PHOENIX — On East Washington Street sits a building with a story most Phoenix residents don’t know. The Swindall Tourist Inn was once listed in the Green Book, a travel guide that helped Black Americans navigate the country safely during the Jim Crow era. Today, that same building is home to the Afri-Soul Education Center, a community hub where Black-owned businesses are being built, supported, and sustained.
Darlene Little, the CEO of Afri-Soul, didn’t set out to run a business incubator. She and her husband had operated an African marketplace in California until the economy collapsed in 2008. When she came to Phoenix, she noticed something missing.
“I knew there had to be plenty of Black-owned businesses in Arizona other than hair and just food,” Little said. “There had to be something else.”
What she also noticed was a troubling pattern. Research showed that Black-owned businesses were failing within three to five years at a disproportionate rate, not because of bad ideas or lack of passion, but because of a lack of capital, mentorship, and access to the basic language of business.
So she built a place to change that.
A Hub Born From History
The building itself carries weight. The Swindall Tourist Inn was one of three Green Book-listed buildings in Phoenix during the Jim Crow era, when Black and Brown travelers needed a guide just to know where they would be safe. When the building was set to be demolished, a group of Black golfers pooled their resources to save it. They always envisioned a museum of some kind inside its walls.
That vision is now closer to reality than ever.
Today, Afri-Soul houses roughly 15 to 20 businesses in its market space, ranging from art and cultural imports to community-focused retail. Little and her husband, Dr. Mike Little, run their own import-export business, Small World, bringing back art, statues, and goods from the African continent. Among the items sold at the center are table runners and placemats made by disabled women in Kenya, women who are often ostracized after becoming disabled who receive the proceeds from every sale through a partner organization.
“My business is their business,” Little said. “I have no other function than to help other African-American or small business or BIPOC businesses be successful. That is our goal and our mission.”
Doors Closed, Then One Opened
For Mika Maharaj, founder of the Soul Center of Art and History, finding Afri-Soul was the turning point she didn’t know she needed.
Maharaj had spent years trying to find a home for her community-led museum, which centers Black and Brown experiences and uses storytelling and film to collect and preserve history. She knocked on doors of organizations with far more resources than her own. They passed. Then she tried the commercial real estate market.
“As soon as real estate agents found out that we were creating this museum and what we were planning to do, we were told things like, ‘Oh, you can’t afford that,'” Maharaj said. “But you haven’t even looked at our financials. You haven’t seen what we can afford. How do you know? We couldn’t get past the phone call.”
Maharaj was unhoused when she started her business. The rejections kept coming. But when she reached Darlene Little, the answer was immediate.
“Whatever you can afford is what I will work with while you’re building out your business,” Maharaj recalled Little telling her. “It really is a partnership. I feel like I have a second executive director, a mentor, someone I can lean on when things are hard.”
The Soul Center of Art and History is now operating out of Afri-Soul, with Maharaj having grown her presence from inside the center to having her own dedicated space within the building.
Teaching the Next Generation
Little’s vision extends beyond the businesses already operating inside Afri-Soul’s walls. She runs youth entrepreneurship programming for children ages 5 through 12 and teens 13 through 17 through a program called BOSS, which focuses on helping young people understand what it means to own and operate a business.
“A lot of us don’t know the language of business, and that becomes a barrier,” Little said. “We need to start young.”
The center also works to educate visitors, young and old, about the history of Phoenix’s Black community. Little says many residents don’t realize that the area along the Jefferson and Washington corridors was once a thriving Black business district, complete with schools, churches, restaurants, and entertainment venues.
“A lot of them don’t know that,” Little said. “So it’s not just kids that we educate. We try to educate everybody who walks in the space.”
Beyond business education, the center hosts chess lessons, spoken word events, open mics, and family and community gatherings, serving as a cultural anchor for Black and Brown residents spread across the valley.
Keeping It in Community Hands
Now, Little has her sights set on something bigger. She is running a capital campaign to purchase the Swindall Tourist Inn and the office building next to it, so the property stays in Black hands permanently.
“We are doing a capital campaign in order to purchase that building so that it’s in Black hands forever,” Little said. “So that we can stretch out, so that we can have event space for small businesses that won’t cost them too much in order to promote their own businesses.”
For Maharaj, the stakes couldn’t be higher, or more personal.
“We often hear the question of where are all the Black folks at,” Maharaj said. “This is an amazing hub for our folks. Come and be a part of what’s happening here. Come and build with us, come and work with us, come volunteer, donate. Here is a solution that’s being handed to us, and so we should be supporting that so that it lasts and it’s sustainable.”
The Afri-Soul Education Center is located on Washington Street just east of 7th Street in Phoenix.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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