By Dr. Stacie NC Grant, Chairman of the Board, Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO)
On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned what had already been true for two and a half years: they were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had been signed. The war was over. Freedom, long delayed, had finally arrived.
But freedom without economic power is fragile. History has taught us that lesson more than once. We know what it means to be legally free and economically constrained. We know what it means to have rights on paper and barriers in practice. We know that true liberation, lasting liberation, requires not just the absence of chains but the presence of opportunity.
That is why, on every Juneteenth, I think about entrepreneurship.
I think about the Black men and women who, the moment they were free, built businesses from nothing. Who farmed land, opened barbershops and beauty parlors, started newspapers, founded insurance companies, and banks. Who created the infrastructure of Black economic life in this country with their own hands, their own vision, and their own refusal to wait for someone else’s permission to build.
That spirit is exactly what the Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) was founded to protect and to grow.
When WIBO opened its doors in 1966 at the YWCA on 125th Street in Harlem, it did so with a radical belief: that every person, regardless of their background, education, or access to capital, deserves the same quality of business education that builds financially strong, sustainable enterprises. Not charity. Not handouts. Education. Tools. Community. The same foundations that every successful entrepreneur, regardless of race or zip code, requires to build something that lasts.
Sixty years later, that belief has trained over 18,000 entrepreneurs and helped create more than 34,000 jobs across New York City. Sixty years later, the graduates of WIBO’s programs are building restaurants, healthcare practices, technology companies, beauty brands, construction firms, and community organizations across every borough of this city. Sixty years later, the work continues.
On this Juneteenth, I want to speak directly to every person who has ever had a business idea they were afraid to pursue. Every person who looked at the obstacles between where they are and where they want to be and wondered if the gap was too wide. Every first-generation entrepreneur who has never seen someone who looks like them own something significant, and who carries the weight of that absence every day.
That is what Juneteenth means to me as an entrepreneur, as an educator, and as the Chairman of the Board of an institution that has spent six decades in service of that courage.
If you have been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. WIBO’s free monthly workshop, Decide: A Business of Your Own, is open to anyone who is ready to take the first step. No experience required. No cost. Just the willingness to show up for yourself and the community counting on you.
Register at https://wibo.works/info The next session is Thursday, June 25, 2026 at 7:00 PM.
Because on Juneteenth, the best thing we can do is build.
About The Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO)
Founded in 1966 at the YWCA on 125th Street in Harlem, WIBO is a New York City nonprofit that has trained over 18,000 entrepreneurs and helped create more than 34,000 jobs across the five boroughs and beyond. Through WIBO Grow, free legal and accounting clinics, and a strong alumni network, WIBO helps entrepreneurs build financially strong, sustainable businesses. Learn more at wibo.works.