued them together and everything and fixed them up nicely. I took the chairs back to the man and he was impressed by my work. I think he paid me twenty or thirty dollars for those chairs.”

“So what did he do with the chairs?” I asked.

“He took them inside and used them I guess.”

“That’s super cool,” I said. “He was going to throw the chairs away, then because you came along, he was able to keep the chairs and save money by not having to buy new ones.”

“Exactly, in the long run, my business helps to save my customer’s money as well as preserving antique furniture. A lot of my clients have antique wooden furniture that you can’t find anymore. I can restore these items and make them look like new.”

How Being an African American Affected Business

Although black, Drae Wright is a very light-skinned man. We have joked that he could pass for Cuban or another Hispanic race. Even still, I wonder to myself if his light complexion allowed him to escape some of the plagues of racism.

“Has being black affected you at all in business?” I asked him.

“When I was coming up, I lived in a mixed-race neighborhood. But back then, white people would not frequent a black-owned business. It just wasn’t done. So I decided that to get the business of white people, I would need to fool them. For them to frequent my business, they would need to think it was a white-owned business. So I named my business, Ray’s and Drae’s Woodcrafting. I figured the white people would assume that Ray was white and Drae could be either one. Although I was light-skinned, most white people could tell I was not white. And that’s how I ran my business, and it worked. I got a lot of white customers. Then one day I had a white gentleman come in and say, ‘I’m looking for Ray.’

I said, ‘Ray is not here right now, is there anything I can help you with?’

He said, ‘No, I spoke to Ray in person, and Ray told me to come down here.’

I said, ‘Oh really? Well, Ray is out of town right now sir. Is there anything I can help you with?’

The man said, ‘No, I will come back when Ray is here.’ Then he left. But what he did not know, was that there was no Ray. I was Ray and Drae, so how did he talk to Ray in person? Ha!”

Meeting Racism on the Job and in Everyday Life

“So you are saying that even though you are light-skinned, white people can still tell you are black?” I asked.

“As I said, I grew up in a mixed-race neighborhood. When I was younger, my complexion was very fair-skinned, almost the same color as white people. I didn’t even wear my hair naturally, but long down my shoulders and straightened with a hot comb. One day I saw a little white girl and her mother about to get into their car. And the little white girl looked at me then asked her mother, ‘Mommy, mommy, is he a nigger?’

Then the woman looked at me, then down at her daughter, and said, ‘Yes he is.’ At the time, I did not take the statement offensively because we did not come up with that word being used as offensively as it is now. I took it as a teaching moment where the mother was teaching her daughter to recognize and stay away from black men.”

“Years later, I had a customer from Monks Corner call in. At this point, my business was called, Ray’s Professional Furniture Repair. She asked, ‘Are you a black-owned and operated business?’

Filled with pride at being a fully black-owned successful business, I said, ‘Yes ma’am, I am.’

And then she said, ‘Well I don’t want to do business with a nigger,’ and hung up on me.

Another time I went to a home in North Charleston. We were there to pick up a big piece of furniture for repair. When we pulled up, it was four of us, all black, and I was the lightest one in the group. When we pulled up, we must have passed five or more confederate flags in the neighborhood. We knew we needed to stay together in this neighborhood because bad things could happen to us otherwise. When we arrived at the house, the whole family greeted us outside. The husband, wife, son, and daughter, an average white family, all greeted us. The man didn’t say anything to us. He just looked at us, and then left, going somewhere else in the house. The wife, on the other hand, greeted us and shook our hands. We followed her into the home. Once we entered the home, we began working, but the son stayed around us as if he were curious about what we were doing. So I bent down to say, ‘Hello,’ to him, and I kid you not, he kicked me straight in my nuts and screamed, ‘Get out of my house you niggers!’

The mother came into the room yelling at her son, “Bobby Earl! Did you kick him? No, no, no, you don’t do that!” Then the little boy started crying and said, ‘It’s because I want them out of my house because they’re niggers!’ He must have been around six or seven.”

A Successful 30 Year Business

Today, Drae Wright has been in the woodworking business for over 30 years. He became so skilled that he now works as a contractor for the U. S. Government. It amazes me that this man holds the intelligence and skills he has without having attended formal training. Yes, Drae Wright began his career in the military, in the Navy. But he began his woodworking trade long before that and kept working his trade even while pursuing a career in the military. His last seven years in the military, however, he was promoted to a Pattern Maker, which allowed him to perform his woodworking for the Navy itself. That is what he does for the government today. Drae Wright has raised three children and has become a staple in the Hollywood community of South Carolina. Many of the residents have furniture that Drae has repaired over the years with his woodworking business.

Most people don’t know that wooden furniture such as dressers and chairs can be fixed and repaired. People wind up throwing away furniture and buying new ones because they are unaware that it can be fixed. Woodworkers like Drae Wright are practicing a dying art form. We once employed many skilled artisans in our tourist district. Now, woodworking is a dwindling art form that can still be a very lucrative business if you know what you are doing. South Carolina especially is currently looking for skilled artisans to help rebuild our historic homes in the tourist district. I hope that other African Americans will see the importance of learning a skill, a trade, and using it to create a business that will produce future wealth for them.

Having Your Own Business Brings Wealth and a Peace of Mind

Drae Wright has over nine cars on the 15 acres he calls home. In addition to that, he has over a million dollars’ worth of property, making him one of the wealthiest men in the area. Drae admits that all of his wealth did not come from the woodworking business. Like many entrepreneurs, Drae Wright has dabbled in several businesses. He sold cars, created meals and sold dinners, and dabbled in other entrepreneurial exploits. But instead of living an extravagant lifestyle, Drae chooses to live a quiet life in the country indulging in his love for animals. Drae admits that he’s raised over six goats on his land, and has taken care of numerous dogs. Unfortunately, Drae had the goats and the dogs living on the same piece of property and the dogs eventually got free and killed the goats. You can still see the horns attached to pieces of goat skull when you walk the land.

Drae Wright is not the only black successful business owner in the area. But he is one of the few black business owners who has made a living by having a successful furniture repair and woodworking business. Not only has he managed to keep a lucrative woodworking business, but he has managed to maintain a positive working relationship with his community. Over the years, Drae has taken in the neighborhood boys. Boys without fathers, and he taught them a trade, how to work with their hands. He gave them jobs around his shop and even a place to stay when they did not have a home. Many of the young men in the area call Drae, “Pop,” and they can’t wait to shake his hand or give him a warm hug when he comes by. His name is well known in the area, as these young men remember growing up with his sons and having Drae step in as a father figure when their fathers were nowhere around. His heart for the young men is wonderful when you consider Drae never knew or met his father. He does not even know his father’s name. Drae’s mother passed away when he was around thirteen, and his grandmother finished raising him. She did an amazing job raising an inspirational black man who grew up to be a successful business owner.