MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – The City of Memphis and Shelby County Government have ended their Minority Women Enterprise programs.
On July 1, a state law went into effect dismantling DEI departments. 40% of all U.S. businesses are women-owned, which is a driving force in America’s economy, according to a 2025 report on the impact of women-owned businesses by Wells Fargo.
A challenge for women and minority-owned business owners is systemic roadblocks and funding cuts.
“Those programs excluded from our rolodex to be able to pull those programs up. That’s a blow,” said Sherrye Smith.
Smith, a business owner herself, is a mentor to the owner of the “Lavish, Too” boutique in the Medical District, a business that has grown into two locations in the past seven years.
The owner of the boutique is Lawanda Thornton. She started her business by just handing out business cards in Whitehaven and has now grown it into a place for women and men to shop.
When Smith heard about the recent ending of the Minority Women Business Enterprise program, or MWBE, she was shocked.
The MWBE program promoted minority and women-owned businesses regarding government spending. It also opened the door to more resources for those businesses.
“It can be very disappointing, it can be very overwhelming,” she said. “But as a business owner, we’ve hit roadblocks before.”
The program ended under a new Tennessee law, the Dismantling DEI Department Act, sponsored by Tennessee House Republican Aron Maberry of Clarksville.
In April, Maberry said, “DEI programs, while claiming to support inclusion, often create division and inequality. Dismantling them is a meaningful step toward a more united, merit-based future, and I’m proud to lead this effort for the Volunteer State.”
Tannera Gibson, Chief Legal Officer for the City of Memphis, said, “The City of Memphis is operating in full accordance with state law and is awarding contracts based on lawful eligibility criteria.”
Shelby County Commissioner Britney Thornton says she is concerned about how this new law will impact a city known for having a large minority population.
“Now that we are enforcing something that is going to take away so much of the progress we had been making. That’s the part that concerns me. We had the program. We were starting to train individuals on how to get county contracts and how to get city contracts, where the resources were, and now, we are being told by legal we can’t even talk about it,” said Thornton.
She also explained how government spending looked from her seat on the county commission.
“What we have seen on the county side is that we have a significant underspend somewhere between 0% and 8%, we were spending with minority businesses,” she said. “We know that Black businesses are within that figure.”
The law now prohibits local governments from using discriminatory preferences to increase diversity, equity, or inclusion.
Wells Fargo’s report shows that Black-women-owned businesses account for 14% of all women-owned businesses in the U.S. It also shows that those businesses bring in over $118 billion, but their growth has slowed as systemic challenges are in place.
Smith said that as Black women business owners, they are working together to overcome the roadblocks.
“We had to come together and in doing so a woman picks up the phone and says, ‘Hey Mrs. Sherrye, do you know how to do A, B, C, and D?’ If I don’t know how to do it, I know how to call someone else who is already been there. It hasn’t stopped us; it slowed the wheel down,” said Smith.
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