I hope you are all doing well as we emerge from COVID (hopefully) and get back to business. Minority businesses were impacted more than others with about 41% of Black businesses not surviving the COVID era. My hope is that with the Black Business Equity Fund and efforts launched by others many of our local businesses were able to stay afloat and position themselves for future prosperity. Langston Tabor, our namesake, would have been 80 years old this month. A few of our members knew him personally, but most of you didn’t. Let me tell you a bit about him: He started Tabor Electric in 1978 with a $400 unemployment check and collateral from bills for his finished projects. He was rejected by the electrician’s union and the large electrical contractors would not hire a Black man, so he started his own business. Through force of will, knowledge and a desire to teach the trade, he expanded Tabor Electric from one employee to dozens. He wired airports in several states and many commercial buildings, including skyscrapers. In 1997, he posted $5 million in sales. Tabor chose the electrical trade to make his mark because, while in Africa, he saw black engineers and technicians involved in construction projects and wanted to do the same as a Black man in the US. While he had tremendous success in business, his passion and life’s work was minority youth, single parents and other minority contractors. A single parent himself, he created an electrical mentoring project in the central area where he taught single mothers how to rewire their condos. In another project, he worked with CAYA (Central Area Youth Association) to assemble a group of young people and wire a 20,000 square foot building. “As an African American, I grew up with a sense of social responsibility” Tabor once told a Seattle Times reporter. “I realized that what was needed were employers.” Mr. Tabor died of a stroke on November 12, 1998 at the age of 56, days after state voters passed Initiative 200, ending affirmative action in state and local public contracting, education and employment. He worked tirelessly to defeat the ballot measure, spending much of his money and his time fighting I-200. He stated often that he doubted whether his business would survive the end of affirmative action. He noted that builders might not want to work with even a well-known minority businessman without the encouragement of government agencies. He was right and, today, there is no minority business that comes close to the success Langston Tabor experienced in his era. We are fortunate that the legacy and mission of Langston Tabor lives on at Tabor 100, a group formed in 1998 by Dave Tyner, Langston’s best friend.